First Seleucid Battle Groups

These are the first two battle groups for my Field of Glory Seleucid army. This one is a pike block painted by Dragon Painting Service (DPS). If you've ever looked for painted miniatures on Ebay, you've seen DPS's work listed there. I've purchased quite a few figures from DPS, and their quality is quite good, and if you're patient you can usually get a better price then their 'Buy it Now' price. This unit was the first I've purchased from them which I wasn't completely satisfied. The Xyston figures are painted quite nicely, but the auction's photos pictured the figures with Xyston's excellent pikes with formed spear points on them. When the figures arrived, not only did they not have the Xyston pikes, the pikes were obviously made from spring steel pulled off a roll. The pikes on the figures I received were wavy like gravy. Of the 46 figures with pikes I was only able to use 3 of them. The other 43 I had to remove and replace.  Now that the pikes have been replaced, I'm quite happy with the unit.

I don't usually post figures here on the blog that I've purchased painted, but since I replaced the pikes on this unit, and had to paint them and touch up the hands, etc. I thought I'd go ahead and show the unit here. Also it let me give everyone else who's considering purchasing pike-armed figures from DPS the heads up that they might received wavy pikes as well.

This battle group I painted over a decade ago when DBA 1.0 was first released. Back then the Seleucid DBA army list allowed you to have two elephants, one of which was the general's unit. In the next edition of the rules Phil Barker adjusted all of the army lists so that none of the armies could only have more than one elephant element, so the second one has been collecting dust until now. These are 'Fine Essex Lead'. We still call any Essex figures 'Fine Essex Lead' in deference to the fact that for quite a while Essex was the cream of the crop for 15mm figures. Honestly, they're still the best 'TRUE' 15mm figures. Everything newer that's been released that's generally considered better is larger than 15mm. Of course the larger the figure, the more detail you can put into it.  I've purchased an additional two Essex elephants to add to this to create another two-stand element of elephants for my Seleucid army. The Essex elephants, like the figures are true 15s and I thought it would probably not be a wise choice to mix them with another brand of elephants.