Elephants

I've had these boys finished for a while now and haven't got round to posting a picture. These are the centre-piece of my Carthage army.


I had a look at the carthage elephants available from Magister Millitum & Pendraken and I was pretty unimpressed. They have very high howdahs that appear to be styled as if they are made of bricks (see below for MM Carthage Elephant).

Now my level of knowledge and research into Ancient heraldry is limited, and this may be bang on the money, but it looks daft. And given my approach to gaming and modelling in general I'm not going to spend good money and loads of time on models that look rubbish. Therefore I just looked through all the catalogues until I found my favourite looking elephants and got them instead.

These are Magister Millitum Sellucid Sucessor elephants, which I have replaced the howdah crew with MM Lybian spearman (which are Carthage standard infantry in the MM range).

I've painted the crewman as a Numidian, which may or may not be accurate.

As you can see I've maybe gone a bit overboard with the details! I painted wood grain onto the howdah and wrinkles into the elephant's flesh. As as well as freehand painting the red border onto the cloth.

Personally I think they look loads better than the "official" models and I'm pretty happy with them. Let me know what you think - sensible plan or historical travesty!?