On the fanaticus forums, someone asked about building a BBDBA army (a triple DBA army from one army list and its allies) starting with the armies he already had. They just happened to have most of the same armies as I do, so I did some calculating.

If you have all of the Later Achaemenid Persian (II/7) options painted, a Skythian (I/43a) army with all the options painted, and one of the later Hoplite armies (II/5), then you have a great start on a double Persian army with Skythian ally for BBDBA. Reading the DBM lists, you can make a theoretically accurate army by using greek hoplites as mercenary spears, Skythian light horse as allied units within the Persian army, and Cretan archers (use Greek) for the Psiloi. Then
all you need to paint is a few elements of Cavalry and maybe more Psiloi to fill up the BBDBA army.

But… I have all those armies. That means I could do it too. And, I just happened to have a spare pack of Persian cavalry… and so my slide down the slippery slope began.

I painted two cavalry stands and the cavalry general I hadn’t painted previously. Around this same time, I started looking into Basic Impetus and Impetus. To field an Impetus army for the Persians, I’d only need a few more cavalry stands and a bit more Psiloi. So I bought a pack of archers, and painted the rest of my cavalry.

The four stands of cavalry in the rear are Chariot Miniatures (Magister Militum/Navigator Miniatures). The Cavalry general in front is from the Essex DBA army pack. The archers are also Essex figures.

Now… the archers give me more Psiloi than I need. If I use mercenary hoplites from my Greek army for the spear elements, then all I need to make a triple Persian army for BBDBA is another cavalry or chariot general and either scythed chariots or psiloi.

But once I have a BBDBA army for the Persians, who are they going to fight against? Clearly I’ll need to paint a second BBDBA army as an enemy. I chose Alexander the Great (II/12), because apparently I have a driving need to paint 48 more pikemen. Actually, if I paint a triple Alexandrian army, I’ll be able to morph it into about 5 other Alexandrian/Successor armies, and I’ll have enough figures to have some of the successors fight against each other in DBA. It’ll also get me enough figures for a substantial Impetus army.

Now I have both Persians and Alexandrians on order from Magister Militum, to round out the Persian army and triple my Alexandrians. I chose the figure packs myself instead of buying premade DBA armies, so I could tweak some of the options so they’re more useful in other armies.