28mm Numidian Light Cavalry

This is the first of several 28mm units that I'm painting up for an upcoming First Punic War campaign that a few of my wargame club friends and I will be partaking of next year. Several of our group have 28mm hoplites that have been gathering dust. With our recent increase in enthusiasm for the Field of Glory (FOG) ancients rules they have decided to re-base for FOG. Not having any 28mm ancient figures I thought I would contribute to the effort by filling in some of the missing battle groups needed for the campaign.

This is the first of those battle groups - a six (6) stand unit of Numidian light cavalry. The figures are from Old Glory and were nice clean sculpts with good animation. My only minor complaint is the galloping horses are too long to fit on a 40mm deep base. This required me to mount this unit on 50mm deep bases. Even with the enlarged base depth I still had to trim the galloping horse bases about 5mm. Spears and javelins are 1/64" steel 'piano' wire sharpened to a point and then dulled for safety. Each is glued into a hole through the figures hand insuring a secure grip. I hope they will last a nice long time.

The shields that come with the figures are all the domed shields. I chose to replace half of these with flat round shields I made on my laser engraver. I'm more used to seeing Numidian shields feature hide-covered flat shields than domed ones. Both types shields were adorned with hand-painted decorations: hide patterns for the flat shields and appropriate symbols for the domed shields.

This is the second unit I've shaded with the Army Painter Quick Shade product. This time I diluted the quick shade 3 parts quick shade to one part mineral spirits. I very much liked the results and will continue to use this ratio until my can of quick shade thickens up a bit more from evaporation.