Core of the Army

 The other elite cavalry regiment who bookend the army of Phyrrhus, are the Agema. These are the Royal Squadron of the Epirot cavalry, the closest companions to the King.

 

I made the classic mistake of painting these first out of all the cavalry, which shows up in a couple of ways. The first six figures I painted in enamel paints, including the horses. By the time I was painting the next six, I had moved to using oil paints for the horses (the splodge on / wipe off method.) The other "mistake" was my reading of Companion style cavalry as having white armour (some type of leather corselet?) I decided to paint the obvious muscle cuirass these figures are wearing as some sort of white painted finish, instead of the more likely bronze or silvered finish.

 

This unit has seen long and heavy service and at some point one base went missing. The command base is thus a replacement, conscripting in an Essex Miniatures officer figure to make up the three.

 The first unit of pikemen that I completed were also in the cross over between enamel and acrylic paint use. I got the first Citadel boxed set of the water based paints for Christmas and they were a revelation! You can see the difference in the red of the uniforms between the rank and file and the officer and musician. The red of the foot is much duller, which sort of works, so I have never gone back to redo it.

 The next 32 pikemen were mainly done in acrylics. These were all Corvus Miniatures and pretty much straight out of the WRG Armies of the Macedonian and Punic Wars. I mixed up the four different styles of equipment to give these units a slightly less uniform look.

 

The only upgrade to these figures that I have done is to swap the bendy lead pikes for steel pins. This was just to improve the look but also got rid of the debunked idea of the two part pikes with a metal sleeve holding the two parts together. (Anyone with a shred of experience of materials would already  have had grave doubts about the whole idea.)

 

These figures, now long out of production have formed the core of all my Successor armies. They have since been joined by units of Foundry and other makes but always put in a veteran shift!