Fumbling my way around the world of Ancients

Having  settled on multi-basing my models I then had to make a decision on what size and shape bases to use.

Looking through the internet it did seem like rectangular bases were more popular than square bases when it came to 15mm figures.

I settled on a standard size of 20mm x 40mm for my infantry figures with the idea being to mount 4 models on each base.

Basing this way did somewhat make Hail Caesar the preferred rules system as it relies more on the footprint of the unit rather than number of bases.

To play using Warhammer Ancients I would ideally need units between 5 and 8 bases wide.  Although doable it could mean my armies start to look a bit like thin lines unless I increase the ranks of bases too.  Of course also doable, but it would require quite a lot of figures per unit.

I had initially thought that 4 bases would be a good size, but I soon realised that it would lose a lot of grandeur.  I really want to give the impression that these battles involved a cast of thousands, not just a few hundred men.

16 man units just seemed small.  So I have decided to go with 8 men per base, or at least for tightly packed close order infantry.  I will probably do different figure counts to represent more open order troops.

Next I started to look at the shape of the footprint.  I noticed that many people portrayed the Macedonian Phalanx formation in a rectangle on the tabletop but looking in history books the formation was more square.

With each Phalanx consisting of 16 ranks of 16 men for a total of 256 men.

Looking at the Hail Caesar rules it pretty much confirmed what I needed to do.  Phalanx formations in the rules are supposed to be 4 ranks deep.

If I make each phalanx unit 2 bases wide and 4 bases deep not only would I make the footprint square I would also comply with the 4 ranks rule from the rules I plan to use.  This in turn meant that my units would be 8 men wide and 8 men deep for a total of 64 men.   A massive increase from what my initial thought had been.

I was hoping to have at least 6 phalanxes in my Macedonian force, but after working all this out I would have nowhere near enough men.

So another order was placed to bolster the ranks.