Ancient Nostalgia

I mentioned in an earlier post that the 15mm ancients for DBA that I had rediscovered and am currently working on, had originally been destined for a sprawling "known world" campaign. Looking for my Italian Wars folder for a map of Italy based around the game "Machiavelli", I chanced upon the folder with my ancients bits saved and collected. It includes some sketches which I know Jonathan likes, so thought I'd share it on the blog - there being no new painted units to show...

It would have been in the mid-1990s as I was very keen on DBA and had been building armies slowly for several years. It was sometime around then that I started to develop ideas for my "Known World" campaign of around 105 BC. I was very influenced by an old boardgame I'd bought and played many years previously, Imperial Governor:

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/7934/imperial-governor-and-strategos

It is a typical hex and counter boardgame with a rather fanciful mix of powers - Rome, Carthage, Macedonia, Pontus, Syria and Egypt with leaders of different eras and even states mixed together.

Looking in my folder, I had obviously worked on converting the game map to my own purposes and adapting the rules. I had even drawn out the map in a small and large version, a fact I had forgotten!

The larger version was split across three sheets, the west:

And east:

I had also planned out the armies, influenced partly by the colours in the game. Please don't use as an accurate historical representation, even though many images and colour schemes were derived from the WRG books. Pontus in particular has variations on green simply because this was the colour of that state's counters in the game (so I cannot think of them except as "green"). 

Roman legion variations

Numidians

Seleucids

Ptolemaics

Mithridatic Pontics

My DBA armies were painted based on the sketches.

I think several things happened; I tried DBM which proved something of a disappointment and yet again I got sidetracked into variations, in this case the various Roman civil wars and lost focus to some extent. I know I was still painting DBA armies when I moved to Wiltshire in the mid to late 1990s and the last army I painted was the early Germans, having just  finished the Celts. I found the primed Parthians and more Germans which date from then recently. I can see I was looking to include in DBA things like hordes (which have been included) and naval (which have not) and at that time I built a lot of things like camps and terrain. Hence the sketches for my Roman marching fort:

Individual matchsticks were carved into the "pila muralis" - now you can buy them in strips from Essex Miniatures....

I was also planning ships and how to fit one on an 80mm x 40mm base....

Oddly, I have just completed two commercial models from Museum Miniatures of ancient galleys modelled to fit on such a base, so was surprised to see the idea has been long in the planning!

My rediscovery has in many ways helped with maintaining the enthusiasm for the current project and made me wonder if a "Known World" Campaign will eventually reach fruition?