​Battlefield Role: Elite Heavy Infantry
Weapons: Spear and a Hoplon Shield. A Longsword as sidearm.
Outfit: Enclosed corinthian helmet and reinforced full plate armour.
Skill level: As the name says, they are literally Champions!
Affiliation: The League of the Athenian City-States
Doctrine: Athena's Way of the Warrioress
Strengths: Unparalleled individual combat skills. They provide great morale boosts to nearby allied units due to their fame.
Weaknesses: Their individual thirst for glory means they usually don't fight as a team, scattering their ranks in single-handed fights instead of sticking together. They are also well known to be unruly and charge onto the enemy lines without explicit orders to do so.
Athena's Champions
The Champions of Athena are, as their name very well entails, champions from the spectacular Olympic Games that happen annually within the crowded arenas amongst the League of the Athenian City-States. The winners of such events are rewarded with not only fame, glory and wealth, but also with a lifelong position of honour in the elite military regiments from their native City-States. In those regiments, former rivals from the arenas are brought together to fight side by side in defence of their land and families during times of war. Nothing but the best of the best fighters, who can kick some serious ass on any battlefield.
​
However, although they are undeniably some of the mightiest individual combatants one can ever see in any arandolian army, the Champions of Athena aren't quite the "perfect military regiment" one might think they should be. They are indeed fierce, brave, honourable and agile beyond measure, with the sharpest combat skills you can imagine. However, they are also too often pretentious and self-centered due to so many years fighting for spectacle, simply lacking the discipline and the coordination which other actual soldiers usually have.
That's because most of the fighters at the arenas started fighting in a very young age, learning everything that there is to know about individual combat either all by themselves or in gladiatorial schools, without ever really learning much about teamwork or military hierarchy. They didn't ever had a drill sergeant to put them in line or condition them to follow orders like normal soldiers do, while their fame and glory in front of the crowds makes them quite proud and overbearing, very unlikely to obey anyone but their own selves.
​
As such, they are some of the very best fighters in the whole nation, even though their strong sense of competitiveness and thirst for glory makes them very difficult for any general to control. They think they are the queens of the battlefield, which they actually are, becoming rather prone to outright refuse to follow simple orders like "halt", "stand your ground" or "get into formation".
Many times they might even charge ahead at full speed onto the enemy lines without the slightest command to do so. More than once did these unruly champions start a battle prematurely, dragging the rest of their armies behind them and clashing against the enemy shields with such ferocity that they always make a hell of a hole on the adversary's front lines. That would be enough for any reasonable general to disband the entire champion regiments due to their sheer lack of discipline, if it weren't for the clear fact that their uncontrollable impulsiveness and eagerness to fight actually drives all the other surrounding allied units' morale to skyrocketing heights. Possibly resulting in a rather easy, fast and complete victory in most battles.
​
After all, what soldier wouldn't feel deeply honoured and highly inspired to fight alongside a famous and glorified, invictus Champion of their own kin?
