Numidian cavarly

So  I finished these 2 "small" units for Hail Ceasar. They are the lovely Victrix plastic set.

 I started out painting  them in the classic but wrong dark African skin  tone,

 But after seeing how other did north African skin, I  managed to find a way. In the end, the skin was made with  Foundry  Chestnut A and B then Citadel Agrax Earth shade, then a second highlight of Chestnut B.

 It did take a couple of tries to find the right color, So, in the end, there is 4 different skin colors in this unit.

I'm kinda anciented out now, I have to try and finish my elephant and Spanish cavalry.  But I mostly want to get back to my  18th-century projects. Not sure if GNW or SYW will be first out.

Hat-trick

Wow, three posts in less then a month.
Well both my hoplites and vetrans are as done as I can get them untill I get more flock.

So it stopped raining so I got some nice outside pics of the hoplties and vetrans

 A couple of vetrans got celtic plaid cloth for their tunics. I noticed one had the on the outside of the box, so why not. a nice way to get rid of the bordome of painting white and red.

Also some better pics of some celtic cav I did just over a year ago today.

Woo, just 12 days

Sorry for the bad pics, but I said I would try and update a little more often. So bad pics. becaue 1. I'm out of my flock so the unit can't be totaly finished, and two there are 5 wild pupplings in the yard, can't risk taking pictures out side as long as those run around.

So these are wip. 24 carthagenians spearmen/hoplites. These are primaraly for HC so the hoplites needed 3 ranks, the box comes with 24 hoplites(including command) So that means 3x8 figures.

I'm not that pleased about the slip box, I would have preferd 60 figure box of Vetrans and one of Hoplites, not split in 24/24 pluss light infantry. Now I see the spanish boxes will be 24 figures to,(well 26 with command)  Why spanish get 26 figure boxes and not 60 with 24/24 split I do not know.

Depanding on how you would rate the spanish(warband ect) you might need 4 ranks of spanish, that means you need atleast 2 boxes to make a propper unit, Also £18 for 26 figures is 0.75 pr figures, alot more then the 0,45 pr figure in the 60+ boxes. But I guess still alot cheper then £1.1-1.6  the metal 28mm costs.

Enough bitching, lets get to the figues, there has been very little pics of any of the victrix boxes of late, I do find romans, but even greek hoplites and especaly the carthaganian figures are hard to find painted. I even had a ahard time getting info on just what was in the spures, I had to as on a forum to find out if the spear arms could be used for both type of soldiers. But they can't the arms are designed for either hoplites or vetrans, so all vetrans will be in a more dynamic stabby stabby pose, all hoplites will be in a static waiting for the bus pose.

I've found that painting linothorax is plastic is a pain in the ass, I have painted Aventine linothorax and those are nice and easy to paint, I then painted Warlord phalangites and fround the plastic linothoraxes to be a pain to paint, shallow details, so much time spent on tidying up my sloppy painting ect. I thought it was just warlord plastic beeing warlord. But no the linothoraxes from victrix are also a paint, they are better to paint(mostly because of the pose I think)  but still hard to put details on them, lots of gonig back to fix mistakes ect. I guess it's just a fact of life, the tunics, the command figures, faces, spears, shields ect, are great, It's just plastic and linothoraxes equals pain to paint. I have painted 5 of the vetrans and working on another 5 now. They are great, the mail is so easy to paint, So it's not lack of quality or skills of the sculptor. 

I would have preferd my hoplites in a more dynamic pose, to me hoplites should be in battle formation with spears over shield!  

So bad picutre! The have mostly white linothorax with some red trimming, some have colord sholder parts, one has all red chest part.

The command figures are great, Very fun to paint.

But it brings me back to my trouble with the box, I really don't need hoplites, I only really need the vetrans, But the price of the figures almost double if I don't use the hoplites. So I guess they will be used for Punic forces in Spain and africa or Battle of Trabia ect.

Gallic Riders

 Well doing a carthaganian army is not really doing much carthaganians. Infact at Cannae Hannibal he did not have any carthaganian cav, it was all, Numidian, Spanish and Celtic/gallic.
And like 60-70% of his infantry was celtic and spanish. So I just have to start on his allies.
First up is 6 gallic cav.  This is first of 4 bases. So this will be a large unit in Hail Caesar. My cav is 6 small 12 standard and 24 large. I have decided to mix the "noble and regular cav, I find it unrealistic for them to be "separate game units"  I will class them as heavy cav, even if about half will not have armor by the end. I plan on two callic and 2 spanish units for this division. Then the second division will be only numidians(like at Cannae) not sure how that will with in hail ceaser tho. I also got my victrix romans, I think I'll be able to make 2 units of hastati from it.


My proudest moment in life, I managed plaid trousers! that I keep seeing people paint celts with. yet when I search for celtic plaid I only get kits and Scottish drap, not other celtic peoples plaid clothing.

Unit is a mix of armord with sword and unarmord with spear. I'll add a command more unarmord with spears and some armord with spears.

Cartago Part 2

 So finished another 10 from last post. These are better. more detail on the mail. Did the command to, one trumpter and two officers. one in black and one in brown leather. The trumpter is in white and purple linothorax. Purple is the "theme" of the unit. Some of the shield do not have a motive on them, instead they got DREID BLOOD! oooohohhoh!

 Black leather dude.

 Brown leather dude

 The unit is half done. 15 of 30. I know I have more figures some were, I saw them just a few weeks ago, but now I can't find them.

I like these, they  look good, the mail looks much better with just a thin layer of primer ontop and light brushes of metal.

John "Hannibal" Smith

Well ingnore the John Smith part, And keep the Hannibal part. Last time I pained theise figures was the 6th of December 2011 When I first got into Ancients. I  rnever did much  more of carthageninans, as aventine never exapanded their range, instead going to Pyrrhus instead. With Victrix new range of romans and soon punic forces. it thought it was time to restart theise. I actualy thought my early ancients look pretty good but I find these are much better. The two things pulling them down is the mail and shields. theise figures has been primed those almost 3 years ago. so some of the primer had gone of, instead of re priming them, I decided to just put som  black paint on the bare metal parts, but it was to much paint and the detail on the armor was gone, making it hard to get to look good. the shields still clearly looks like they got watermarks on them, and not that they are painted.

Except for those. I like them, the broze is much better. so is the flesh and wood.
The tunics are a mix of white. natural lien and dark tan green(realy just od with highligts) The common theme is purple border on the tunic both on the ned and on the armes. I did this because they are supose to be veterans, with stolen roman shelds and armor. So even if you buy the theory that ancients tried to use uniform tunics for units or armies. All we know of all long  military campaigns, is that after a while uniformity goes out the can.

 One guy has a plane white shield.

 The hair on the helmets are a mix of, red, blue and green.

The broze to make propper shades, I have left some part black. this is most notisable on the graves.

10mm Ancients

 So I got  a bunch of 10mm Ancients, Doing the 2nd Punic wars. all figures are the new punic war range from Pendraken. So far only 1 unit is done, and thats the 48 hastati, each finished unit is gonna be 4 bases, and 48 figures for 3 rank infantry, and 56 for the warbands, Cav is gonna be 24 for standard size and 12 for small. The rules will be Hail Caesar.







Half a unit of Pricipes

 Iberian mercenry warband

 Carthagenian vertrans

 Big grey thingies, also known as elephants(the bible called them Behemoth(no it did not talk about dionsaurs)

 Numidian cav, 15 of them, plan on having 24 figure units for standard sized units. So it's gonna be lots of cav goodness.

 Everythnig from an angle, I have notised one thing about ancients, even with 28mm, the figures often just end up beeing heads with shields, it's often very hard to see the armor/cloth/uniform, as the shield take up the front, and you need  a special angle to see the body of the soldier, this is even worse in 10mm, so I  tried to get an angle, so  you can actualy see, some of the badly painted figure and not just the shield.

Both the carthagenians and pricipes have chainmail.
I honestly did all figurs very simple, the horses got 2 shades only, and it was quckly done, not alot of detail, since the units are so big it gets boring fast, like the iberians, took me 3 days for this half unit,, they got a base coat on the unit with a highlight, and purple line on the end(read they had that)  the chainmail is a single coat of gunmetal, no inks or highlights, as I said you mostly only see the shield anyway. so these are by no means my best figures, not even my best 10mm, the only ones that look ok, are the elephants.

135 28mm in 25 days

Ok, this is quite impressive some time ago I did do 1000ish 6mm in like a week, but I think this is cooler, 135 Ancient 28mm, in 25 days, and thats with a week of not painting at all, so I guess you could say 135 28mm ancients in about 18 days. I have no gotten enough figures to do a small photo shoot.


First up the first of two bases of Celt iberians, this is a massive base of 20 figures, they got lots of character, lots of diffrent shields, two diffrent types of spears, swords and axes. So a real ragtag unit, some of the warriors got mail, some got this really cool leather/bronze thing were they got a chest peice made of leather with a kinda boss of bronze ontop of that.
Sevral are totaly unarmord, so this unit will be medium infantry.

And now the photoshoot


The romans move towards the carthaganians

Even tho the carthaganains only got one finished units, and two half inished units, they got basicaly the same number of soldiers.

The carthaganians got 65 figures, 45 vetrans and 20 iberians.

The romans got 70 figures, 60 close order infantry, 8 skrimishes and 2 generals.

So whats next, I'm going to finish the iberians, then finish the half done carthaganians, that will bring my carthaganain side up to 100, I'll then go at that romans, and finish the legion, thats one unit of hastati and one of principes. That will bring the romans up to 110.

By that time or long before I'll get another shipment from Aventine, this will include a latin allied legion, and 2 big units of Phalangite and two smaller units of Thureophoroi. two small units of roman cav, and one unit of phyrric cav. So basicly for this very unhisotric game, carthage and Pyrrhus is allied, so I get 3 carthaganains in a division with the iberians, and one division with the greeks, with two Phalangite and two thureophoroi and the cav.

The romans get their own legion with cav, and the allied legion. When I get this done if I ever did get this done I can have a game.

This is for my very very unhistoric battle, basicly the battl