The ancient world invented formation warfare, and for six centuries it was the central problem of military thought. How do you take a group of individual men, each one frightened, each one capable of simply running, and transform them into a single instrument that holds its shape under the pressure of another mass of men trying to do the same? Every great civilisation of the classical world answered this question differently, and each answer both created opportunities and exposed weaknesses that the next answer exploited.
The Greek hoplite phalanx encoded a civic contract in a military formation. The man on your left held his shield so that its rim covered your right side; you held yours to cover his. Every man depended on every other. Break the line, and the whole structure collapsed. Hold it, and you became something greater than any individual, a wall of overlapping shields and levelled spears that had stopped the Persian empire in its tracks at Marathon and Plataea. The system was not just a tactic; it was an expression of what the Greek city-state believed about the relationship between citizens.
Philip II of Macedon understood both the power of the phalanx and its limits. His answer, the longer sarissa pike, deeper formations, and the Companion cavalry that exploited whatever gap the infantry created, produced the instrument that carried Alexander across three continents. But the sarissa phalanx required flat, clear ground to work. On broken terrain it lost cohesion; against mobile enemies it struggled to bring its full weight to bear.
Rome solved the terrain problem by making flexibility the core of its system. The manipular legion and later the cohort could fight in broken ground, on hillsides, in forests, because it subdivided the rigid line into tactical units capable of independent action. The pilum, the gladius, and the scutum were designed to solve specific tactical problems at close range. The men who carried them had been trained for twenty years. They could build a fortified camp in an afternoon, engineer a road through hostile territory, and fight from Caledonia to Mesopotamia using the same basic system adapted to whatever opponent they found.
This article covers the 600-year arc of that evolution across four WoFun collections, from the hoplite citizen-soldier to the professional legionary, by way of Alexander's phalanx, the Persian Immortals, Hannibal's war elephants, and the enemies Rome met beyond the Rhine and the Danube. All are available at WoFun Games.
Shields and Spears: The Greek Hoplite Phalanx
The hoplite system emerged in the Greek city-states in the 7th century BC and dominated Aegean warfare for three centuries. Its tactical logic was simple and almost inescapable: a mass of armoured infantry, eight or more ranks deep, each man's round shield, the aspis, overlapping the man to his left, advancing in step to present an unbroken front of bronze and wood. The doru spear, roughly two to three metres long, extended beyond the first rank in a hedge that no unformed opponent could penetrate without extraordinary individual courage.
The key mechanical phenomenon was the othismos, the push. When two phalanxes met and neither broke in the initial contact, the rear ranks pressed forward, adding their weight to the front. Victory went to the side that maintained its formation and pushed harder. The system rewarded collective discipline above individual heroism, which is partly why it became the political as much as the military expression of the city-state: men who trained together, owned adjacent farms, and voted in the same assembly also fought shoulder to shoulder, each one's survival dependent on the man beside him doing his job.
Its vulnerability was always the flanks. A phalanx that held its line was formidable; one caught in the flank or rear by cavalry or light infantry was helpless. The Persian Wars demonstrated both. At Marathon in 490 BC and Plataea in 479 BC, the Greeks exploited terrain and the Persian reliance on archer-infantry to deliver exactly the kind of controlled frontal engagement where hoplite discipline prevailed. But a battle like Delium in 424 BC, where the Theban right wing went deeper than its opponents and enveloped the Athenian flank, showed what happened when the geometry of the encounter went wrong.
The Antiquity (PD) collection, illustrated by Peter Denis, brings all three sides of the ancient Aegean world to the table, Macedonian, Greek, and Persian. The collection is available as an 18mm Full Pack, containing 1,786 figures across 25 sprues plus Andy Callan's PDF rules for Alexander the Great battles, and a 28mm Full Pack for players who want the larger scale's visual detail. The 28mm Starter Pack pairs the Macedonian and Persian armies for the Alexander campaign scenarios.
At the foundation of any Greek force sits the Greek Generic Hoplites (Peloponnesian War Period), the citizen-soldiers of the city-states, armed with aspis and doru, whose locked formation was the most effective infantry system the world had known until Philip II changed the rules. Deploying them correctly, maintaining their line, and choosing terrain that gives them a clean approach to contact is the central tactical challenge of the Greek side in this collection.
The Sarissa Revolution: Philip II and Alexander
When Philip II became king of Macedon in 359 BC, he had a kingdom in military crisis. His answer was to take the hoplite system apart and reassemble it as something entirely different. He replaced the doru with the sarissa, a pike of five to six metres that required two hands to carry, making a large shield impossible. He deepened the formation to sixteen ranks. He equipped each rank differently, so that the pikes of the first five rows all protruded beyond the front of the formation, while those of the rear ranks angled upward to catch incoming missiles. The result was not a wall of shields, it was a forest of pikes, impenetrable from the front and terrifying to face.
But the real innovation was systemic. The Macedonian phalanx was designed not to win by itself but to fix the enemy in place while the Companion Cavalry, the heavy horse on the right flank, led personally by the king, found and exploited a gap. The phalanx pinned. The cavalry killed. At Gaugamela in 331 BC, this system reached its apotheosis: Alexander held the Persian centre with his infantry while his Companions drove through a gap in the Persian line and struck directly for Darius, who fled. The battle ended not when the Persian infantry broke but when the Persian command structure collapsed.
The Macedonian Phalanx represents the sarissa-armed phalangites who formed the iron spine of Alexander's army, the force that crossed from Greece to the Hindu Kush without ever being broken in open battle. On the table, deploying them means committing to a terrain choice: they need clear ground to advance without losing formation. Give them that ground and a cavalry unit to exploit any gap they create, and you have one of the most tactically coherent armies in ancient wargaming.
The Persian Response: Imperial Scale and the Immortals
The Achaemenid Persian military was not the incompetent levee force of popular imagination. It was the most sophisticated logistical and administrative army the ancient world had yet produced, capable of projecting force across a 5,000-kilometre empire, coordinating multiple campaign theatres simultaneously, and sustaining armies in the field for years. The Persian Immortals, 10,000 heavy infantry kept perpetually at full strength by replacing each casualty immediately, were professional soldiers at a time when most armies were seasonal. Persian cavalry was frequently superior to its opponents. Persian composite archers could maintain devastating fire at ranges that foot soldiers could not answer.
The tactical problem at Gaugamela was systemic rather than individual. Achaemenid doctrine was built for a different opponent, arrow-and-spear engagement on open terrain, harassment by cavalry, and then decisive exploitation by the king's guard when the enemy line wavered. It had no doctrine for the sarissa hedge that kept Persian infantry at bay while the Companions manoeuvred around the flank. The Immortals were formidable soldiers in the tactical environment they were designed for. That environment was not one the Macedonian system offered them.
The Wider Ancient World: Scythians, Thracians, and India
Alexander's campaigns took the Macedonian phalanx far beyond the Persian heartland and into terrain and opponents for which it had not been designed. The Scythian horse-archers of the Central Asian steppes, strike at range, refuse contact, wear down a formation that cannot catch them, anticipated a mode of warfare that would characterise steppe nomads for the next thousand years. In the north, Thracian peltasts, javelin-throwing light infantry who operated ahead of and around heavy formations, were so effective against the phalanx that Philip II had incorporated them into his own army. At the Hydaspes in 326 BC, Indian war elephants forced Alexander into one of his most improvised tactical performances, splitting his cavalry to hit the elephant line from multiple angles before it could break his infantry.
The Antiquity (WoF) collection, illustrated in-house by WoFun, extends the ancient world beyond the three-civilisation core of the PD collection. It covers Macedonian, Greek, Persian, Scythian, Thracian, and Indian armies across 75 individual addons, designed for group tactical play with the larger-headed figures characteristic of the WoF style. Both an 18mm Full Pack and 28mm Full Pack are available, offering players the complete spectrum of Alexander's opponents, from the disciplined Persian Immortals to the light cavalry of the steppes.
The Scythian Horse Archers represent the counter-phalanx problem at its starkest: mounted warriors whose tactical advantage was the ability to engage at range and disengage before the phalanx could close. Against them, the sarissa was useless. Against a formed cavalry force that could catch them, they were vulnerable. Getting the range of engagement right, the central challenge of fielding Scythian cavalry, is the tactical puzzle this unit brings to the table.
Elephants and Cannae: The Punic Wars
The Punic Wars (264–146 BC) produced the most studied battles of the ancient world and introduced the war elephant to Mediterranean warfare on a decisive scale. Hannibal Barca crossed the Alps in 218 BC with a mixed army of Libyan veterans, Spanish infantry, Numidian cavalry, and African forest elephants, and proceeded to destroy every Roman army sent against him over the next three years.
At Trebia in 218 BC, the elephants broke the Roman cavalry screen and drove the allied infantry into the flanks where the Carthaginian heavy foot cut them apart. At Cannae in 216 BC, the battle military theorists have studied continuously for 2,200 years, Hannibal deployed without elephants but achieved their effect through formation: a convex centre of Gallic and Spanish infantry that deliberately gave ground, drawing 80,000 Romans forward into a tightening pocket while Libyan veterans on both flanks rotated inward and the Numidian cavalry sealed the rear. Somewhere between 50,000 and 70,000 Romans died in a few hours.
The Republic survived because Rome had strategic depth that Hannibal could not destroy. Scipio Africanus studied the pattern and devised the answer: at Zama in 202 BC, he created corridors in his infantry line through which the Carthaginian elephants could pass harmlessly, cheated of their intended impact. Then he executed his own envelopment while his cavalry blocked Hannibal's from repeating Cannae.
The Punic Wars (PD) collection, illustrated by Peter Denis, covers both Roman and Carthaginian armies in full. The 18mm Full Pack contains 882 figures across 15 sprues; the 18mm Starter Pack provides the entry point for players who want to begin with the core encounter. The 28mm Full Pack delivers the same armies at the larger scale.
The Carthaginian African Elephants (From the Side) are the most psychologically and tactically decisive unit of the Second Punic War, the weapon around which Scipio had to redesign his entire battle plan at Zama. At the table, deploying them forces the Roman player to decide whether to create corridors and neutralise them or hold a conventional line and risk the psychological impact on cavalry and allied infantry. Getting that answer right is what the Punic Wars collection asks of the Roman player.
Rome vs. the World: Imperial Rome
By the 1st century AD, the Roman cohort legion had evolved into something the ancient world had not seen before: a formation army designed for adaptability above all else. The pilum, a heavy javelin whose iron shank was designed to bend on impact, rendering the enemy's shield useless by its weight before close contact, was the opening move in every engagement. The gladius, a short stabbing sword most effective at ranges where larger weapons could not be used, finished the job in the tight-packed fighting that followed. The scutum, a large curved rectangular shield, could be locked into the famous testudo formation to advance against arrow fire, or used in the close-press fighting at the shield wall.
But Rome's real advantage was institutional. Legionaries served twenty years. They trained constantly, built fortified camps as a matter of routine after every day's march, and drilled tactical responses to every opponent they encountered. When the Dacians introduced the two-handed falx, a curved blade on a long haft designed to hook over the shield rim and strike the arm or shoulder, Rome responded within a generation by reinforcing arm guards and helmet brims in the affected frontier legions. When Parthian cataphracts proved resistant to the pilum at close range, auxiliary archers were embedded into the legion structure to engage them at distance. The collection includes the Germanic Tribesmen, Gallic Armoured Infantry, Parthian Horse Archers, Parthian Cataphracts, Dacians, and British Chariots who put this adaptability to the test.
The Imperial Rome (PD) collection, illustrated by Peter Denis, covers this full range of opponents. The 18mm Full Pack contains 1,178 figures across 17 sprues, Roman legions alongside every major barbarian opponent from the Rhine to the Danube and beyond. The 28mm Full Pack provides the same scope at the larger scale. The dedicated wargaming rules by Andy Callan at Imperial Rome and Her Enemies give players the starter framework for Romans vs. Britons, Romans vs. Germans, and Romans vs. Dacians scenarios, each a distinct tactical problem.
The cohort's command structure, the Legionary Command figures that headed every unit, embodied the system's institutional continuity. The centurion who led from the front, the aquilifer who carried the eagle that could not under any circumstances be lost, the optio who dressed the rear rank and prevented wavering: these men were the human mechanism through which twenty years of professional training translated into battlefield cohesion. Placing them correctly on the table is not flavour, it reflects exactly how the Roman tactical system operated.
Four Principles of Formation Battle
These four collections span six centuries of ancient warfare, but certain tactical truths repeat across all of them.
The flank is always the killing ground. Every ancient formation from the hoplite phalanx to the Roman cohort was dangerous from the front and fatal from the sides or rear. Every great ancient tactician, Epaminondas at Leuctra, Hannibal at Cannae, Scipio at Zama, won by attacking the flank or creating conditions that made flank exposure inevitable. Protecting flanks is the pre-battle decision; exploiting unprotected flanks is the battle-winning move.
Depth creates momentum; too much depth wastes men. The Theban Sacred Band at Leuctra proved that a deeper formation on one side could overwhelm a shallower one through mass. Philip II standardised at sixteen ranks for exactly this reason. But the Roman manipular system showed that flexibility, fewer ranks but more independent tactical units, outperformed mass when terrain or the pace of battle refused to cooperate with the plan.
Terrain decides before formations meet. The Macedonian phalanx required clear ground; the Roman legion fought effectively in woods, on hillsides, across rivers. Scenario setup, the placement of rough ground, the direction of advance, the choice of battlefield, determines which side's system functions as designed. Getting terrain right in scenario design is as important as unit deployment.
The specialist unit that solves one problem creates another. War elephants shattered cavalry and broke allied infantry, but corridors neutralised them. The sarissa made the Macedonian front impenetrable, but reduced the phalanx's ability to manage broken terrain. The pilum degraded enemy shields before contact, but left Roman infantry briefly exposed in the moment before the close-press began. Every tactical innovation in this article came at a cost that the next generation of commanders learned to exploit.
Choosing Your Era
Each collection offers a distinct formation battle experience at the table.
Antiquity (PD) is the collection for players drawn to the apex encounter: the Macedonian combined-arms system, phalanx plus Companion Cavalry, against the full depth of the Persian imperial army. Three complete civilisations, one collection, with the Andy Callan Alexander rules included in the 18mm Full Pack.
Antiquity (WoF) extends the ancient world into the unconventional opponents that tested the limits of the Macedonian system, Scythian horse-archers, Thracian light infantry, Indian war elephants. Seventy-five individual addons across six civilisations make it the most flexible ancient collection in the WoFun catalogue.
Punic Wars (PD) is the collection for players who want the tactical genius of Hannibal and the war of attrition that finally wore him down. Cannae, Trebia, Zama, the scenarios built into the collection's army compositions offer three distinct versions of the same strategic problem.
Imperial Rome (PD) gives players both sides of the frontier encounter: Rome's professional machine against the tactical diversity of the barbarian world, with three separate opponent armies (Britons, Germans, Dacians) each presenting a genuinely different battlefield challenge.
600 Years at a Glance
From the citizen-soldiers locking shields at Marathon to the professional cohorts engineering roads through Dacian mountain passes, the four collections covered here trace every major transition in ancient formation warfare. The tactical problems evolved, how to defeat the shield wall, how to exploit the flanks, how to break the elephant charge, how to field an army that worked on any terrain, but the fundamental question never changed: how do you take individual men and make them fight as one? The answers produced some of the most consequential military encounters in history. On the tabletop, they produce some of the most demanding tactical puzzles in historical wargaming.