Sahel Conflicts: Panhard ERC-90 Sagaie

JJG Print 3D expanded their modern French offerings with a new series of armored vehicles designed by Guaro3d. I took the opportunity to up-gun my Foreign Legion with some support vehicles. First up was the Panhard ERC-90 Sagaie, which was a light wheeled tank/armored reconnaissance vehicle that was used by the FFL from the 1980s through the 2010s. The model can be purchased in 1/56 or 1/50 scale for 28mm gaming, and I went with the larger version. This came out as 10.4cm (not including the gun barrel) x 5.0cm x 4.9cm.

For my vehicle, I based it on the appearance of these ERC-90s seen in western Africa as part Operations Serval and Barkhane, though I didn't have any of the seen stowage to add.

Source: Twitter

Source: Twitter

The kit didn't have all the surface detailing of an injection mold  scale model, but as a wargaming model, the detail was quite respectable. The only missing item that I wish was present on the kit was the machine gun for the turret railing. I didn't have an appropriate machine gun available in the bits box, so had to go without. To create an antenna, I went with some black airplane rigging rather than wire, as I figured the latter was more prone to damage during transport.

For the camo netting, I couldn't find anything in 1/48 scale, so was forced to use 1/35. It looked less refined than I wanted, but for an issue I'll mention shortly, I felt I needed to still use it.

The kit came in three pieces: the turret and two halves of the body, with the wheels printed in place. There were no registration pins to help with positioning and a bit of a gap in some spots, so filling and sanding were needed to get a reasonable seam. 

While the print quality was good overall, there were some issues with the turret that had to be addressed. First up was a missing set of smoke launchers; the green ones were present, but the brown ones only had the mounts and no tubes. I'm not sure if they broke off somewhere or there was an uncaught printing error, but they needed to be recreated. Luckily I was able to do that fairly easily with some plastic rod and paper strips. It wasn't a perfect match, but were close enough that I think  they wouldn't be noticed on the table.

The major issue with the turret was a pronounced upward curve of the gun barrel. I tried reshaping it multiple times using heat and weights, and while I made improvements, I could never get it to remain straight long term. After eventually breaking it with my efforts, I gave up and opted to fill the dip with camouflage netting.  While you can still spot the issue when you get down to tabletop level,  I felt it was much less noticeable from the usual players' vantage. 

 Overall, I'm happy with the final results and am looking forward to seeing how it performs on the table. 

Punic Wars: More Refurbished Units

 

Work continues on refurbishing my old Carthaginian army.

First up is another unit of African hoplites from 1st Corps Miniatures. This unit has the convex shields, so I opted to replace my old decals with some from Little Big Men Studios, as I thought they would apply better than on the concave shields used by the other unit. I was a few short, so supplemented them with some designed for Crusader Carthaginians; the size was very close.

Next up are some Ligurians from Old Glory Miniatures. I received these as part of a mixed bag of second hand figures, so opted to combine the swordsmen with the javelinmen (converted to longer spears) as a light infantry unit. There was no standard bearer with the figures, so I converted one javelinman using a leftover standard from my plastic Numidians. Old Glory can be hit or miss in terms of sculpting quality, but I found these to be reasonably good en masse and the shield transfers helped improve the appearance (It seems they shared shield types with the OG Celtic range). 

I don't know much about the Ligurians, but the online drawings I found depicted something between the other Italian tribes and the Celtic peoples. I went with influences from both when painting the fabrics and also threw in one of Charlie Brown's ancestors for my own amusement.

Last are two units of repainted Libyan javelinmen from Newline Design Miniatures.  They only came with 3 poses and the sculpting style is a bit old fashioned, but I think the LBMS transfers (I used leftovers from the Wargames Factory Numidians) helped elevate them somewhat. 

Here they were prior to refurbishment.

Since my original painting, I've learned they favored red tunics and also were known for their tattoos, so I tried to capture that this time around. I don't know what the tattoos exactly looked like, so used some modern Berber tattoos and Carthaginian icons for inspiration.

Punic Wars: Command, Elephant, and Cavalry

Still lots of work to go, but I'm making pretty good progress. As with the previous updates, here is the before picture. Besides the poor basing, I always disliked the shields for the cavalry; it looked like they were defending themselves with large slices of watermelon.

First up is the Carthaginian Hannibal set from 1st Corps to command the army. The figures are well sculpted for their age, though the same horse pose is used for both figures, which is a bit disappointing for a small unit.  

Hannibal does not come with a shield, but I added one made from a cut down infantry shield. I used LBMS transfers to give the figures a more modern feel.

Next up is a war elephant, also from 1st Corps. This old pewter design appears to have since been replaced with a new resin sculpt, which is probably for the best, as there are now a lot better elephants on the market. Still, he'll get the job done.

I kept the old shield decals and didn't do much differently other than add some washes and highlights. 

Last up are the Newline Designs Carthaginian cavalry. When I received mine back in the day, no musician was included, though they seem to have one now. There are only two horse poses and two spearmen poses, so not a lot of variety when compared to more modern lines.

I've done my best to hide the lack of variety with color variations and more LBMS decals, but I'm not sure how effective it is. There are no decals made specifically for the Newline figures, so I used a mix (my Newline set had 3 shield types) of cavalry and infantry transfers designed for 1st Corps. They weren't a perfect fit, but still look better than the old watermelon shields. 

With that, I'm now a little over a third of the way through the refurbishment/expansion, and will soon have enough for a pilot game of Hail Caesar next month.

 

Punic Wars: Refurbishing Numidians and Samnites

My refurbishment of my old Carthaginian army continues with some allied troops. First up are Numidian cavalry from 1st Corps.  As you can see, the original paint jobs are fairly flat and the basing has a lot of room for improvement. 

Now with additional highlighting of the riders and horses, and the revised bases.

1st Corps has two horse variants for their Numidians, but I received only one pose for my unit.  I've done my best to hide it in the color schemes, and I'm hoping it's not immediately obvious since all the riders are different. 

The shield bosses prevented the easy use of any LBMS decals, so I've stuck with the hand painted hides.

Next are Numidian javelinmen from Foundry with a few spare Wargames Factory plastics thrown in. The Foundry figures were a convention flea market purchase and had never been painted before this.  I didn't have the full set of shields so mixed in some from Wargames Factory, along with javelins and some spare bags and daggers to tie the two manufacturers in better.

The size between the two manufacturers are similar, with the most noticeable difference being the hairstyles.  The LBMS decals for the Wargames Factory figures are a little small for some of the Foundry shields, so I painted in the edges to fill in the gaps.

Last for this round are my A&A Samnites. Again, they started with the same relatively flat paint jobs and poor basing.

Refurbished Samnites

I used the LBMS decals this time and the amount of pop they give the figures is amazing.

For the Samnite clothing, I passed on additional highlighting as I didn't want to damage the tunic patterns. However, with the new shields and other updates, I don't think it detracts from the figures all that much.

There are still quite a few units to go, but I'm happy with the progress I'm making.

 

Sahel Conflicts: More Terrorists, Troops, and Civilians

 I'm back with the last of my modern African figures; the storage box is finally full, so there will be no more expansions beyond this and the remaining vehicles on the painting table.

Motorcycles seem to be a popular mode of transportation in Mali for various militias and terrorist groups, and I received a few as part of my Miksa Miniatures Kickstarter pledge. They weren't enough to field a full unit, but Eureka Miniatures had a set of Australian SAS soldiers in headscarves that I converted.

As part of the conversion work, I ordered a Russian weapon sprue from Miniature Building Authority. Unfortunately, they were more 32mm in size and looked huge on the figures, so I had to try and cut them down a bit to make them look more appropriate. In the end, they were still oversized when compared to the Miska AK47, but I think it looked ok overall. Straps for the weapons were made from thin strips of plasticard.  

One of the stretch goals from the Miska Kickstarter was an insurgent with improvised rockets. I couldn't find any real world photos to help with painting, so used some Hamas rockets as references.

The final items from Miska in this update were a set of civilians. They were slightly taller than the Eureka civilians, but not enough to be distracting.  For clothing, I used some photos of civilians from the Timbuktu as reference.

To complete the civilians, I ordered a few herds of goats from Eureka. Depending on the scenario, they could either be static terrain pieces or join the civilians as moving variables/complications on the battlefield (perhaps with an IED tied to one of them).

Finally, I ordered some African militants off of Etsy that were designed by CombatOctopus. The figures were comparable in size with my other 3D prints, but one odd thing about them was that the head sizes were smaller than the other manufactures. To me, they looked like 25mm heads on 28mm bodies, particularly the heads in caps. However, I think they will be fine on the table. I left them as generic soldiers, and they will either function as poorly equipped Malian soldiers (they have no body armor), mercenaries, or bandits.