28mm Spanish 'Small Shield' Cavalry

This is the last unit for my 28mm Carthaginian army. I started this project in November of 2012, so it has taken me almost two years to complete it. Considering the size of the army I'm actually happy to have finished it in under two years.

This is a unit of Spanish 'Small Shield' skirmish or light cavalry. In Field of glory this will be a single battle group of four stands. In Hannibal at the Gates it will be four separate skirmish cavalry units.

The figures are again from Old Glory. This particular sculpt isn't my favorite, but I think they came out ok. I went with military red tunics and took the extra time to paint the horses as Andalusian breed, which is an ancient Iberian breed appropriate for these troops. The light brown coats match well with Army Painter strong tone 'dip'.

Next up on the painting table, the first of my Republican Roman army to oppose the recently finished Carthaginians.

28mm Carthaginian Citizen Heavy Cavalry

I intended this to be the last unit I painted for my 28mm Carthaginian army, but when reviewing my dead lead box I actually discovered I misplaced a unit of Spanish light cavalry, so this will be the penultimate unit that I will paint for the army. This is a single battle group in Field of Glory or four individual units in Hannibal at the Gates. These are the citizen heavy cavalry. The most affluent of the first class citizens. I've painted them in expensive blue and green underclothes and they're equipped with the finest bronze breastplates and linen armor. The shields are a combination of decals and hand painted decorations. The figures are made by Old Glory.

I'm heading out on a week's vacation. When I return I'll be finishing up the last unit of Spanish light cavalry and participating in our club's pirate game day.

28mm Ancient Gaul Cavalry (3)

These are two bases of Gaul cavalry and an officer that I picked up on Ebay. They were reasonably priced and nicely block painted. A couple of the figures had a decent wash on them. All of them suffered some damage in shipping. I took the liberty of touching them up, doing some small changes to better match my style and then I gave them all a uniform army painter wash with a thinned wash to not overdue it.

The officer is based like my other ancients officers, with a magnetic strip at the back. The two combat stands will be used to extend one of my other four stand units to a six stand unit when playing Field of Glory. For Hanibal at the Gates these two stands will each be another HATG cavalry unit. You can never have enough Gauls!

28mm Spanish Scutarii (2)

This is the last of the Spanish Scutarii I had to paint up for my 28mm Carthaginian army. These are wearing assorted randomly-colored 'on campaign' tunics without the characteristic Spanish striping. The shields are again hand painted, with the exception of the officer's hoplon which is a decal. I mixed up the geometric patterns on the shields of this unit which I believe is more historically accurate.

These figures, like the last unit, are a mix from the Old Glory Scutarii pack and the Old Glory Caetreti pack. The latter I feel is what gives the unit a proper Spanish look. Originally I was going to paint this unit as a pair of small Hanibal at the Gates units, but when I finally inventoried all of my unpainted lead I was able to scrape up enough figures for a whole six-base Field of Glory battle group. The final (blurry) photo below is how the unit will be deployed in Hanibal at the Gates; as three soldier units.

28mm Spanish 'Large Shield' Cavalry

This is a unit of 28mm Spanish 'large shield' cavalry for my Carthaginian army. The figures are Old Glory and are intended to represent Spanish skirmish 'small shield' cavalry. Not knowing a lot about them I ordered them with the intention of converting them to battle cavalry by adding the large shields. When the figures came, much to my dismay, one of the poses had the small shield slung on the figure's back and the only armor on the figure at all was the helmet.

Discouraged, I forged on but as the paint job shows, my heart wasn't 100% into painting this unit. I chose plain white tunics. The shields are a mix of leftovers from my bits box and some made on my laser. The patterns are hand painted and with the exception of the shield that looks like it belongs more in a Swiss unit than a Spanish one, I think they came out ok.

This unit can represent a single battle group in Field of Glory, or four units in Hannibal at the Gates. I have one more large unit of Carthaginian citizen cavalry and a couple small units left and I will be able to call my Carthaginian army done. For painting totals, I'm calling this 24 'figures': 12 riders and 12 horses.

28mm Carthaginian Elephants

I've had these elephants on the painting table for quite a while. Honestly, I had expected them to be easy and quick to paint. Somehow in my mind I thought of each elephant as one figure not figuring in the assembly, howdah, driver and combat crew. Instead of 6 figures these were actually 28 figures counting all of the crew and escort figures.

That said, I'm happy to say they're done. This group will represent three battle groups in Field of Glory or six elephant units in two Hannibal at the Gates terror wings. Seen above and to the left they're arranged as they'll be used in Field of glory. The figures are all Old Glory. The unarmored figures are from the Old Glory Carthaginian line and the armored are from the Macedonian line. Truth be told it's quite likely that none of the Carthaginian elephants had howdahs, but without crew sculpted to ride directly on the backs of the elephants, I was forced to use the howdahs. Since the unarmored howdahs had very characteristically Carthaginian shields molded onto them I decided to go ahead and put my Spanish escorts on those bases. The armored elephants have no exclusively Carthaginian markings on them so I left them without escorts in hopes that they'll also be able to serve in my Pyrrhic army that I'll be painting later.

Below are two close-ups of the armored elephants, followed by a couple of photos of one of the Hanibal at the Gates terror wings, and finally a close up of one of the drivers and escorts.

28mm Carthaginian Veteran Spearmen (2)

This is my first completed unit of 2014. Things got so hectic over the holidays that I didn't even have time to do a year in review post. This is another unit of Veteran Libyan Spearmen for my Carthaginian army for Field of Glory and Hannibal at the Gates. This unit has white shields to help differentiate it from the other unit I painted last year. With this one I also chose to sprinkle in some hoplons, still awaiting replacement with captured Roman scutum. These figures will represent a single battle group in Field of Glory or three units in Hannibal at the gates as shown in the bottom photo. I've included a photo of the 2nd rank to show the shields as well as one of a sample of the rear view of some of the stands.

Next up on the painting table are six Carthaginian elephants. Before those hit the blog I have some purchased units to post. I apologize for the shoddy photos. I prefer to use natural light, but here in New England it's below freezing outside and dark when I leave for work and dark again when I return home. The photo booth with its less than optimal lighting is the best I can do.

Another Shameless Plug

I'm selling off a Field of Glory Renaissance rule book and 3 army list books on Ebay here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/321229601823?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

I just won't get to painting the armies for a long time considering my current progress and plans for ancient armies.

Thanks for looking,
AJ

28mm Campanian Hoplites

This is a unit of Campanian Hoplites for my 28mm Carthaginian army. The figures are Old Glory from their Italian Wars line. The Figures are from their Oscan Hoplite bag, but they do nicely as Campanian with plenty of helmets with two, three or four vertical feathers characteristic of the Campanian area. This is a fantastic pack of figures with nearly every figure in the pack unique. For the non-command figures there are 3-4 body types with a myriad of head choices. Wonderfully luxurious. The spears are from Warlord Games.

This group will make a six stand battle group for Field of Glory, or two 12-figure phalanx units in Hannibal at the Gates as seen in the bottom center photo. The bottom left photo shows the rear rank of figures so I could show off all the nice shields.

28mm Carthaginian Generals

A Carthaginian army isn't any good without some leadership. These Carthaginian generals are primarily Old Glory figures with the exception of the Hannibal figure on the white horse. He's either a Renegade figure or a Crusader figure, I don't remember. I added a standard bearer to Hannibal's stand to indicate that it's an army commander while the others represent wing commanders. I felt a rose colored cape was particularly fitting for the flamboyant chap on the right.

Apologies for the poor photo quality. Light in the mornings in the fall months isn't very good. Unfortunately by the time I get home from work the sun is already either setting or it's already dark, so this is the best I can do until I finally give up and return to the winter method of using the indoor photo booth. 

The back of each base has a magnetic strip added to allow me to put different magnetized labels on them according to what the scenario requires. These can be simple names or names and statistics depending on the rules I'm using for the game.

I also based up two Gaul officers that I purchased from Ebay. These came with the soldiers I posted about last week. There weren't enough to make a full base of cavalry with so they seemed like good candidates for Gaul officers. Possibly later when I paint up my Gaul officer figures these will find themselves relocated onto a combat stand. For now they'll be fine as command figures.

28mm Spanish Scutarii

This is the next unit I've painted for my 28mm Carthaginian army. In Field of Glory this is a single unit of medium infantry. In Hanibal at the Gates this becomes four units of the 'soldier' unit type as seen below.

These are all Old Glory figures from two separate packs. The figures in metal helmets are from their Scutarii pack and the more characteristically Spanish leather helmets come from their Caetreti pack. The shields are hand painted. Originally I was going to feature a more purple striping on the tunics and shields, but in the end I settled on the dark red that most other wargamers use. The figures were 'dipped' using army painter strong shade. The spears are from Warlord Games.

Next up are some Carthaginian generals that are painted but awaiting dipping and basing. Following these will be some Campanian hoplites that are currently on the painting table. If you're following my blog be sure to scroll down for two additional posts I've made today.