(NSFW) Amazons

Following up on yesterday's post, here are the pictures of Desiree's Amazon army. The choice to do an army of Amazons was born of her experience playing a Dwarf army in our Fantasy Warriors games: she wanted her "from scratch" army to have the numbers and the speed that the Dwarves lacked. The matriarchal, all-female nature of the army appealed to her as well. Miniatures were drawn from two sources, primarily (both Australian companies, interestingly enough - I'll leave the sociological analysis to another day): Eureka and Shadowforge Miniatures. Although there is an official Amazons army list for Armies of Arcana, it's a more "Frazetta-esque" take on Amazons, what with Sabretooth Tiger cavalry and so forth. Fortunately, AoA is eminently adaptable, and I found someone online who had put together a more Grecian-style Amazon list specifically inspired by Eureka's line.

Of course, as these figures are based on Ancient Greek battle garb, they tend to be rather scantily clad. Even the "heavy" infantry of the phalangites have bare thighs, and the skirmishers are about one-third buck naked. Therefore, consider yourself warned that many of the following pictures may not be entirely Safe for Work (if you work at the sort of place where your boss objects to naked one-inch-tall metal women). Fairly warned be ye says I.

The centerpiece unit of the army and by far its hardest-hitting melee unit is this group of 21 phalangites. Due to their Phalanx rule, all 21 of the figures can potentially fight in a melee if facing forward! I like their death iconography; Des and I have agreed they're some sort of "death guard" unit of specialist undead fighters - clearly Germanotta is not the only rogue necromancer running around the campaign world!

An interesting counterpart to the phalangites is this unit of 19 peltast skirmishers. Despite their lack of armor and completely opposite fighting doctrine, the peltasts cost almost exactly as much as the phalangites. This is due largely to their ability to infiltrate the battlefield and spring ambushes. They proved their worth several times over during our last game, as I'll document in my battle report. (A few of the shield designs are hand-painted, but most have decal transfers.)

The vulnerable flanks of the phalangites are guarded by two units of 10 axewomen, pretty much bog-standard infantry.

While a unit of scantily-clad slingers advances in front of the melee units, blocking line of sight and providing harassing fire.

The fast units in the army comprise two light chariots and a unit of centaur archers:

Finally, the characters. The "leader" of the army is another Hasslefree figure, a barbarian queen atop a sabretooth lion mount (a sort of homage to the original Amazon list, I suppose). I gave her a more Grecian-style mace clipped from an extra Shadowforge leader figure in place of the oversized battle axe she came with; I figure she's a sort of Macedonian-type ruling over the more "civilized" Amazon (i.e. Greek) subjects.

The army's spellcaster is this priestess:

And what good is a priestess if she can't summon an avatar of Athena to fight for you?

I forgot to put a regular miniature next to Athena for scale, but that miniature is about 40-50mm tall, as you'll see in the battle report pictures. Not only is she a badass fighter, but she can also cast spells! The Amazons having two spellcasters to my single Necromancer proved a real setback for me in last weekend's game. Might have to try and even things up somehow...