Hi, I’m Eric. Occasional writer for Goonhammer Historicals, miniature games enjoyer.

Fool. Mark. Rube.

I find myself in a situation entirely of my own making, a sorry tale of hubris, friendship, and a group text chat that is an active hazard for all involved.

You may have read Colin’s account of where we stand in our mutual, Hoplite-heavy pact. Here is mine.

How We Ended Up Here

Having succeeded in getting Colin into historicals through a combination of persistence, reasonably priced bags of miniatures, and the promises of games to be played, I supported his plan to buy one the Warlord blind boxes. That felt like the makings of a fun project – a combination of hobby discount and a leap of faith.

And then, I did something foolish. I told him whatever he got, I’d make an army to match.

Now had be picked the Napoelonics Black Powder or the Pike & Shotte versions of those boxes, I might have been tempted to even greater heights of hubris and promised to do a paired blind box project. As it was, I did purchase both of those, netting myself a perfectly sensible plastic British force for the Napoleonic Wars and what I believe is an all-metal army specifically for the Siege of Malta. In case anyone was curious as to the variety that came in those boxes.

But given that the Hail Ceasar! box spans a period of time best described as “The vast majority of recorded human history,” I didn’t figure that would work.

And so we waited, both of us fearing Colin opening a box with “Congratulations, here’s your all-metal Hittites”, leaving me to conjure up an army of Sea Peoples or Assyrians. Personally, I was hoping for a Viking-age army, and Warlord miraculously getting me out of this hobby situation of my own making by letting me leverage an army that I already owned. It would have been so easy…

The Reveal and Decisions to Be Made

When Colin called me with the news that Warlord had sent him a box of essentially infinite Spartan hoplites, I was relieved. Not only was this what my friend was hoping for, but it was something I could work with. While it’s not my favorite historical period it is one I’m at least passingly familiar with, and popular enough that I wasn’t facing sourcing miniatures from super-obscure sources.

The first question is, of course, what army should I build to face down Colin’s Spartans?

To me, there were three logical choices:

• A contemporary Greek city-state that had, historically faced the Spartans in battle, ala Athens or Thebes
• Macedonians who had, similarly, faced the Spartans during their conquest of the Greek city-states as they built their empire
• The Achaemenid Persians, probably the most iconic non-Greek foes of either one of the armies above

All of them are compelling choices, and reasonably well supported ones in terms of miniature lines. I opted against the Greek city-states simply because of the sameness of the armies – a core of Hoplites, combined with the fact that the rules for other elite formations of the era, such as the Sacred Band, are pretty much summed up as “as Spartans” in the rules. “Colin’s army but worse” doesn’t hold a tremendous amount of appeal for me. The other two I waffled back and forth between, finding both of them rather compelling, until I had a conversation with a friend at my local club.

We were discussing the evolution of his tactical preferences in wargames, and how they seemed to be converging on a strong defensive base while biding time for a single, decisive charge. I have my suspicions that I’ve driven him toward this through my own fondness for shock assault armies.

But given that preference, a Macedonian army of phalangites plus the elite Companion cavalry seemed like a natural choice. Ideally, whatever army I then pick should be able to credibly have gone to battle against both he and Colin, and the armies of Xerxes, Darius the Great and Darius III are not so dissimilar that I can’t field them from the same broad collection of models.

Persia it is.

Reflecting

Honestly, I’m thrilled. There’s an extremely well supported line of Persian models from Victrix, excuses for color and variety that I think will be a fun contrast vs. the more intimidating blocks of Greek hoplites, and a very different play style, built around bow-armed infantry and more numerous cavalry that, while not the equal to Colin’s hoplites in a frontal assault, can hopefully whittle him down, break up the cohesion of his advancing line, and threaten his flanks.

Speaking of unique playstyles, the first units I’ve picked up for the army is three scythed Chariots. These are absolutely wild – essentially, they’re horse-drawn guided missiles that, frankly, are more than a little horrific. Rules wise, they charge once, hit hard, and then die. The core, drilled Spartan hoplite core of Colin’s army has a chance to mitigate that, but any non-elite Greeks, etc. face a pretty serious threat, as the consequence of a frontal charge vs Hoplites, namely that you’ll probably lose, doesn’t really matter if the unit you send in wasn’t going to survive in the first place. There’s some trickiness there with how the Hail Ceasar! rules work – whatever division these madmen are in is at high risk of being broken by them working as intended, which seems wrong. It’ll take some playtesting to decide if that needs to be house ruled, but I’m not going to let a little thing like “This might destroy your entire army’s morale” stop me.

Unlike everything else in the army, there are not a wide array of plastic options for scythed chariots. I could find two sources that had the combination of the right scale and reasonably modern looking sculpts – two different four-horse chariots from Gripping Beast, and a two-horse version from Footsore. Technically, the Gripping Beast chariots are intended for the various successor armies of Alexander’s divided empire, but they’ll do in a pinch. I’ve ordered four of those, as the description and intent of the chariots is that they’re fairly large, so the four-horse version appeals. But I’m also going to need division commanders, and I’m tempted to use the smaller Footsore model for one of those.

So What Now Remains?

Well, there’s figuring out what the rest of my army looks like. Beyond the scythed chariots, I’ve only made one major decision about my army: No Greeks.

The Persians are allowed to take mercenary Greek hoplites in their list, but a division of hoplites needs to be entirely hoplites or skirmishers, so this is a relatively steep investment. I’m not particularly keen on choosing not to do Thebes or Athens only to make my Persian army’s core a bunch of Hoplites, so that’s being shelved for “Someday I’ll probably do that, but not today.” As for the rest – I’m not really sure yet. I need to do some mapping out, but I sort of want to celebrate the diversity of possible units in the Persian list, so you can expect the variety pack. Presently, I’m not quite as daunted by this as Colin is, for one simple reason: I don’t have the models yet.

Unlike Colin, I don’t have three hundred or so Spartans staring up at me in grey plastic. But two factors are going to work against me here: First, with relatively cheap units, it’s entirely likely the Persian counterpart to his army is also going to be comically large. Second, I paint much slower than Colin does. Trust me friends, an attack of “what the hell was I thinking!?” is coming. The plan to get through it is a combination of stubbornness and the same damnable group text that got me into this mess in the first place.

There’s also the matter of hosting. At the ending of what I’ve taken to referring to as “The Great Undertaking”, and the real motivation behind all this, is to get Colin up for a game day. We live the kind of close where it feels like we should see each other more, but the kind of far where we don’t. So this is a powerful incentive, and an excuse to host. Which means boards – preferably a couple to allow a short little campaign should we . And while boards for Hail Caesar! – especially for this period – are much less demanding in their construction than something like The Baron’s War, I still want them to look good, and to be a worthy showcase for the armies once they’re done.

I have some plans on that account. More on that later.

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