From Ken at East of India:
I really wanted to not only do an ancient range but also to start the ball rolling with a complete phalanx. The reason was simple for this start point in the range; in my recollection no one had done this before in this scale! Obviously it would be commercially unsound to make a huge block of figures and each piece individual, so we decided on the following configuration: We made a body for each of the four ranks and interchangeable heads for each, thus with swapping heads around and also having a dozen different shield designs, we have made a unique "block" of twelve figures. These "blocks" can be multiplied as so required to create a huge battle scene.

The picture below shows 3 of these "blocks" and we think it works quite well. Of course this is only a 4 rank configuration. Using the long pike (or indeed short) from our figures it could easily be made 10 ranks deep or more by using several of the poses in each rank!

A quick note on pike length: Our initial offering for this Ancient Collection is a Greek phalanx around the time of the battles of Marathon (BC 490) and Plataea (BC479). At that time, with the armour we have chosen for our first warriors, a short pike would have been more historically accurate. However having spoken to a large number of collectors a few have the opinion that "a phalanx cannot be a phalanx without those huge long pikes." So we had a dilemma; but not really as we have decided that each set will contain both the long and short versions: 3 figures 6 pikes. We hope therefore everyone will be happy!

Ancient Persian Cavalry