Hey, new to KOW. I want to do a Spartan Army list that is fully converted and even print some of my own figs but was curious what armies have good Frontline hand to hand units possibly something with Shield and Spears or shield and single handed weapon. I’m thinking like a good sheild wall army. Since I’ll be converting them I’m not sure the army race matters as much.
Any suggestions?
Kingdoms of Men would seem the obvious.
do you have it assembled already? what kind of unit diversity does it have? (are there light infantry skirmishers, are the Phalanx’s made from fully armored hoplites or are there formations of less armored ones, are they classical era troops or are there some of the later hellenistic era troops? or even macedonian successor era phalangites?)
if you haven’t built anything yet, you may want to decide how closely to the spartan visuals you want to stick… being willing to bring in say, hellenistic cavalry, and/or successor war elephants for example might help fill some units in whatever list you do, though neither of those would be part of a historical Spartan army.
If race doesn’t matter, Dwarfs can offer you good solid units.
Also Spartan themed Dwarfs would be a refreshing change from the usual Dwarf aesthetic.
KOM is obvious as said earlier. The other you might look at is Basileans as the other major human faction.
They are more elite than KOM and have more resilience but at increased cost
Most of it maps pretty easily if you are prepared to stretch history a bit
Ogre palace guards a key unit - you’d need to go mythological for those and think about smallish giants, cyclops, or minotaur’s maybe?
Following on from @Wargamer_Stu idea re Basilea, you could also look at the Order of the Brothermark?
You get some lighter troops - bowmen and light cavalry -along with a decent range of the more elite stuff from the main basilean list
These are all perfect ideas. Especially the troop detail given by @Wargamer_Stu.
I haven’t started collecting or creating anything yet. I’m coming from the old WHFB and I had collected Beastmen and Skaven and those army’s aren’t available yet here at KOW. So lucky for me I get to start something new 
Great comments though. The Spartan Dwarf comment could be interesting.
For an elite army like Spartans I would go with Elves.
You could even go Undead. Spartans that have been buried for hundreds/thousands of years, reanimated ny a mad necromancer.
What is great about KoW is how versatile it all is, as clearly demonstrated by this thread.
Whatever army you feel like basing them on, if you are looking to add some mythological flavour, and create some elite troops, then I suggest looking into the creation myth of Thebes with Cadmus.
Basically they planted dragons teeth and from the ground sprouted warriors. Admittedly in the myth the warriors went ahead and basically killed each other on the spot… but your version doesn’t have to go like that.
Wargames Atlantic makes some greek/spartan themed skeletons. you could do those for the skeletons, and paint up the fleshy spartans with pale skin and patina’d armor for use as revenants, or in glowy colors for use as ghosts.
Also Victrix do undead shield transfers etc for their normal hoplites, so you can them as zombies or skeletons with a suitable paint job or some new heads
I had thoughts of doing a Greek Myth army as I have most of the figures; Hoplites as the main infantry, Centaur Cavalry, Satyr skirmishers, Harpies, Cyclops giant, Minotaur for a monster, Medusa for a spell caster, etc. However, I haven’t really found a suitable list and I have put the project on the backburner. KOM, Elves, Basilia all have promise but no way to incorporate it all. Under second edition, when I started the army, I was working off the historical book with the myth units. So, I’m no help except that once you have settled on a list, if you are looking for unit variety to flesh out your Spartan infantry core, there are lots of cool mythological ideas out there.
Greeks from KOW Historical plus the fantasy allies section is the closest fit. However its balanced for V2 not V3 so the points might be off.