Punic Wars: Commanders and Gallic Warbands

The work on expanding my Carthaginian army continues. As Hail Caesar uses more command stands than WAB, I’ve created two more from some Crusader Miniatures infantry command stands. They are very well sculpted and cast, and fit nicely with the A&A figures I have in my army (which isn’t a huge surprise since it’s the same sculptor).  Since the Carthaginian army was a mix of peoples, I’ve opted to go with one Carthaginian commander and one Apulian Italian commander. While I don’t have any Apulian units in my army, my hope is that they look generically Italian enough that won’t look out of placing leading a mix of Oscans, Ligurians, and Italian hill tribes. The shields were done using transfers from Little Big Man Studios.

My initial Gallic warband from 20 years ago was made from Foundry figures, with Black Tree command, and a lone 1st Corps figure (known as ‘Shorty Bob” due to his stature when compared to the other lines).  I bought the Foundry figures second hand and they came without shields, so I had to order replacements from Old Glory. Since then, I went on to pick up some Renegade and Gripping Beast over the years. There are some size differences between the various brands (The Renegades are big guys with swords the size of cricket bats), but I’ve done my best to mix everything together.  Overall, I think the dynamic poses help hide the differences in a warband, so I don’t think it’s too glaring. For the shields, I’ve mixed everything up and replaced some with additional Old Glory shields, allowing me to use LBM transfers in additional to the original decals from Veni Vidi Vici.

Warband 1:

Warband 2:

Hail Caesar: First Game

We're still finishing our armies, but we had enough to try our first test game of Hail Caesar (we're still using 1st Ed.): Two divisions of Punic War Carthaginians vs three divisions of Early Imperial Romans, for a total of around 330 pts per side. Overall we enjoyed the rules, though we made a lot of mistakes around disorder, stamina, and break tests. I'm not sure how much our errors impacted the final results (Roman victory), but it will be interesting to retry this battle in the future. 

Th initial battle lines after the Carthaginians moved first. The hit and run tactics of the Numidian cavalry worked well, especially when attacking in the flank.

On the far end of the board, I made the mistake of letting my cavalry get in front of my infantry.  While they hit hard the first round, their sustained attack was weak and it really impacted the back and forth of the battle. I think the smarter move would have been for them to swing into the flank after the infantry made contact.

Though loosing the round of combat (I forgot about the Wild Fighter rerolls), the large Gallic Warband held up fairly well against the Romans.

Very quickly we learned that supporting units and flank attacks were critical to winning the encounters, particularly when light or medium infantry were going up against heavy infantry. 

I was originally concerned the variation in unit frontages (my army was based for Warhammer Ancients) was going to cause problems, but it ended up not being an issue. However, that may be to us taking the game casually; more competitive players might have had cause to raise a stink about how we lined things up.

I originally used my skirmishers as screens to protect my infantry formations as they moved up, but later found them more useful as flank attackers to weaken the Roman attacks on my heavy infantry.

The elephant wasn't as effective of a terror weapon as I had hoped for, at least how I deployed him.  I'll have to toy around with new strategies moving forward.

A lot of people have recommended moving to the 2nd Ed. rules, as the organization is supposedly clearer, but I think we'll keep muddling through the original rules before shelling out another $56 to upgrade. As we continue to finish our armies, it will also be interesting to see how many units can practically be deployed on a 4'x6' table. We should both be at approximately 3-4 divisions of 4+ units per army when done. 

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.