Ancients, Blocks and a dash of DBA

I returned home yesterday evening from a business trip to the wilds of Birmingham to be greeted by a very large box of Command and Colours Ancients blocks from the collection of Mr Gow and forming the last part of the transaction. No prizes then, for guessing what I was doing last night!

The first task was to sort the blocks into their respective colours as the sets overlap in certain cases - a good example being extra units for the Eastern Empires set (number 1) being included in the Imperial Rome set (number 4). In real terms it is usually later unit types (for example Cataphract cavalry for the various Persian armies - Pathians and Sassanids) being included to round off the range of troops available. With this in mind I finished off the Eastern Empire armies and also that of Republican Rome (the light blue and light grey blocks respectively). I am now left with the Early Imperial Roman blocks (red), the Late Imperial Roman blocks (purple) and the Barbarians (green).

I have yet to acquire a copy of expansion 6 - The Spartans - but this will be an urgent priority, if only so that the entire collection is complete. This set also backfills the earlier Greek army from the Eastern Empires set with some proper Hoplite units and not just the Spartans.

I have not progressed any further with the bases for the collection but did have a thought concerning how to game using the existing materials. Why not just use DBA 12 element armies made up of C and C units and use the C and C rules to fight the games? This would only need some translation of DBA unit types into C and C speak so should be achievable. I will consider this further, after the rest of the blocks have been labelled and consigned to their storage boxes.