Peter Pig recently released a rather surprising (for them..) new set of hellenistic pikemen and command, in what looks to the the start of a new range to complement some of their small but perfectly Piggily-formed Greeks, Romans and their enemies (Germans, Parthians etc).
As a general fan of all things Pig - and with a mate putting in an order for some WW2 stuff I could Piggy-back (ahem) onto - I thought I should pick up a set and give them a whirl.
They are all cast without pikes - very much the modern style I think, and a good idea all round especially for anyone like me who has long since bought a plastic-bristled brush to make endless numbers of 15mm spears out of !
The castings are effective when painted and based en mass, as you can see from these who have had a black undercoat with fairly quick and simple drybrushed metal armour, and then some basic colours for flesh added - however I did feel that it would have been rather challenging to paint them "better" than this, as a lot of the detail seemed in hard to get to places on the figures, or perhaps was not as paint-friendly and sharp as I had initially hoped when looking at the castings themselves.
The officer pack has 8 figures too, with a couple of standard bearers, officers with swords and trumpeters. The pikemens shields are of the "tiny" persuasion, making it pretty tough to put any sort of pattern onto them - VVV transfers would I'm sure be too big by far, although I'm told that LBMS may do a very small range for Forged in Battles' similarly small-shielded pikemen that could maybe fit.
Squeezing in a second standard at the rear of the base has allowed me to make up a 12-man ADLG pikeman unit with only 1 pack of actual pikemen and one of officers (who'd do perfectly well as officers for the other PP "hellenistic" set, the 2 packs of City Militia Peltasts in the Parthian range)
The spare officers I used to make up a small command stand with a fairly low-skill banner design to boot!
And here they are ready to fight.
In many ways these figures reminded me of some QRF Medieval Swiss figures I have in the same army as some from Mirliton - just like the QRF Swiss, the level of detail on these chaps isn't perhaps as good as some other ranges out there, but when massed together it's really difficult to tell the difference - and pikemen are always all about the mass effect.
All in all they are a solid if unspectacular addition to the already extensive roster of "true" 15mm pikemen out there - especially if you want small shields, angled pikes and open hands.
Personally speaking having done these I think I'm a bit of a "bigger shield" and "vertical pikes" man myself, as I find that generally more practical for gaming and it also allows the shield patterns to offset my own sometimes patchy painting standard!
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