Command and Colours Ancients with 54mm

 

 

 A very long time project has been collecting 54mm Punic Wars figures to replace all the blocks in the C&C Ancients boardgame with figures; using one figure per block.  I had managed to collect a fair few figures and then become stuck as the Hat figures were no longer in stock anywhere and I struggled to get things like slingers.

Eventually, I found some metal slingers and some other figures being sold off by Rupert at Drum and Flag and then the Hat figures came back into production and I was able to put together all the figures I needed.

The effort of painting everything was a little daunting, but then I hit on taking a leaf out of Norm from Battlefield Warrior blog and undercoating each side a different colour and playing with them like that while I worked through painting them...

I undercoated the Carthaginians white and the Romans grey and finished all the bases to make all the figures look consistent.

The edges of the bases are painted the appropriate colour for the block type - green = light, blue = medium, red=heavy.  Things like auxilia and warband have a white stripe down the middle of each side as their blocks have a white edge around the colours.

My regular opponent Anthony and I played the first game last week using Trebbia as the scenario and it worked well and looked good, even with unpainted figures.

The game was very close and I lost 6 to 7 as the Carthaginians, not helped by the ambush by Mago not turning up.

The game has certainly inspired me to get on and paint another set of figures...

54mm Punic Wars

 

Been completely knocked out by a virus thing for the last few days which meant I didn't get to Warfare (first time in over 20 years) and now have a year where I won't have attended any wargames shows (first for over 25 years!)...  Too foggy brained to paint or concentrate on anything so I decided  to sort out some of my Punic Wars 54mm figures for the Command and Colours project and get them based.

On the right are all the Carthaginian Infantry needed barring 4 more light infantry(ordered), 12 slingers ( they are already painted) and some bowmen (ordered from Irregular Miniatures).

On the left are all the Roman Infantry needed barring the velites (already painted) and some bowmen.

I am planning on undercoating one side grey and one side white and doing the bases and painting the base edges the appropriate colour for light, medium, etc

Then I'll try a test game and get them painted gradually.

Next I need to assemble and base all the cavalry and the 4 elephants (I have 2 already based and painted) and the 3 commanders per side.

 

Next off the painting table are 24 x 54mm Velites made by HAT.

These are the first figures ready for my Command and Colours Ancients project.  The idea is to use a 5" hex mat and replace each block with a 54mm figure.  I have been collecting the figures for this for a while but was stuck for a year or so as I couldn't get all the figures I needed.

Then Rupert from Drum and Flag (excellent service if you are looking for plastic figures, by the way) sold off a lot of his collection of 54mm and I was able to pick up things like the HAT Slingers that were a limited metal release as well as elephants and some of the missing cavalry.

Now these are done I will probably work through rebasing some of the painted figure next before starting on more Roman Infantry.