Miniature Friday: The Warriors of Athena

The Warriors of Athena

Over the last few months, I have been reading a lot of Ancient Greek Myth, so it is not terribly surprising that I got a hankering to paint up some Greek heroes.  I spent several weeks researching the various miniatures available and deciding exactly what I wanted.  Since my love of Greek myth mostly comes from the old Hollywood flicks, Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans, I am more interested in recreating the look of these films than I am in historical accuracy.  Thus, I decided I would base my heroes on Greek hoplites, even though these warriors actually date to many hundreds of years after the Heroic Age of Greece.

Phassos the cunning

After much searching, I finally decided to go with the Greek hoplites put out by Wargames Factory.  I have had my differences with WF in the past, but these figures ticked a lot of boxes.  They have nice details, most of which are pretty crisp.  Since the arms, heads, and weapons are all separate, there is room for a lot of variation among the figures.  Also, unlike hoplite figures from most other companies, these figures are easy to assemble in heroic action poses.

My only real complaint about the set is the lack of head variation.  There are only three different head types in the box, and all of them have helmets.  Then again, I want most of my figures to be wearing helmets and I found some suitable no-helmeted head replacements in my bits box, so I guess it wasn’t that big a deal.

Cepheus

As I was painting the figures, I thought about their story.  What brought these guys together, and for what do they fight?  I like my heroes to be just that – the good guys, but I needed a higher purpose, something that could hold them together and give them direction.  Well, in Greek Myth pretty much everything revolves around the will of the gods, and of these immortals, there is only one that strikes me as generally being good: Athena.  As the goddess of wisdom and war, Athena is the perfect patron for a group of wandering heroes.  Thus I named my heroes ‘The Warriors of Athena’ because they travel the world at her prompting, fighting monsters, defending the weak, and generally doing all of that A-Team/Magnificent Seven type stuff.

I’m not sure if this is the final team line-up.  I suspect it may change over time as I paint up new figures and retire old ones.  I’d like to add a centaur to the mix and maybe a warrior woman.  I also plan to get an Athena figure at some point for those times where the goddess decides to directly intervene.

 Now that I’ve got my team together, all I need is some baddies for them to fight!

Special shout out to Little Big Man Studios whose shield transfers add so much to the figures.

Hyrieus, son of Hermes, a lucky man

Tigasis

Barthas

Palaimon, grandson of Poseidon

Dryas 'The Boar Hunter'