From HarryV: 28mm WAR ELEPHANTS and commanders (295 Pts)

 

For my final submission we have the massed war elephants of Carthage!

Lighting was terrible when I took these pictures, so it was hard to really get good shots. Mounted commanders are from aventine miniatures, foot command from victrix hoplites

The elephants are from Victrix and aventine, with the crews from both manufacturers mixed together to try and blend them together and make a cohesive looking elephant brigade. 

I guess when I originally ordered these from aventine I forgot to order the Howdahs, so I did end up having to fabricate my own! I used the victrix Howdas as a pattern and constructed them out of a very heavy cardboard. 

I had previously painted two war elephants which I rebased and touched up to match this new set, this what the force will look like for gaming. Three units of three elephants strong. I painted the new elephants fairly generically on purpose, with the idea that they could be used for Carthaginians or Ptolemaic elephants. 

Thanks so much for putting on the challenge, and those so much to Peter for managing the Tuesday crew. I had great fun participating this year for my first time! 

Best, Harry

7 War Elephants - Scored as vehicles? at 20 pts each (140 pts)

21 Crew - 5 pts each (105)

4 Casualties -  5 pts each (15)

2 mounted officers (20 pts)

2 foot officers (10 pts)

Total: 290 pts

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Sylvain: What an awesome post to finish the Challenge! You did it BIG! The elephants gear is fabulous and their crew are exquisitely painted. I like how you put squished enemies (including a horse) in the path of the elephants. Bravissimo!

 

From HarryV 28mm AWI Riflemen, Militia, and Hessians (150 pts)

 Hi all, something slightly different from me this week. But don't worry, there will be more Carthage coming next week!

For this entry I have 

12 American Riflemen 60 pts (Brigade games)

2 Riflemen Officers 10 pts (Brigade games)

6 Hessians  30 pts (Brigade games)

10 American Militia 50 pts (Brigade games + Black Hussar Miniatures) 

For a total of 150 points. 

 Sorry no nice background today, and the work desk is horrendously messy, so the window with natural light if going to have to do for pictures today. 

The American War of Independence/ American Revolution is probably the area of US history that holds the most interest for me overall. And in particular the years of '75-'78. 

My main goal is to do a slow grow for the battles of Hubbardton and Bennington (long live the Green Mountain Boys!), which are my particular fascination, but the battle of Long Island also holds a big interest for me, along with the other battles of '76. 

Now the danger with the slow grow is that the grow is too slow and the forces fails to grow at all, while being a distraction of time and capital from other projects. However, I am pretty committed to this, and my goal is to only order new elements once all the previous troops or terrain have been completed. 

First unit completed are 6 Hessian (or Brunswick for the Saratoga campaign of '77) Jaegers with "Amusettes" from Brigade Games. I mainly did these troops up as they were sitting in the stockpile for some reason (no idea what possessed me to buy these a few years ago) while I await the arrival of the main crown forces in the post. The Amusettes are somewhere between a large rifle and a small cannon, weighting in at around 50lbs. No idea how these will be used on the tabletop or what rules to use for these, or even how they will be deployed. But they were decent painting practice for the rifle armed Jaegers arriving in coming order. 

Next the riflemen - all from Brigade Games

Here we have a rifleman officer, probably my favorite figure from this batch that I painted. This fellow would be one of Daniel Morgan's troopers, drawn from the backwoods and frontierlands of Maryland, Virginia, or Pennsylvania. I loved the elaborate linen hunting shirt on this figure - obviously the more fringe the higher the rank among the rifle corps. 

This gentleman would be a Level I leader in "Sharp Practice", is perhaps a Captain, and would lead a company of riflemen. 

The officer's 6 riflemen. I color coded his command with the yellow flower tufts. My goal is to perhaps use an adaption of "Sharp Practice" for this force, but also in my mind is adapting Simon Miller's "For King and Parliament" or his new up coming "Lust for Glory" ruleset

A second rifleman officer. 

My original intent with these was to base them in a more forest floor like environment but I couldn't quite pull it off, so I just reverted to your classic field type terrain. I do want to try again with some forest floor basing on some of my coming units. 

This force was color coded with each other and the officer with the white flower tufts. 

Last, but not least, my militia force, from Black Hussar Miniatures and Brigade Games

Now there are 20 of these based up here, but only 10 were painted during this challenge. The other 10 I had painted a number of years ago. Originally I had bought these to serve as New Hampshire provincials during the French Indian War battles around Ticonderoga/Fort Carillon, who lacked uniforms during that conflict. However, painting French white uniforms at that time mentally broke me and I abandoned the project.  

They were initially singly based but I have based them up into these mass bases. I was going to paint a commander to go with these, but realized I lacked a figure currently of significant enough gravitas to serve as a colonel of militia. 

My idea for this project is that each base is a  unit from "Sharp Practice" and in real life terms would be a company. 

The officer bases would mainly represent  Colonels or Majors, with the officer level represented by the number of figures on the command base.

 Most of the actions that I am interested in do not have enough battalions for a "big battle game", but have too many troops from skirmish. 

Anyways, if you are looking for some inspiration, I loved this YouTube documentary which I watched while painting these up:

What a great selection of AWI types Harry.  I really like those Jaegers with their Amussettes.  I remember that WRG has a very light gun category to cover these, plus swivel guns and Indian jingals.  Some really fine detailed work on those 'Murcan riflemen too.  I have spent time In New York and Vermont around Lake Placid and Lake Champlain and I understand your interest in the Saratoga campaign.  Great work all around. 

Harry V - 28mm Carthaginian Cavalry (130 pts)

Hi All, 

More progress on the Carthaginian front. For this post I have 12 Carthaginian cavalry from Aventine Miniatures in 28mm. These are a mix of packs, some sold as Carthaginian cavalry, others as successor cavalry. 

 

These figures will be my last unit of ethnic Carthaginian cavalry for the army. 

I am generally a pretty big fan of aventine miniatures but these cavalry will definitely look quite small next to their Victrix brothers I did for my first entry. Most of the rest of the cavalry for this project will be Victrix, so hopefully they don't look too out of scale when massed together. 

Some of these cavalry I have actually been holding onto since around 2018 when I first got back into miniatures and had originally wanted to do a Carthage project, so it was nice to finally get these completed and onto the table top. 

The basing on these figures is a little sparse, I actually was shocked to realize I was basically out of nice tufts! However I am reasonably happy with the basing, and think it gives a decent enough dry North African feel. 

First the foot and now the horse.  These aer wonderful Harry, love the bright colours on the cloaks.  I think that your bases look perfect for North African or Sicilian scrub.  I am bumping points a bit for the size and quality of your pots today.

From Harry V 28mm Carthaginian Citizens/Spearmen (720 pts)

 Hi all, 

Sorry to kind of drop a points bomb with this post, but I have also know completed 144 28mm Carthaginian citizen spearmen. My process for troops like these is to do a massive production line with each step of the modeling process, so they were finally completed all at once. 

The vast majority of the figures are from various victrix sets (and some wargames Atlantic bitz), with 6 figures drawn from the Foundry/Casting room miniatures Carthage range to add a little character and a few other figures from the plastic Carthaginians from Agema miniatures. 

Each unit has 36 figures, these are for To the Strongest, where they would likely be classified as raw spearmen. I have gone with deep units to give them a little more staying power. Raw spearmen tend to be speed bumps at the best of times in the rules, so the extra depth should hopefully allow them to survive a little longer and let the elephants and cavalry win the day.

 I also think it is the historical deployment. 

For the shields I mainly went with the thureos style shields as I was aiming for a punic wars look, however there are a variety of shield types mixed in to represent a more ad hoc nature to the units. Thureos was recorded as being used in third punic war in the literary accounts, and there are North African monuments with the shield as well. According to Spanish historian Quesada Sanz the Carthaginians likely introduced large, oval shields to the Iberians, so I think Thureos is reasonable, especially as that shield type seemed to majorly come into fashion across the Med In this time. 

If I was purely going for a Sicilian Wars style army I would have used all aspis shields, and in fact I kind of wish I did as the citizen infantry played a major role in those wars against Syracuse. 

I think these troops could do equally well as less well equipped Libyan foot. I think that armor tends to be over represented by wargamers in the ancient period, I think the vast majority of troops would have lacked significant armor in any army from the period. 

One source of inspiration for these was the Truceless or Mercenary War were Libyan subjects along with mercenaries revolted against the Carthaginians due to a lack of pay after the first punic war. At times during this conflict every able-bodied Carthaginain who could shake a spear was drafted into the ranks, so I included a number of very poorly equipped fellows in the ranks. At the same time, the levy would be a cross-section of society, so included some well armored officers and troops to represent the wealthier classes. 

 

I used figures from a lot of different victrix sets for these units - some purpose bought, other figures were sprue left overs that could be reasonably pressed into service. 

For helmets, the montefortino style is the one that I used most, but there are a range of hellenistic types as well as the conical helm often associated with Carthage. The montefortino seemed to be manufactured in scale and widely used by Carthage and distributed to her mercenaries, so this made the most sense to me as head gear. 

Duncan Head in the book "Armies of the Punic and Macedonian Wars" has a recreation of a Carthaginian citizen in that book - it seems like every figure manufacturer has basically copied that look for every single figure sold as a Carthaginian citizen. I personally think that the citizen body would look a little more varied and diverse. 

This project was absolutely a speed paint for better or for worse. The qualities of the figures varies pretty dramatically in some cases, depending on the mood I was feeling when painting. 

A lot of the back rank figures required some conversion work to get the upright spears - the Victrix citizen set only has attacking poses, so some surgery was required for the back ranks. 

I usually organize the figures on popsicle sticks, with 4 figures to a stick, and paint in batches of 16 or 4 sticks. For these simple ancient figures with only a few different colors I find I can comfortably due 16 in around an hour, not counting drying times for washes. I focus on one tunic color per day and then mixed all the figures together to get random blends of tunics for the final units. I also undercoat with a skeleton bone color primer as I find that gives and excellent base for off-white tunics and the spear shafts. 

For basing these deep units, I stuck the first two ranks on the bases, then applied the ground cover, and then did the following ranks, to make applying the basing material a little less messy on the figures.

Yowza that's a big Phalanx Harry!   It just looks amazing.  love hear the kit bashing and mixing of figure ranges, that IMHO is the only way to go.  I got a chuckle about the Duncan head illustration.  The WRG Armies and Enemies series is a wonderful resource, but yeah it did tend to focus designers on one look.  Luckily, the mix and match approach can get around most of that.  I also enjoyed reading about your batch painting approach.

From HarryV Libyan Skirmishers (180 Points)

 Hey everybody, 

This week's submission is 36 28mm Libyan Skirmishers for my Carthaginian Project for a total of 180 points. These Libyans were recruited from the nomadic, tribal peoples of the vast region of Libya. 

 

These guys are made from the Warriors of Carthage box from Victrix, along with fellows from the victrix peltast set and other random sets to make up the numbers. You only get 12 in the warriors of Carthage box, so numbers needed to be found elsewhere. Fortunately you get extra Libyan heads so conversions are easy. 

Hannibal had around 2,000 of these warriors in his army from my research, so at a 1:50 scale that gives 40 models, so I am about 4 figures short, but oh well. 

I couldn't find my stash of surplus round shields and did not have enough in the packs to give them all round shields. Therefore some of these fellows have picked up thureos shields from Carthage's substantial armories. Of course, after priming them I found my extra round shields. 

Some of these Libyans also have acquired/looted helmets as well. This was mainly to make up for the lack of Libyan heads I had available. 

Our limited sources of these gentlemen describe them wearing exclusively red tunics, along with wild and shaved hairstyles. I believe the hairstyles would have been unique to each tribe, however the victrix set only has one expression/face per hairstyle, so the different tribes are mixed together for modeling purposes. 

The victrix warriors of Carthage box is a little frustrating as it combines three very distinct troop types in one box. I would really prefer separate kits for the different troop types, like a dedicated box just for Libyan skirmishers. now that I am out of Libyan heads I can't really make any more of this troop type. Also you only get one head per hairstyle, where you would think the skirmishers recruited from a tribe would be grouped together all with the same hairstyle. 

These are all for the "To The Strongest" Ruleset. 

Next up are many more infantry along with more heavy cavalry which will be ready towards the end of February. Following that I have some really cool stuff (I think) for the Carthage project which will remain a secret for now. 

Every time I see HarryV in the title I expect to see HYW English, but I am more than satisfied with these Libyans!  Excellent work on kit bashing, painting and basing these skirmishers.  As Phil Barker would say, do not discount the humble light infantry skirmisher with javelins.  These troops are. both cheap and effective.  In one of our TtS games, Irish beardless youth managed to get round the flank of the Roman legions and win the day.  I got a chuckle out of your shield drama (been there) and the issues with the heads.  FYI, I know some gamers have used Perry Mahdist plastics as greek javelin men, so maybe's there's another source for you.  I am hoping that the promised "really cool stuff" includes Heffalumps.