The year is 87 BC. Sulla's legions have crossed from Greece into Asia Minor, expecting to face another eastern king with a long spear and a short strategy. What they encounter instead stops them cold. Arranged against them is an army that simultaneously deploys Macedonian-style pike formations drilled to the standard of the old successor kingdoms, war chariots inherited from the Persian imperial tradition and fitted with scythed blades along their wheel hubs, and cavalry trained in the steppe tradition of the horse nomads, fast, loose, and lethal at range. Mithridates VI of Pontus has not simply raised an army. He has assembled a military philosophy.
The century between Rome's absorption of the kingdom of Pergamon in 133 BC and Pompey's final settlement of the east in 63 BC is one of the most complex periods in ancient warfare. It is an era in which three fundamentally different military traditions operated simultaneously across the same geography, the Anatolian coast, the Levantine hinterland, and the eastern steppe frontier, and none of them could claim decisive dominance. The Pontic hybrid army, the Parthian mobile war machine, and the fragmented remnants of Alexander's Hellenistic legacy each had strengths the others lacked. Each found ways to threaten Roman power that Rome found genuinely difficult to answer. And each, ultimately, fell short.
These are not three stories that happen to share a century. They are three chapters of the same story, a world in transition, where old military certainties had broken down and new ones had not yet been established. Understanding how Mithridates' pikemen stood in the same battle line as his scythed chariots, why a Parthian army could destroy three Roman legions without fighting a conventional battle at all, and what the Thureophoroi of the successor kingdoms tell us about the exhaustion of a military tradition, all of this belongs to the same conversation.
It is also, as it happens, a conversation that fits neatly on a 90 by 120 centimetre game mat. WoFun Games brings all three of these military worlds to the tabletop through the 10mm Antiquity PD collection, illustrated by Peter Dennis, covering the key forces of the Pontic Wars era: Mithridates' Pontics, the Parthians, and the Successors. Each army is a different kind of challenge to command. Each tells a different story about how ancient warfare really worked.
The Hybrid Kingdom: Mithridates' Pontic Army
Mithridates VI of Pontus was not born into a great military tradition. The kingdom of Pontus was a regional power on the southern coast of the Black Sea, culturally hybrid, politically opportunistic, and strategically exposed on multiple frontiers simultaneously. What Mithridates did with these constraints was, in military terms, genuinely inventive. Rather than commit to a single model, he borrowed from every tradition within reach and assembled an army that could fight on almost any terms an opponent might choose to impose.
The decision to rebuild the Macedonian pike phalanx was not nostalgia. By the late second century BC, most military thinkers in the Mediterranean world considered the sarissa a declining technology, one the Roman manipular system had already shown it could outmanoeuvre in the right conditions. Mithridates understood something that Rome had perhaps allowed itself to forget: the pike phalanx was not inherently fragile. Its weakness was its flanks and its need for flat ground. On the right terrain, against an opponent who could not overlap it or break its cohesion before contact, it remained almost indestructible at the moment of impact. The Mithridates Pontic Pikes represents this arm in the collection, 252 figurines on a single 1.5mm Plexiglass sprue, available on 6 square bases of 43x43mm or 12 rectangular bases of 43x21mm, printed in full colour and ready to press out and slot into the pre-cut MDF bases without a brushstroke required. The dense, ordered mass of the formation is immediately readable at a glance across the table.
Alongside the pikes, Mithridates deployed one of the most visually arresting weapons of the ancient world. The scythed chariot was already an anachronism by the first century BC, a weapon that had its finest hours centuries earlier in the armies of the Achaemenid Persian kings. Mithridates used them anyway, and not out of ignorance. At the tactical level, a line of bladed chariots driven at speed toward an infantry formation was terrifying rather than reliably lethal, their real purpose was psychological, to break cohesion and open gaps before the pike advance. The Scythed Chariots addon captures this striking unit: 40 figurines on a single Plexiglass sprue, with 6 square bases or 12 rectangular, a small but visually arresting element of the Pontic battle line that commands attention on the table far out of proportion to its numbers.
At Orchomenus in 85 BC, Roman discipline broke the chariot charge by the simple expedient of digging trenches across the flat ground the chariots needed to build speed. It was a telling verdict on a weapon that required perfect conditions to function. But the fact that Sulla felt the need to dig at all says something about the psychological weight Mithridates' army carried. The hybrid model nearly worked. It fell short not because it was poorly conceived, but because Rome, when it found the right commanders, was simply too adaptable to be surprised twice by the same combination.
The Eastern Power: How Parthia Fought
If Mithridates' army was a deliberate construction, Parthian military doctrine was something that had evolved organically from the conditions of the Iranian plateau and the steppe frontier beyond it. The Arsacid kings who ruled Parthia from the mid-third century BC onwards did not fight like Hellenistic kings. They did not seek the decisive pitched battle, the hammer blow of cavalry into a wavering infantry line. They sought instead to make the battlefield itself an instrument of exhaustion.
The foundation of the Parthian system was the horse archer, and it was the Parthian/Pontic Light Cavalry that gave the army its reach and its patience. These riders could maintain contact with an enemy force for days without ever accepting a decisive engagement, showering infantry formations with arrows, withdrawing before any counter-charge could close the distance, and returning the moment the pursuit slowed. The shared designation of this unit reflects the historical reality that the Pontic kingdom, neighbour and rival to the Parthian empire, drew on the same steppe-trained riding tradition for its own flanking cavalry. The set contains 119 figurines on a single Plexiglass sprue, mounted on 6 square bases of 43x43mm or 12 rectangular bases of 43x21mm, a fluid, dispersed fighting arm that looks nothing like the ranked formations of western armies and plays nothing like them either.
The mass of the Parthian force, the infantry levies and tribal contingents that gave it depth and presence, was provided by peoples like those represented in the Parthian Tribal Warriors. The Arsacid empire was not a single homogeneous state but a coalition of peoples drawn from a vast territory stretching from the Euphrates to the borders of India. Its armies reflected that diversity. The Tribal Warriors addon, 252 figurines on a single Plexiglass sprue, 6 square bases at 43x43mm or 12 rectangular bases at 43x21mm, represents the human mass that made the Parthian system's operational patience possible, the auxiliaries and client levies who could absorb pressure while the horse archers did their slow, meticulous work.
The killing blow, delivered once the enemy had been sufficiently disordered by hours of arrow fire and feigned retreats, belonged to the Cataphracts. Fully armoured rider on fully armoured horse, the cataphract was the closest thing the ancient world produced to a medieval knight, a shock weapon of devastating mass, armed with the long kontos lance and designed to shatter formations that had already lost their cohesion. The Cataphracts set contains 136 figurines on a single Plexiglass sprue, mounted on 4 square bases of 43x43mm or 8 rectangular bases of 43x21mm. Proportionally fewer stands than the light cavalry, which is historically accurate: cataphracts were expensive, slow to raise, and deployed selectively rather than as the centrepiece of every engagement.
The proof of concept arrived at Carrhae in 53 BC, when the Parthian general Surena destroyed Marcus Licinius Crassus and the better part of three Roman legions using almost exactly this combination. There was no dramatic pitched battle, no decisive clash of infantry lines. There was instead a long day of arrow fire, a failed Roman attempt to force engagement on terrain that offered no shelter, and then the cataphract charge into a formation that had exhausted its options. It remains one of the most complete demonstrations of a coherent military doctrine surviving from the ancient record, and one of the most instructive games you can run on the table, watching the Parthian system operate as designed against an opponent who understands, too late, that accepting the enemy's preferred engagement range is already the fatal error.
The Inheritors of Alexander: Successor State Soldiers
By the time Mithridates was assembling his hybrid army and the Parthians were refining their mobile doctrine, the Hellenistic successor kingdoms, the direct political heirs of Alexander the Great's conquests, were already in serious decline. The great Seleucid empire that had once ruled from Syria to Bactria had contracted to a rump state in northern Syria, squeezed between Roman expansion from the west and Parthian pressure from the east. The Ptolemies of Egypt were stable but passive, their military ambition long since replaced by diplomatic calculation. The smaller kingdoms of Asia Minor were slowly being absorbed into Roman or Pontic orbits.
What remained of the successor military tradition was not the great pike phalanx of Alexander's Macedonian veterans. It was something more flexible, more pragmatic, and in many ways more historically interesting, a soldier type that had evolved over a century of adaptation to the reality that no successor kingdom could sustain the sheer mass of a traditional Macedonian levy. The Thureophoroi were the emblematic infantry of this later Hellenistic world, and the Thureophoroi unit in the collection gives them their due. The set contains 188 figurines on a single Plexiglass sprue, with 6 square bases of 43x43mm or 12 rectangular bases of 43x21mm, a substantial regiment that reflects the Thureophoroi's role as a genuine workhorse unit rather than a specialist arm.
Named for the large oval shield they carried, the thureos, borrowed from Celtic mercenary practice and adapted to Greek military convention, the Thureophoroi were neither light skirmishers nor heavy pike infantry. They occupied the productive middle ground, carrying a combination of spear and javelins that allowed them to skirmish before contact or hold a formation in close combat, deploying in a looser order than a pike block but with considerably more staying power than conventional light troops. A Thureophoroi regiment could screen the advance of heavier troops, anchor a defensive flank, or pursue a broken enemy, the kind of versatility that specialist pike or cataphract units could not offer.
At a deeper level, the Thureophoroi represent the story of an entire military tradition trying to survive changed circumstances. Successor state commanders deployed them as a flexible core around which mercenary specialists, war elephants, and the remnants of traditional Macedonian cavalry could be arranged. They appear in Pontic armies, in Seleucid forces, in the service of minor kings across Asia Minor. Wherever a Hellenistic successor army fought in the first century BC, Thureophoroi were almost certainly somewhere in the line, adaptable, durable, and unpretentious, the professional infantry of an era that could no longer afford the luxury of a single tactical orthodoxy. In a period defined by hybrid and transitional forms, they are the most honest emblem of what late Hellenistic warfare actually looked like on the ground.
Three Armies, One Table
The Pontic Wars era does not offer two neatly opposed sides. It offers three different military systems operating simultaneously, each with distinct strengths, distinct playing styles, and distinct answers to the problem of how to fight a war. The Antiquity 10mm Full Pack puts all of them in front of you in a single purchase: 2,903 figurines across 17 Plexiglass sprues, covering every regiment in the collection.
The Pontic contingent is built around its pike core and specialist support arms. The Mithridates Pontic Pikes (252 figurines) form the centre of the battle line, with the Scythed Chariots (40 figurines) providing the army's most volatile and visually striking element. The Western Close-Order Archers (294 figurines) give the Pontic force a disciplined ranged arm capable of sustaining fire across the advance, while the Hellenic Javelin Skirmishers (180 figurines) offer the screen of light troops that any pike formation needs to reach contact intact.
The Parthian force arrives with a completely different logic. Horse Archers (98 figurines) are the opening move in every engagement, fast, dispersed, keeping contact without offering it. The Parthian/Pontic Light Cavalry (119 figurines) extends that mobile reach, while the Eastern Close-Order Archers (180 figurines) provide a steadier ranged anchor when the army needs to hold ground rather than skirmish. The Parthian Tribal Warriors (252 figurines) supply the mass that makes the army's operational patience sustainable. And the Cataphracts (136 figurines) wait until the enemy's cohesion has been sufficiently degraded to make their intervention decisive rather than costly.
The Successor armies bring the greatest infantry depth of the three forces. Armoured Successor Pikes (200 figurines) and Unarmoured Successor Pikes (270 figurines) give players the choice between the traditional heavy pike block and its more lightly equipped but more numerous counterpart, a distinction with real tactical implications, reflecting the economic pressures that late Hellenistic kingdoms faced in sustaining their armies. The Thureophoroi (188 figurines) and Hellenic Javelin Skirmishers complete a layered infantry line of genuine historical complexity. Greek Heavy Cavalry (170 figurines) provides the mounted strike arm that successor commanders used to exploit gaps, in the tradition of the Companion cavalry Alexander had made famous a century earlier.
Elephants (30 figurines) and the Commanders, Elephants and Chariots sprue (42 figurines, including individual command stands) complete the toolkit. War elephants were deployed by successor kingdoms, Pontic forces, and eastern rulers alike across this period, and the command sprue ensures every army has leadership represented on the table.
The Full Pack also includes two Legionnaire regiments: Legionnaires 1 (200 figurines) and Legionnaires 2 (252 figurines). This is the element that transforms the collection from a three-faction sandbox into something much closer to the actual historical scenario. The Pontic Wars were fought against Rome. Mithridates' hybrid army was built to defeat Rome. The Parthian system was tested against Rome at Carrhae. The successor kingdoms were absorbed by Rome across precisely this century. Every scenario in the collection has a natural adversary waiting in the pack, and the two Legionnaire regiments cover enough variation in Roman infantry organisation to represent the forces Sulla, Lucullus, and Pompey brought east across three decades of campaigning.
What the Full Pack puts in front of you is a genuine scenario toolkit. Orchomenus (85 BC) can be fought with the Pontic Pikes and Scythed Chariots testing whether the hybrid army can break Roman discipline on open ground, while the Western Close-Order Archers and Hellenic Javelin Skirmishers contest the approach. Carrhae (53 BC) becomes a study in patience, how long can the Parthian player sustain Horse Archer and Light Cavalry pressure before committing the Cataphracts, and at what point do the Legionnaires exhaust their options? A Successor versus Rome matchup sets Armoured and Unarmoured Pikes, Greek Heavy Cavalry, and Thureophoroi against the manipular system that had been dismantling Hellenistic armies since Cynoscephalae. Mix the forces as the historical record permits, Pontic commanders hiring Successor mercenaries, Parthian client kings contributing tribal levies to allied campaigns, and the scenarios available from a single box are extensive.
All of it operates on a 90x120cm mat, manageable on a dining table. The figurines press from their 1.5mm Plexiglass sprues and slot into pre-cut MDF bases with no painting required, in two base options: Standard A with square 43x43mm bases for infantry and cavalry, with 15mm round bases for commanders, or Standard B with rectangular 43x21mm bases for infantry and cavalry, again with 15mm round command bases.
Where three worlds collided, and where Rome eventually arrived to settle the argument, the battles were rarely clean or decisive. They were instructive: about the limits of each system, about what happens when a hybrid army meets a mobile one, when a shock force meets a flexible one, when three different answers to the problem of organised violence are tested under genuine operational pressure. That is what this collection puts on the table, game by game, until you find out whose answer was closest to right.