Macedonian Army

Macedonian Army STL Miniatures: The Sarissa Phalanx in 15mm and 28mm

Philip II looked at the hoplite phalanx and asked a simple question: what if the spear were longer? The sarissa answered it at somewhere between four and six metres, held two-handed, with the first five ranks projecting points beyond the front line. Nothing could reach a Macedonian phalanx from the front. The trick was making sure nothing had to.

Our Macedonian range covers them in 15mm and 28mm, supplied as digital STL files for home printing.

The army that took an empire

The sarissa gets the attention, but the phalanx was only half the system. Philip built a combined-arms army where the pike block held the enemy in place and couldn’t be broken frontally, while the Companion cavalry found the flank and delivered the actual killing blow. The infantry was an anvil. The horsemen were the hammer.

That’s what Alexander inherited and took from Macedonia to the Indus in a decade. It’s also what makes the army interesting on a table: fielding it well means understanding that your phalanx isn’t there to win the battle, it’s there to make winning possible somewhere else.

Strengths and the obvious weakness

Frontally, a sarissa phalanx is close to unbeatable by anything that has to come to it. Cavalry won’t charge into a hedge of pikes. Hoplites can’t reach past them. The formation does exactly one thing and does it better than any contemporary.

The weakness is everything else. A pike block is slow, it needs flat ground, and its flanks and rear are almost defenceless because a man holding a six-metre spear in both hands cannot turn quickly or fight at close quarters. Broken terrain fragments it. Once the Romans worked out how to exploit gaps in the line, the whole system stopped working.

On a table that gives you a force with a genuine tactical identity rather than good stats. You’re managing a formation that wins if the battle happens on your terms and loses badly if it doesn’t.

Choosing a scale

Macedonians make the strongest case of any ancient army for 15mm. The visual impact of a pike block depends entirely on depth and mass, and at the smaller scale you can field enough ranks for it to look like the thing it’s supposed to be. Sixteen ranks deep is what the sources describe, and that’s a very different object from six models in a line.

At 28mm the individual soldier and his equipment become paintable, and a Companion cavalryman is one of the more rewarding models in the ancient world. The tradeoff is table space and print time on a formation that needs numbers to work.

Printing sarissas

This is the hardest print in any historical range. A sarissa is an extremely long, extremely thin projection with almost no mass, and it will warp or snap given any excuse. Orient the model so the shaft isn’t spanning a long unsupported distance, support along its length rather than only at the ends, and cure fully before removing supports.

Many people print pikes separately as straight rods and glue them in afterwards. It’s more reliable, easier to replace when one breaks, and lets you use brass or steel wire instead if you’d rather have something that survives handling.

Frequently asked questions

Should I print the sarissas or use wire?
Both work, and it depends on how much you handle your models. Printed pikes look correct and come out of the file as designed, but they’re brittle and a phalanx gets picked up and put down a lot. Steel or brass wire cut to length survives anything, costs almost nothing, and can be replaced in seconds when one bends. The compromise many people reach is printing the figure with a short stub of shaft and drilling for wire, which gives you the correct hand position and an indestructible pike. If you’re building a large phalanx that will see regular use, wire is the pragmatic answer.

How deep does a pike block need to be to look right?
Deeper than most people build. The historical Macedonian phalanx formed sixteen ranks, and the visual effect depends entirely on that mass of angled shafts receding backwards. A block four ranks deep reads as a line of infantry with long spears. A block twelve or sixteen deep reads as a phalanx, and it’s genuinely impressive on a table. Your ruleset will specify what it wants for game purposes, but if the look matters to you, this is the strongest argument for building at 15mm where the model count is affordable.

What do I need alongside the phalanx?

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