Tuesday, August 29, 2023

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.

28mm Carthaginian and  Apulian Italian Punic Wars command miniatures for Hail Caesar and Warhammer Ancients from Crusader Miniatures

28mm Carthaginian and  Apulian Italian Punic Wars command miniatures for Hail Caesar and Warhammer Ancients from Crusader Miniatures

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:

28mm Punic Wars Gallic Warband for Hail Caesar and Warhammer Ancients from Foundry, A&A, Renegade, Gripping Beast, and Black Tree Miniatures

28mm Punic Wars Gallic Warband for Hail Caesar and Warhammer Ancients from Foundry, A&A, Renegade, Gripping Beast, and Black Tree Miniatures

28mm Punic Wars Gallic Warband for Hail Caesar and Warhammer Ancients from Foundry, A&A, Renegade, Gripping Beast, and Black Tree Miniatures

28mm Punic Wars Gallic Warband for Hail Caesar and Warhammer Ancients from Foundry, A&A, Renegade, Gripping Beast, and Black Tree Miniatures

28mm Punic Wars Gallic Warband for Hail Caesar and Warhammer Ancients from Foundry, A&A, Renegade, Gripping Beast, and Black Tree Miniatures

Warband 2:

28mm Punic Wars Gallic Warband for Hail Caesar and Warhammer Ancients from Foundry, A&A, Renegade, Gripping Beast, and Black Tree Miniatures

28mm Punic Wars Gallic Warband for Hail Caesar and Warhammer Ancients from Foundry, A&A, Renegade, Gripping Beast, and Black Tree Miniatures

28mm Punic Wars Gallic Warband for Hail Caesar and Warhammer Ancients from Foundry, A&A, Renegade, Gripping Beast, and Black Tree Miniatures

28mm Punic Wars Gallic Warband for Hail Caesar and Warhammer Ancients from Foundry, A&A, Renegade, Gripping Beast, and Black Tree Miniatures

28mm Punic Wars Gallic Warband for Hail Caesar and Warhammer Ancients from Foundry, A&A, Renegade, Gripping Beast, and Black Tree Miniatures

Sunday, July 30, 2023

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. 

Tuesday, June 13, 2023

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.

28mm (1/56, 1/50) French  Panhard ERC-90 Sagaie for Operations Serval and Barkhane in Mali and the Sahel from JJG Print 3D and designed by Guaro3d

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: https://twitter.com/defensenigeria/status/1383642486438981637
Source: Twitter

Source: https://twitter.com/ModernConflict/status/1221040844305850369
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.

28mm (1/56, 1/50) French  Panhard ERC-90 Sagaie for Operations Serval and Barkhane in Mali and the Sahel from JJG Print 3D and designed by Guaro3d

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.

28mm (1/56, 1/50) French  Panhard ERC-90 Sagaie for Operations Serval and Barkhane in Mali and the Sahel from JJG Print 3D and designed by Guaro3d

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. 

28mm (1/56, 1/50) French  Panhard ERC-90 Sagaie for Operations Serval and Barkhane in Mali and the Sahel from JJG Print 3D

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.

28mm (1/56, 1/50) French  Panhard ERC-90 Sagaie for Operations Serval and Barkhane in Mali and the Sahel from JJG Print 3D

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. 

28mm (1/56, 1/50) French  Panhard ERC-90 Sagaie for Operations Serval and Barkhane in Mali and the Sahel from JJG Print 3D

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

Monday, June 5, 2023

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.

28mm Carthaginian Miniatures from 1st Corps with Little Big Men Studios transfers for Hail Caesar and Warhammer Ancient Battles

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). 

28mm Ligurian Miniatures from Old Glory with Little Big Men Studios transfers for Hail Caesar and Warhammer Ancient Battles

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.

28mm Ligurian Miniatures from Old Glory with Little Big Men Studios transfers for Hail Caesar and Warhammer Ancient Battles

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. 

28mm Libyan Miniatures from Newline Designs with Little Big Men Studios transfers for Hail Caesar and Warhammer Ancient Battles

Here they were prior to refurbishment.

28mm Libyan Miniatures 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.

28mm Libyan Miniatures from Newline Designs with Little Big Men Studios transfers for Hail Caesar and Warhammer Ancient Battles

Tuesday, April 18, 2023

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.

Old 28mm Carthaginian miniatures awaiting refurbishment

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.  

28mm Carthaginian Hannibal command from 1st Corps miniatures

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.

28mm Carthaginian Hannibal command from 1st Corps miniatures

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.

28mm Carthaginian elephant from 1st Corps miniatures

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

28mm Carthaginian elephant from 1st Corps miniatures

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.

28mm Carthaginian cavalry from Newline Designs miniatures

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. 

28mm Carthaginian cavalry from Newline Designs miniatures

28mm Carthaginian cavalry from Newline Designs miniatures

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.

28mm Carthaginian army so far

 

Tuesday, April 11, 2023

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. 

28mm Carthaginian Army for WAB and Hail Caesar: 1st Corp Numidian Cavalry

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

28mm Carthaginian Army for WAB and Hail Caesar: 1st Corp Numidian Cavalry

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. 

28mm Carthaginian Army for WAB and Hail Caesar: 1st Corp Numidian Cavalry

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

28mm Carthaginian Army for WAB and Hail Caesar: 1st Corp Numidian Cavalry

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.

28mm Carthaginian Army for WAB and Hail Caesar: Foundry and Wargames Factory Numidian javelinmen skirmishers

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.

28mm Carthaginian Army for WAB and Hail Caesar: Foundry and Wargames Factory Numidian javelinmen skirmishers

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

28mm Carthaginian Army for WAB and Hail Caesar: A&A Samnite infantry

Refurbished Samnites

28mm Carthaginian Army for WAB and Hail Caesar: A&A Samnite infantry

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

28mm Carthaginian Army for WAB and Hail Caesar: A&A Samnite infantry

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.

28mm Carthaginian Army for WAB and Hail Caesar: A&A Samnite infantry

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


 

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

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.

28mm modern African figures for Mali/the Sahel from Eureka, Miska, and Combat Octopus miniatures for Spectre, Bolt Action Modern, and Zona Alpha

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.

28mm modern African insurgents/terrorists from Eureka (Australian SAS conversions) and Miska miniatures

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.  

28mm modern African insurgents/terrorists from Eureka (Australian SAS conversions) and Miska miniatures

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.

28mm modern African insurgent/terrorist improvised rockets from Miska miniatures

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.

28mm modern African civilians from Miska miniatures

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).

28mm modern African goats from Eureka miniatures

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.

28mm modern African militants from Combat Octopus 3D print miniatures

Friday, March 3, 2023

Punic Wars: Refurbishing An Old Carthaginian Army


When I got back into wargaming in the early 2000's (I had previously played Rogue Trader WH40K back in the 1980's), I was really interested in moving from Sci-Fi into historical battles, but had no idea where to start. Poking around various forums in those early interweb days, I saw references to a new Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB) game that seemed to be all the rage with 28mm players. Given my previous WH40K background, this seemed a natural place to jump in and I managed to track down the rulebook and "Armies of Antiquity." 

After talking with various people online (including a very helpful Allen Curtis, who would go on to write the "Hannibal and the Punic Wars" supplement for WAB), I thought the variety of troops found in a Carthaginian army would make for a fun bit of painting.  With the advice of Allen and others, I assembled my first army from various manufacturers and managed to play a few tournaments at "The Shield" historical conferences in the San Francisco area. Unfortunately the conference shut down (and later Warhammer Historical itself), so without access to other players in my area, my army sat in storage for over 15 years. 

But recently a gaming buddy of mine expressed an interest in playing ancients with the Hail Caesar rules, so I thought it was time to dust off my Carthaginians.  I had about 200 figures painted, and another 200 or so that had never been finished. Given the age of my army and my limited access to paint and other supplies at the time, I figured a makeover was needed to bring them up to more modern standards.

Here is what they looked like out of the storage boxes. The painting was only a two tone affair, decal options were limited, and the steel bases were just green with some added model railroad flock and rocks. While not a complete disaster, there was definitely room for improvement, particularly with the bases.
28mm Punic Wars A&A Carthaginian miniatures for Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB) and Warlord Games' Hail Caesar

With the large number of figures to process, I had to make a decision of how far down the refurbishment rabbit hole I wanted to go. I went with the following:
  • I would not fully repaint the figures for the most part, but add additional highlights and washes as appropriate. The bare figures would be painted to match using the old color schemes, rather than my new recipes.
  • I would still use some of the old Veni Vidi Vici monotone water slide decals, but would also add in some Little Big Man Studios decals as appropriate for some added pop.
  • Rather than try to break the figures off their old bases and switch them to plastic or MDF,  I would stick with the steel bases for the army. I was also going to leave the base sizes and unit formations as is, rather than adjust them for the Hail Caesar recommendations.
  • The old flock and other basing materials were to be removed.  The bases would be coated with Vallejo ground texture, the rocks better integrated into the ground, and a dusting of light flock and modern grass tufts added.
The first unit through the process was a batch of A&A veteran African spearmen.
28mm Punic Wars A&A Carthaginian miniatures for Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB) and Warlord Games' Hail Caesar

For this unit, I kept the original VVV shield decals, though added some wash and highlights. Skin and clothing got highlights, and the edges of the linen cuirasses were lightened from black to a sand color.
28mm Punic Wars A&A Carthaginian miniatures for Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB) and Warlord Games' Hail Caesar

1st Corps African/Libyan Hoplites 
28mm Punic Wars 1st Corps Carthaginian miniatures for Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB) and Warlord Games' Hail Caesar

These were upgraded in the same manner as the A&A figures. I hadn't painted in the eyes originally (these figures are a bit smaller) and attempted to do so during the refurbishment, but the shield and spears got in the way of my brush. As such I gave up and left the eyes as is. 
28mm Punic Wars 1st Corps Carthaginian miniatures for Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB) and Warlord Games' Hail Caesar

Wargames Factory Numidian Light Infantry
28mm Punic Wars Wargames Factory Numidian miniatures for Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB) and Warlord Games' Hail Caesar

I never assembled these plastic figures back in the day, so they were new to my army.  Considering they were one of the very early 28mm historical plastic kits for wargaming, they actually looked pretty good. The kit came with javelins instead of spears, so I replaced them here. Unfortunately, I was out of wire spears and had to use my stockpile of pewter ones.  They are a bit thick as a result, but it got the job done. I trialed the Little Big Man decals on this unit and while the designs were lovely, I had some issues with the edges of the decals bunching up on the convex shields. For the next batch of convex shields, I think I'll try cutting divots out of the edges to see if that helps.
28mm Punic Wars Wargames Factory Numidian miniatures for Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB) and Warlord Games' Hail Caesar

And here is a bit of a size comparison.  This army was built during the transition from 25mm to 28mm figures, so I had some size discrepancies between the manufacturers. 1st Corps figures were only around 25mm to the eye, while the other two manufactures were 27-28mm.
28mm Punic Wars miniatures: 1st Corps, Wargames Factory, A&A size comparison


I still have a long road ahead of me to finish the rest of the figures, but I'm happy with the initial upgrades and am optimistic that the final army will be looking much better.
The remaining "to do" pile