Wargamers' Generosity / New Project

This feature (generosity) rears its lovely head again. The Polemarch is downsizing his collection, disposing of his ancients figures and ships. I expressed an interest in the Greeks and Early Persians and received them on Monday. As he didn't want any money for them I'm making a donation to Oxfam. I was also tempted by the Macedonians and Later Persians but thought that I would have enough on my hands with the earlier bods. So many thanks and kudos to the Polemarch!

Here's what came in the post on Monday:

Approximately 1000 figures all painted. As well as each other and the Persians, the Greeks will be able to fight my Punic Wars period Romans and Carthaginians. I'm sure there would be differences in Greek kit in the 200 years between the Persian and Punic Wars but who can spot that at arm's length?

I won't be repainting anything (no need!) but I am pondering changing the basing.

1. To try and fit in with the basing convention for the Punic Wars collection.
2. To make them compatible with the Alala! rules that I bought from the Society of Ancients.
3. To make them blend with my 'house style'.

This is complicated because Alala! is geared around 25mm size and figure removal. So I'm playing around with different options on paper.  The suggested unit size in Alala! is 24 figures with a frontage of 18cm in 2 ranks. 

The simplest solution is to reduce the frontage to a third. Which fits neatly with my typical basing convention of 6cm bases. Most of the bases pictured above are 4 x 2 cm with 8 heavy infantry per base giving a frontage per figure of 0.5cm. So that works with 12 figures across 6cm. 

But figure removal would be unviable. However there is an option for element removal. So maybe that 6cm frontage could be made up of more than one base. I'm also pondering whether 2 ranks or 3 would produce the effect that I want. My Punic Wars chaps are 2 deep and they look OK. Finally I could double, triple or quadruple the number of figures per unit. Impressive looking units, but that might leave me short of units with which to field two opposing hoplite armies.

Decisions, decisions!