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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Hyrieus, son of Hermes, a lucky man |
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| Tigasis |
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| Barthas |
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| Palaimon, grandson of Poseidon |
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| Dryas 'The Boar Hunter' |
