Macedonians for The Hydaspes

 The Wargames Foundry World of the Greeks range are some of the nicest Hellenistic figures ever produced. The figures are both full of character and nicely historical. There are a vast range of variants available (over 100 pikemen alone) so that units full of individuals or skirmish games with identifiable heroes are possible. I have had a stack of these sitting on the shelf since the year that they were released and I belonged to the pre-order scheme that Foundry ran.  Basically I signed up for everything that they produced for the Macedonians and every couple of months a package of metally goodness would arrive through the post. If I recall correctly there was some small financial advantage to buying the range this way, almost like an early form of Kickstarter.

All these years later the SOA Battle Day gave me the perfect excuse to get some of these finally painted and in use. The main requirement for the Greek side at the Hydaspes were Hypaspists (Macedonian Royal Guard). We would need  3 units of these at the scale we were going to be representing the battle at.  Standard Piquet units are 12 figures (4 stands) for infantry. The other requirement wa Companion cavalry, although we could use similar shieldless Greek cavalry from our collections at a push. A commander figure for Alexander the Great himself  was a must and Foundry do at least 2 that are nice representations of his images.

The Hypaspists were to be armed with short spears / javelins as this fitted with one of the interpretations of the account of the battle of Hydaspes that seems to suggest that the Macedonian heavy infantry used missile weapons against the Indian elephants. This also suits the Hypaspists elite status and multi-role capabilities.

The Companion cavalry are also very nice figures and there are enough individual models to have every one in a unit different. I used a scattering of unarmoured figures so that I could give the unit a veteran look and paint some of the interesting tunic colours that have been recorded from Macedonian tomb paintings. (Not just because those were the figures I happened to have!)

To join the Companion cavalry an Alexander the Great command figure was painted (that standard needs a bit more work - one day...)