Hannibal's Veterans

I spent yesterday painting up some more warmaster figures and I'm now very nearly done with the Carthage infantry and elephants and don't have too far to go with the heavy cavalry.

In the meantime, one unit I have finished up is Hannibal's Veterans. These are Magister Militum figures and come in just two poses, with an additional two command figures.

There doesn't seem to be much historical info on these guys, apart from they existed and were armed with a mix of captured Roman kit. Although how much seems to be a source of debate, as did who was in the unit (Cartheginians or allies) and how long they were an organised fighting unit.


All that means that I decided to paint them up exactly how I felt like it, without even having to worry about them being in any way accurate (not something that really bothers me anyway).


These figures were not a whole lot of fun to paint unfortunately. Only having the two poses made it a bit monotonous to paint, they also have a lot of detail on them, but it is not fantastically defined, which was annoying. There were slight mould lines and these run down the face, which is partially hidden behind the top of the shield, making them virtually impossible to remove and ruining quite a few of the faces. The mould lines then run down the front of the shield to one side of the boss (not down the rim or boss), again making them VERY hard to smooth out with all the detail on the shield.

The final problem was that things like the raised rim around the shield are not very well defined, but are present enough that they can't be ignored! This translated into hours of painstaking, essentially free-hand work to paint them, for a pretty mediocre result.

Overall I'm not sure I'd be that keen to add another unit to my force.

Thanks for looking!