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Review of Theban Armoured Hoplites 5th to 3rd Century BCE
Blurb from the publisher: 'This fantastic set of miniatures represents Greek Hoplites of Thebes, Boeotia and Thessaly from the 5th Century covering the end of the wars with Persia, to the 4th century and the titanic struggle for Greek supremacy in the Peloponnesian war against Athens, Thebes' rise and battle for hegemony over Greece, and the destructive war against Macedonia.
You get 48 superbly detailed miniatures. The detail is crisp and sharp. There are 8 head variants. There are thrusting arms options, spear at rest options and sword arms. If you want to make more at rest arms, by rotating a thrusting arm 90 degrees it becomes a spear at rest position. There are 8 figures per sprue, 4 have shield arms attached and 4 have no arms attached, to enable you to make the musician and other speciality positions for officers and character figures. There are cloaks and various sword scabbards to add even more character and flavour to your Hoplite miniatures. All this makes this set one of the finest, most detailed, and most versatile plastic sets on the market.
This set can be mixed with all the parts from the other 3 Hoplite sets, Athenian, Spartan and Mercenary which all have their own speciality heads and options. Add yet more variety to your Greek armies!
Included in the box is a fantastic flyer produced for us by Great Escape Games giving you unit statistics for your Ancient Thebans to work with their Ancient Rules 'Clash of Empires', a superb set of rules that really capture the flavour of warfare in the ancient world.'
What you get: Your GBP 24,95 or equivalent will buy you Theban Armoured Hoplites 5th to 3rd Century BCE, one of the many big boxes of ancient Greek units produced by Victrix Limited. Should one buy more than one boxes, the price drops down to 15% off, namely at GBP 21,21.
The product contains 48 plastic miniatures at the 28 mm range. It also contains unit statistics for Clash of Empires, the ancient warfare game rules by Great Escape Games. These allow the units to be fielded as Theban Citizen Hoplites, Theban Levy Hoplites, or even the famous Sacred Band. The sheet also concisely presents the contents of the box, as well as instructions of how they can be assembled.
The present review does not discuss the gameplay of the present figures for Clash of Empires, but the actual content of the product.
Content: When opening the voluminous yet lightish box, you are greeted by six sprues with the relevant elements for the assembly of those plastic miniatures. Bases and shield transfers are not included.
Each sprue expectedly hosts eight soldiers. These can be found in four different torso configurations per sprue. There are eight different heads with a variety of helmets, or even without sporting ones, as well as three different types of crest holders. The soldiers can be fitted with three different types of swords in a variety of hand poses. The shields are not different, at least externally, but the arrow aprons are; two different designs exist. One can even fit four of his soldiers as musicians, seeing how a horn is an option alongside the swords. Depending on the complexity one is aiming for, each soldier will be comprised from five to ten parts.
The strong points: The Theban army is the red haired child of ancient Greece, sandwiched between the might of the Spartans, the glory of the Athenians and the impossible accomplishments of the Macedonians. Many forget that just before the Macedonian domination with the sarissas and all, it was Thebes that controlled the military landscape, having reduced the Spartan army to ashes, and having liberated a large part of the Peloponnese helots. The present set corrects the injustice, and presents an army that looks cool without falling back to Athenian or Spartan stereotypes. Truly, there are similarities between the weapons and the armor, Macedonian sarissas excluded; these were all Greek states after all. Yet, the figures look fresh, different. As an example, there is no head with what most consider a typical, closed ancient Greek helmet. The details are very cool, with all sorts of folds on the tunics, ornaments on the swords and engravings on the greaves. The miniatures are distinct, but they will also work as any other Greeks if one wishes to go the extra mile and insert some of them in formations of Athenian or Spartan units in order to achieve further diversity.
I enjoyed how it is possible to build other, more specialized units like commanding officers and musicians, even though this product is only a starting point. I wish more companies did that.
I was very pleasantly surprised to find the units' stats for Clash of Empires inside the box. It is a fantastic coincidence, because we were in any case going to visit that game in the first semester of 2019. Now, the miniatures prompt me to playtest that game and have that review out even sooner. If Clash of Empires is not your thing, the figures can be used as is on Hail Caesar. In fact, I strongly recommend using them on that game alongside Warlord figures. Ancient armies are not about uniformity; they are about diversity. The more different minis and units on different poses and with different equipment, the higher the historical and aesthetic value of the army.
The price is very fair. I really like the permanent offer of a deduction of 10%, 13% and 15%, when one buys more of the same. One really can't field a Greek army with a single box; that's for sure.
The publisher's support for the Greek city states of the era is more than very strong. I am counting five additional cardboard boxes similar to this one, packed with minis of all persuasions, like unarmoured Hoplites, Peltasts, Spartans, Athenians, and Mercenaries. And all that, before we move on to smaller backage with Light Cavalry, Slinger Reinforcements, Macedonian Heavy Cavalry, and many more. We will be seeing a lot more of this line shortly. I don't need to stretch how customizable the contents of those boxes are, and how they can be combined with one another when Greeks are pitted not only against each other but against non-Greek threats.
The weak points: The obvious facts first: this is not a ready-made army. It needs careful assembly and a serious investment of time in order to turn the contents of the box into a proxy of the ass-kickers they were back in the day. These miniatures are addressed to the miniature enthusiast and painter as much as they are addressed to the avid wargamer. You will require dedicated hobby tools, time, and steady hands.
A magnifying lens is not a prerequisite for the work on these minis, unless you are going for really impressive painting results. My very simple advice: go for mass production, and do one small thing at a time. The process is very likely to feel like a chore, at the end of the day however you will have your army made in less time and with only a fraction of the effort. Just because you will opt to minimize the downtime, do not opt for identical soldiers, irrespective of whether this means identical heads on identical bodies, throwing away the crest holders (don't do that!) and overall not bothering much. Armies of the time were organized, yet they were not as uniform as they are today. Variance is absolutely needed.
I am disappointed by the box containing neither shield transfers nor plastic bases. I can potentially see why the latter was done. The minis are mostly system agnostic, and can be played with any system for ancient battles. Forcing the players to assemble them in particular ways might have come out as heavy-handed. Shields, however? I count some 23 different types of transfers in different shapes and sizes that Victrix offers. Surely, some of them could have made it in the box.
Conclusion: The Theban Armoured Hoplites 5th to 3rd Century BCE is a delightfully different set of ancient Greeks. Recognizable as a Greek army, yet with a fresh take, they can be used with any ancient warfare system, and potentially even as any other Greek tribe. I am really looking forward towards examining more of the offerings of this line.
For more info on Theban Armoured Hoplites 5th to 3rd Century BCE as well as Victrix, visit their website at https://www.victrixlimited.com.
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