That'll Be The Dahae

Another Phoenix Model Developments ancient figure - the Dahae horse archer. He's very similar in costume and pose to the Minifigs PB version. The horse is the standard Higgins design, more or less the ECW horse with the pistol holsters removed.

Chariot of Deserts

Here is a Hinton Hunt Persian chariot. Unfortunately there are no horses or crew to go with it. Many moons ago I did have some Hinton charioteers that I got from Pete Bateman of BB Wargames. They were Assyrians and Celts, though. They didn't have bases, but did have plugs on the soles of their feet, suggesting that you could fix them into holes in the chariot. It's interesting - well, to me at least - that Hinton was still designing wargame figures long after his ranges had fallen out of fashion with mainstream gamers. It suggests that then, as now, there was a high-class body of elegant and cultured wargamers who refused to be drawn into the vulgar commercial world of scale-creep and bucket-handed trolls.

Hinton Hunt Ancient Listing

The following list combines the sheets that came with the Hinton Hunt catalogue c.1974/5 with the odd addition of figures I own or have seen.

Greek Hoplites AG 7 Officer in cape waving sword
AG 10 Hoplite thrusting with sword
AG 11 Hoplite thrusting with spear
AG 13 Hoplite with spear, marching
AG 15 Hoplite standing with spear

Persians AP 1 Immortal Officer with axe
AP 2 Immortal Standard Bearer
AP 3 Immortal firing bow
AP 4 Immortal thrusting with spear
AP 5 Immortal marching with spear

Persian Royal Guard of Archers AP 6 Officer with axe
AP 7 Standard bearer
AP 8 Guardsman firing bow
AP 9 Guardsman thrusting with spear
AP 10 Guardsman with spear marching

Medes AP 11 Officer with axe
AP 12 Standard bearer
AP 13 Mede firing bow
AP 14 Mede thrusting with spear
AP 15 Mede marching with spear

Persian Chariots AP 20 Chariot driver
AP 21 Chariot bowman
AP 22 Persian 2 horse chariot
AP 23 Persian chariot horse

Persian Cavalry AP 30 Horse archer firing bow (horse Aph3)
AP 31 Mounted spearman (horse Aph3)
AP ?? Mounted Royal Guard spearman (?) - See picture below.

Persian Command AP 40 Great King Darius on his portable throne
AP 41 Attendant with royal umbrella

Republican Romans AR 1 Centurion charging
AR 2 Aquilifer with eagle
AR 3 Signifer with standard

AR4 Horn player
AR 5 Legionary thrusting with sword
AR 6 Legionary throwing pilum
AR 7 Centurion marching
AR 8 Legionary marching

Imperial Romans

AR 11 Centurion charging
AR 15 Imperial Roman thrusting with sword
AR 16 Imperial Roman Legionary throwing pilum

AR 17 Centurion marching

AR 18 Legionary marching

Auxiliaries
AR 34 Auxiliary slinger

AR 35 Asian archer

Cavalry

AR/41 Cavalryman armed with spear (Horse ARH1)

Praetorian Guard AR 25 Thrusting with sword
AR 26 Throwing pilum
AR 27 Marching

Roman Command AR 51 General Standing with baton
AR 52 Mounted general (horse Apnh1)

Celts AC 1 Chieftain in winged helmet
AC 4 Helmeted warrior waving sword
AC 5 Helmeted warrior stabbing with spear

AC7 Warrior in crested helmet and cuirass waving sword.
AC 10 Chariot
AC 23 Charioteer with whip
AC 24 Chariot spearman
ACH 1 Celtic chariot horse

Ancient Parthia
APN 1 Armoured Cataphract (Horse APNH1)
APN 2 Horse Archer (Horse APNH2)

The following figures do not have bases. They do, however have plugs on the feet. They may be charioteers, or prototypes, or pirates.

AR ? Roman officer, standing
AC ? Warrior, horned helmet, naked, standing
AC ? Warrior, winged helmet, kilt, standing

AP ? Persian slinger ?
AP ? Assyrian, chainmail, plain conical helmet, standing
AP ? Assyrian, unarmoured, crested helmet, standing

 

Across The Hush of 24 Centuries...

...As the narrator intones at the start of what I like to think of as the proper 300 Spartans film. Here are some Hinton Hunt versions of the Immortals who featured in that splendid 1962 movie (Which I think was billed as something like "An army five million strong against the invincible flying wedge!"). Left to right we have an archer, officer with axe, a figure that could be the standard bearer (the standard has ben replaced with a wire spear) and an Immortal thrusting with spear. The archer is in much the same stance as the firing musketeers from the ECW range.

Stryker has kindly forwarded me the additional sheets from the 1974 catalogue which detail the "ancient civilizations" range. Intriguingly they promise that there will be lots of additions in the near future. If I can master the technology I'll post them up here at some point.

A Happy Medean

Actually he's probably more of a perky Persepolian.

When we were compiling the Hinton Hunt Ancients listings for Vintage20Mil we had a bit of a problem as we didn't actually have any printed material on the figures from either a catalogue or from our regular sources of Wargamers Newsletter or Military Modelling.

In the former case we wouldn't have expected any - Marcus Hinton had fallen out with Don Featherstone years before in a dispute about figure piracy in which Hinton (along with Edward Suren) made various allegations about The Don's wargaming buddy and Minifigs owner Neville Dickinson.

Whatever, we eventually managed to cobble together a listing based on various odds and ends of figures we had and the catalogue that had appeared on erstwhile Hinton Hunt owner David Clayton's website in the US.  The Persian section has several different categories of troops including both Persian Immortals and Persian "Royal Guards". I think the little fellow above might be one of the latter fellows.

Tiara Bumper Day

A Mede spearman and archer from Marcus Hinton. The Hinton Hunt ancient range were probably the last that the great man created - certainly they don't feature in any of the catalogues I have seen and may not have appeared until the late-1970s, by which time 20mm had rather fallen out of fashion.

Persian spearmen. The previous owner has replaced the cast on spear with one made from wire.

By The Time I Get To Phoenix

I've previously featured pictures of a couple of the old Phoenix Model Developments ancient range - the Greek officer and the Anatolian Guard Spearman (the latter had stepped straight off the pages of Funcken). Here are a few photos of the Infantry of the Cardaces.

PMD was the name of the company that began life as Les Higgins Miniatures. The rebranding occurred after Higgins died. Most of the later ranges were designed by either Tim Richards - who also did a lot of the Phoenix Follies 54mm stuff - and Higgins' business partner Brian Marlow. However the ancient range was designed by somebody else - Marlow couldn't recall hs name and Tim Richards was similarly vague, venturing that "He lived in Norfolk". Whoever the designer was they are nice figures if a little prone to a certain Hincliffe-esque gibbon-arm.