Ral Partha Persians

Persians, by Ral Partha

For many years I was a solo gamer and consequently I was forced to be my own worst enemy. If nothing else from those bad old days has lingered with me one constant has and that is when purchasing armies I buy not just the army I am primarily interested in but also one of its primary enemies. Ok so I pay the mortgage late.

Ral Partha satisfies this buying strategy for me perfectly with its Hoplite range which includes the Persians. As the years have passed my greed for lead has also seen my hair go from black to silver. All that unpainted lead matches my hair perfectly now. Forget the hair and lets look at one of the best matched ranges any gamer could hope to possess the Ral Partha line of Persians.

The Persian army of this time, circa 500 B.C.Classical Hack Period One, was primarily a close order foot army with substantial forces of cavalry and open foot in support. The army consisted of Hazarabam or units of 1000. Sources suggest that while this was the paper strength of the regiment or Hazarabam it might not have been easily maintained for the field armies that the Great Kings of Persia raised. It is highly likely that only the Royal Immortals or Amtraka were kept at full strength-thus they were termed Immortal as they never dipped below full strength conveying the idea of the Royal Units as being immortal regardless of casualties.

The Perians maintained their armies by divisions and the core of these divisions were the Hazarabam of which ten (of 1000 men each) made a single army division. Herdoctus uses the word myriad for 10,000. Therefore, the Immortals formed an entire division of 10,000. From this we can assume that the regular line infantry of the Persians were not kept up to full strength. The Persian and Mede Hazarabam of the regular army did the field service and as with armies of other great empires action took it’s toll. See Army Formations on page 41 in Classical Hack for a diagram. The figure scale representation I prefer to use for my Persian army is either 1:30 or 1:60.

The Great Kings were not unaware of the need for reliable cavalry and therefore called upon Persian and Mede Nobles to supply loyal cavalry units. The Kings called these Hwaka or "kinsmen". These too were arrayed by the 10,000 or myriad (the division). Again they carried bows, spears and a cutting weapon or sword. The use of barding on the horses was common. Most of the armor was scale armor for horse and rider. The allies supplied various types of other heavy and light cavalry. To bolster a division of 10 Hazarabam the Persian Kings would use scythed chariots and various open and loose medium units of a tribal nature as well as mercenary and allied hoplite Greeks in their armies. By the time of Alexander and Darius the Persian army began arming Persian and Medes like hoplites but by then the power of the west was too great to defeat. The later Successor states who Alexander bequeathed his conquests to tried using imitation legionarii and failed as well. The Greeks were right, things are cyclic.