Persian Army

Persian Army STL Miniatures: The Empire That Reached Three Continents

Persia has a public relations problem. Almost everything we know about the Achaemenid empire comes from the Greeks who fought it, which is roughly like learning about a football club exclusively from the away supporters. What the sources agree on, even the hostile ones, is the scale: an empire from the Aegean to the Indus, and armies drawn from every part of it.

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

An army built on variety

Where a Greek city-state fielded one type of soldier well, Persia fielded everything. Missile infantry as the tactical core, cavalry in numbers no Greek army could match, elite formations, and contingents from subject peoples across the empire who brought their own equipment and their own way of fighting.

That’s a different tactical proposition. A Persian army doesn’t want to grind into a phalanx frontally, because nothing wins that fight. It wants to shoot, manoeuvre, use its cavalry to threaten the flanks a spear block can’t protect, and make the enemy come to it across ground of Persia’s choosing.

The Immortals

The elite infantry the Greeks called the Immortals, supposedly maintained at exactly ten thousand men with every casualty replaced immediately so the number never changed. Whether the name meant that or was a Greek mishearing of something else is still argued over, and it doesn’t matter much for a tabletop: what you get is a distinctive elite formation with a look nothing else in the ancient world shares.

The most colourful army in antiquity

This is where Persia rewards a painter. A hoplite phalanx is bronze and repetition, and that’s the point of it. A Persian force is the opposite: patterned fabric, layered textiles, colour that reflects an empire assembled from many peoples, and equipment that varies from contingent to contingent.

Practically, that means you can’t production-line a Persian army the way you can a Greek one, but you also can’t get it wrong. Variation is historically correct. A unit where every soldier is slightly different reads as more authentic, not less.

Choosing a scale

At 15mm you can field the numbers that made Persian armies what they were, and the missile-and-cavalry combination needs table space to work properly. Cavalry in particular eats room, and an army that wants to manoeuvre needs somewhere to manoeuvre to.

At 28mm the fabric patterns and the equipment detail become paintable, and that’s where the visual argument for Persia lives. A single Immortal at 28mm carries more painting interest than most models in the ancient world.

Printing

Around 0.03mm layer height on resin covers gaming figures at either scale, tilted 30 to 45 degrees for drainage. Spear shafts and bows are the fragile parts, and cavalry legs are the usual failure point on mounted models, so check support placement on both before committing a plate.

Frequently asked questions

How do I paint a Persian army without it taking forever?
Accept that it takes longer than a Greek one and use the variation rather than fighting it. Where a phalanx needs consistency, a Persian force needs the opposite: contingents from different parts of the empire looked genuinely different, so painting each unit to its own palette is both faster than trying to unify everything and more accurate. For the patterned fabrics, suggest rather than reproduce. At tabletop distance a few dots and lines in a contrasting colour read as pattern, and nobody is checking whether your Achaemenid textile design is documented. Consistent basing across the army ties the whole thing together.

What does a Persian army need to beat a phalanx?
Not a frontal assault, which is the mistake most new Persian players make. The historical answer and the tabletop one are the same: missile troops to make standing still expensive, cavalry to threaten the flanks that a pike or spear block genuinely cannot defend, and terrain or timing that stops the phalanx fighting the battle it wants. Build for mobility and shooting rather than trying to match heavy infantry with heavy infantry. A Persian force that closes on its own terms wins comfortably; one that lets a phalanx dictate where the lines meet loses every time.

Why do my cavalry models keep failing to print?
Because a horse’s legs are thin, they carry the entire mass of mount and rider, and they’re usually the lowest point on the model, which makes them the first thing the printer builds with nothing beneath them. Automatic support generation frequently under-supports them, and a leg that separates mid-print takes the whole model down. Check supports manually on the legs and belly, orient the model so the legs aren’t building vertically into empty space, and accept that heavier supports here are worth the cleanup time. Persian armies field a lot of cavalry, so getting this right once pays off across the whole force.

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