The Assyrians came in, like a Dog from the Cold...

Richard over at the My Wargaming Habit blog recently made an offer of some free Assyrian figures  to someone who might provide them a new home. I wound up accepting, and in addition to the free lead, Richard generously covered the substantial postage charges from the UK as well. The figures, expertly packed, arrived in record time. They included some 14 heavy spearmen with 4 copmmand figures as seen above, and...

and a a further 18 medium spearmen wearing conical helmets, and...

a further 12 spearmen, 10 of them bareheaded, plus the requisite shields. All in all, incredibly gernerous of Richard. Thanks again.  

I have a small amount of unpainted Assyrian lead on hand myself - three Old Glory 2-horse chariots

and six Newline Designs command figures

I have a much larger contingent of painted Assyrians already on hand. My Assyrian army is chiefly "new" Minifigs, plus Hinchliffe 4 Horse chariots, all painted back in the late 1970's while I was in Medical School. Those figures were primarily for our own gridded Ancient rules based upon the FGU rules, Legion!  Those rules, which I have termed Legio Quaternarius, were inspired by Charlie Sweet's own gridded Ancient rules, which were themselves my first introduction to Ancient wargaming. A unit in those rules is just 2 stands, so the figures were based and organized with that in mind. 

While I still enjoy those rules, for the past 10+ years, Simon Miller's excellent Ancient rules, To the Strongest, which are similarly gridded, have been my go to Ancient rules. While I could easily play with 2 stand units on a 3" grid (and have truly massive forces), my preferred set up is 6" boxes, and 4 stand units for most formed infantry. 

For some time, a low priority project has been to reorganize and rebase these troops to that standard, while also decreasing the heavy spear units to 3 figures on a 60 x 30 base instead of 4 figures on a 60 x 20 mm base. 

The plan would be to have 6 x 12 figure heavy spear units, 2 x Quaradu (Assyrian household/guard spearmen), and increase the heavy slingers to 2 units of 12, and  the heavy archers  to 4 units of 12, chiefly by the judicious addition of new command figures. My 2 existing Medium spear units of 18 figures would become 3 units of 12 each. The light infantry, all the cavalry and chariots would be unchanged. In addition to the core Minifigs troops, in recent years I have added some figures from the collection of the late Bill McHugh (mostly seen with the arid basing), and few additions from Eureka and Black Tree Designs ranges. Richard's figures, as already noted would add another heavy infantry spear and 3-4 Medium spear units. I may need to add a few more command figures to flesh out some of the units. I  plan to do more "arid" basing scheme for these troops, akin to that I have used for my Egyptians. Considering the size of the collection, I am seriously considering basing half of the troops in subtly different fashion, so that they could represent rival Assyrian factions or even a Babylonian army. 

Anyway, thanks again to Richard and his most gracious and very generous gift. Serious work on Project Assyria will likely not occur until after Historicon. I might even shop for a few packs of the necessary command figures in the Dealer's area while I am there in July!