Thinking of starting Successors

[Westbury]

Having a socially distanced chat in the garden today and we got round to the project we've abandoned twice, namely the wars of the successors, mainly abandoned because of the size of the armies and the cost of doing it in 28mm metal. But now with the appearance of so much plastic maybe it's possible again?
Thoughts would be appreciated. The going in point is 28mm and armies (not the large skirmishes which seem to be flavour of the day at present).
Thoughts on rules, new and past but not the DBA/M stable, would be appreciated also. 

[Hu Rhu]

Perfectly doable, mostly in plastic but it will probably require some metals for the missing pieces.  Victrix are your first point of call followed by Warlord. They have most of the pike units, hoplites and some generic cavalry as well as elephants.  For metals I would recommend Aventine but there are a lot of other good manufacturers out there.

As to rules, we are fighting the Punic Wars via Hail Ceasar.  Very adaptable rules, easy to pick up and have the added bonus of having Army Lists to get you started on the collection.

Hope that helps.  I am sure there will other advice coming your way.

[Corso]

I think Hu Rhu nailed it perfectly, so I second his suggestions.

Victrix miniatures are very detailed and have successor phalangites too, with the option of having asiatic trousers instead of bare legs and greaves. The greek cavalry kits are versatile too, easily converted to companions and prodromoi.

Hail Caesar is a good ruleset, my favourite for ancient 'massed' battles. Unit size is based on frontage, many go for multi-basing though standard individual sqaure bases can also be used. Army lists are easily adapted with rules to add extra special rules and/or profile modification to represents elite warriors or else unwilling troops.

[Jjonas]

If you focus on core generic units to start, then most units will be easily crossed over to other Successor era armies. The key is to focus on completion of a typical combined arms force that is game able. One can add in extras that are more specific to identity armies. The Successor era has a lot of scope even if it does not encompass a huge time period. How one approaches how one would like to have their Early Successors differ from later kingdoms is really a personal decision. Later armies were often more uniform in appearance and had specific troop types that might not appear in any other kingdom's army. Earlier armies were more generic as the Generals recruited troops in their own regions, as well as absorbing enemy forces that surrendered to them. But earlier armies do not have the sexy troop types like armored elephants or cataphract cavalry that later Seleucid and Bactrian armies contained.

Most of the generic troops are available in plastic. So the formula is based on building an Imperial Macedonian list- then you can morph most of it into an Early Successor army of your choice, or an Epirote army against Rome. The generic units can be the bulk of an empire army, with the specific extras added in to give them their special flavor. So a Ptolemaic army may have some different  looking phalangites to represent Egyptian recruits, and African elephants. The Seleucids can add in a super fancy silver shields phalanx, and cataphracts, and scythed chariots. An Antigonid army can have the later shielded cavalry and lots of Thracians.

It is all about how much effort one wants to put into their army- how generic of how specific they wish to be.

[FierceKitty]

Those armies were BIG. You're brave to be taking it on, but I'd think carefully before committing to 28mm armies in that period. My 10mm Seleucids take up a fair bit of storage space.

[madaxeman]

Back in the days when shows and demo games were "a thing" Simon Miller regularly put on huge 28mm Successor battles with his To The Strongest rules  - they've been covered in loads of places and Simon has a great blog so with a bit of google-fu I'm sure you could find some inspiration online from this source for both figures and setup options.

Given TTS uses a grid system, you could also kinda do whatever basing you like, so you could build an army for Hail Caesar (say) and give it a try with both sets?

[Easy E]

28mm!  I have been working 6mm and that has been a big chore! I can't imagine 28mm!  You must have a mammoth table if you want to maneuver at all. 

Victrix is a good start, but keep in mind if you build the successor variants of the Pike units you have to chop of most the legs and replace them with the trouser wearing ones (if you want the variants from the Alexander versions)  I love my Victrix Pikemen. 

[SJWi]

Hi, for what its worth my personal favourite ruleset is Simon Miller's "To the Strongest", but you do need to invest in a gridded mat plus other peripherals to play. His army lists are available as free downloads from his BigRedBat online shop.

I am just completing a Seleucid/Generic Successor army much as described by one of the earlier correspondents.  I mainly used the superb Aventine range, plus extras from Gripping Beast, Wargames Foundry and even 1st Corps.

The Victrix pike, cavalry and elephants look very nice, but you will probably need light infantry, cataphract cavalry and maybe scythed chariots. I think Gripping Beast are the only manufacturer of a 28mm scythed chariot and it is in their Polemarch range.

Worth checking out a variety of manufacturers. In metal Aventine, Gripping Beast and Foundry mix well together. 1st Corps are on the small side.

Warlord also do a decent-looking range but I have only seen them on their website. They sell a "Successor Starter Army" with 100 plastic phalangites, 8 metal cavalry plus an elephant and crew and shield decals for £75 which is pretty good value.       

[Westbury]

Big thanks to all who have replied so far and some useful tips. I feel fairly knowledgeable on the period from researching a while back but the exact point to dip in is more important than I originally thought.
Rules suggestions are welcome, no fixed view at the moment so happy to receive suggestions for new sets and old.
We've realised we are probably going to have to use some metal and the Aventine figures do look nice but maybe for command and 'special' units.
All ideas gratefully received 

[Atheling]

Personally, I'd go metal and go Aventine.

why?

i/ There miniatures are cheaper when compared to most other companies.

ii/ The depth of research is top notch.

iii/ Their Successor range is huge. The only thing it lacks is scythed chariots.

iv/ The quality of the sculpting and casting, not to mention the metal is excellent.

Obviously, metal is more expensive then plastic so feel free to disregard my feeling on the subject

[Easy E]

Big thanks to all who have replied so far and some useful tips. I feel fairly knowledgeable on the period from researching a while back but the exact point to dip in is more important than I originally thought.
Rules suggestions are welcome, no fixed view at the moment so happy to receive suggestions for new sets and old.
We've realised we are probably going to have to use some metal and the Aventine figures do look nice but maybe for command and 'special' units.
All ideas gratefully received 

What are some elements of rules you have liked in the past? 

For example:
Model removal?  Yes or No
Command as a Resource?  Yes or No
Lot's of Modifiers?  Yes or No

Just give us a general idea of what you have of haven't liked in other games.

[AdamPHayes]

There was a great magazine article in Practical Wargaming (?) a long time ago that went through the basics of a Successor army and then how it could be added to, to gradually transform it into a plethora of different armies and choosing the one that suited your own preferences. From memory the basis was 96 pikemen, 48 peltasts and a couple of dozen cavalry. That gave you a viable small Macedonian Early Successor army (to coin WRG parlance.) I was lucky as a schoolboy to have a friend (Nick)  collecting Successors at the same time as me, so we were able to get them on the tabletop twice as fast as either of us individually. There weren't any plastics available (well except a few bags of veteran Rospacks) so metal was the only option back then...

[Atheling]

Whilst on the subject of articles; the two Montvert books at the bottom of this post were invaluable when I painted up some examples of the Polemarch/Gripping Beast Successor range many years ago:

[smirnoff]

Rules: Armati II. I love them and they do not require gallons of units.

I have a fairly large 15mm 'Successor' collection that morphs between 323 (and before) to 150 BC with a big basic core army and relevant additions.

[mc_deli]

I’m doing this in 15mm.

Alexandrian core, plenty of Thracians and hoplites, Indians, then special successor-specific units e.g. catas, trousered pike, chariots, eles, LH bow, personality generals... I’m nearly at a place where I can do 200-300 point (ADLG) for most Greek, Mac, successor, asia minor, bactrian, indian... so covering a lot of list possibilities.

There’s good stuff in 15 between Xyston, MuseumZ, Chariot and FIB.