"What's a Greek Urn? - 3 Drachma's a week!" Ancient Greek 3d prints part 1 - the Heroic Age.

Classic Morecambe and Wise! However this blogpost is not about Greek pottery/wages but instead will focus on my Legiones Antiquitata army as a way of introducing some of the 3d printing options now available with more appearing all the time. Whether you want Heroic, Classical or Mycenean there are Stls available. This blog will focus on the Heroic age with the next blogs covering the Classical and Mycenean.

Starting with the Heroic age, Myceneans and Trojans. I have always loved the Heroic age but there has never really been a range which captured the Peter Conelly/ Dendra Armour/figure of 8 shields vibe that I was after until I discovered Scropha miniatures. I believe the sculptor is French. Scropha produce a beautiful range of 'Biblicals' of which the Myceneans are just one part.

Here are my 'big shield' minis with both figure of 8 and Tower Shields. These were painted using a speedy paint/normal paint method which I have described here https://www.firstcommissionpainting.co.uk/single-post/mycenean-tower-shields-speedy-painting

I have no idea about the lion head officer's accuracy but he has an Achilles like shining shield! I have also printed and painted up some of the Warband type minis wearing bronze armour obviously. For these I use AK burnt tin and highlight using Greenstuffworld pigments gold and bronze mixed. These are much more warband types or lesser heroes from the Trojan wars

For other heroes I have printed STLs by 3d Breed which I purchased as a Kickstarter 'Greeks and Persians' and lots more will show up in this artcle. These are always quite chunky as i think they are designed in 25mm and scaled up. For some they may be too thickset but on alot of the ancients I like it.

The bases are made using a Greenstuffworld roller and take a bit of effort tbh but again worth it on heroes!

For those who are purely historical you may want to skip ahead to the Chariot as now I have my named heroes using my miniatures from the Monolith games Mythic battles pantheon collection. I originally painted the whole kickstarter for a customer and loved them so much I bought what I could off ebay and completed in a 2023 kickstarter for the Norse version! In the base set you get get a few heroes but as an add on the heroes of the Trojan war are available so here we have Achilles, Odysseus, Ajax, Paris and Diomedes just for starters!

Clearly the quality of these minis is not GW 2025 class as they were created around 2018 and are PVC but given that - they still hold up.

Bronze age chariots. Scropha have them covered with not only Mycenean but Mitanni and Assyrian to name but two others. For Egyptian and Hittite Red Copper miniatures are also great but not in the Greek army.. Red Copper are not on Myminifactory but release KS campaigns and sell stls via online retailers. Their instagram is here https://www.instagram.com/redcopperminiatures/

This chariot is Scropha and has the charioteer wearing the beautiful Dendra Panoply. One day I will visit the museum in Nauplion and see the real thing...

At this point I should also mention Wargames Atlantic digital who have various heroic and classical greek stls including dendra armoured guys on foot and trojan wars heroes. Some are on my 'to buy list' once the weather warms and i can start printing in the shed again as I have a few Wargames Atlantic Stls and they are really good. I sort of prefer the one piece stls but for customisation you cant beat Wargames Atlantic. https://www.myminifactory.com/users/WargamesAtlantic/collection/first-empires-ancients

Not quite Greek but Greek adjacent are these Red Copper miniatures Sea Peoples. Again I have a soft spot for the Sea Peoples and believe they have had a bad rep over the centuries being more sinned against than sinners....possibly. Anyway Red Copper have some excellent Sea Peoples such as these...

If you havent read or listened to the book yet I can 100% recommend Eric Cline's book '1170BC - The Year Civilisation Collapsed'. An absolute page turner!

In summary then Heroic age Stls available that I know of as of Jan 2025 are

Scropha miniatures - just excellent

3d breed - chunky but good

Wargames Atlantic digital - good and multipart (more variety but more involved to print)

Red Copper miniatures (Sea peoples)