Gauls - Warmaster Ancients

I'm hoping to get a bit more organised with my blogging in the future, I think I need to try and blog smaller and more often, but we'll see how it goes. I've been doing a lot of Infinity recently, but there is still a fair bit of Warmaster Ancients love around. These are my finished Gauls for my Carthage army. I'm hopeful eventually of expanding these out into an army in their own right, maybe Gauls, maybe ancient brits.

I have painted up 5 more units (15 stands) in total.

These guys are 2 units of Magister Militum gallic nobles, so in my Carthage army they are just standard warband, but if I field a full barbarian army they would be inner circle infantry with an armour save.

I've really gone to town on these and painted individual shield designs freehand, some of them have striped, or tartan effect cloaks, full works!

A super-close-up of the detail work.

I've also done a more basic job on 3 units of Pendraken Gallic warband that I picked up from the Colours wargame show for about £6 for the lot last year. Excellent bargin bin rummage!

All in all that gives me 10 units of allied gauls for Carthage, or 8 units of warband and 2 units of nobles for barbarians

Hannibal

This is my general stand for the Carthage army, I've put it on a slightly bigger base so there is room to pack out the stand with some extra figures and make it stand out.

 

Figures are Magister Millitim. Mostly from the Carthage command pack, but with a couple of spare veteran infantry (white shields) as a kind of honour guard.

This weekend I was lucky enough to take part in a fantastic refight (organised by Jim Brown and Gareth Harding of Purbeck Brotherhood of Ancients) of Teutoberg Wald, when Varus' 3 legions were ambushed and destroyed by Germans. There were well over 100 german warband units alone (3000 figures!), plus archers, cavalry, skirmishers and all the Romans and their baggage train. It must have been close to 7000 figures all told* on a 12 foot long board. I'll have a full report with loads of fantastic pictures as soon as possible.

* - as one guy said, "between all of us we've painted nearly three and half thousand 10mm warband figures....we must be mad."

Narrative Game

Apologies for the time since the last post, I've got distracted with various projects, some of which I'll probably get round to showing on here. I've built up a ~6000pt Vampire army made up of ebay purchases and lots of Mantic's fabulous undead range. I've also been sculpting some of my own figures for a zombie survivor game (more to come soon on this).

I did get together with a couple of my good gaming friends last month though and finally managed to persuade them to have a game of Warmaster Ancients with me. I pretty much used all the figures I have, didn't worry about points values. It was Imperial Rome against Carthage, and I'd guess it was about 3000pts vs 2000pts respectively.

I came up with a quick narrative scenario that the Romans were on a patrol from a main camp and starting cutting up rough in a local village (OK it was a Dark Ages village, but we won't worry about that). The Carthaginians with a sizeable quota of Gallic allies appear on the scene and ambush the patrol, and the main Roman army then turns up to save the day.

6x4 board with the village about 8" square set up ~24" from the Roman board edge and 30" in from the left hand board edge (so roughly central just in the Carthage half of the board). The village is surrounded by a stone wall and so all units behind this count as defended.

The Romans deploy first with 1 unit of legion, 1 unit of archers and 2 units of auxilliaries and 1 leader. The rest of their army deploy as normal near their own board edge.

The Carthage forces deploy as normal.

The objective of the game is to control the village by having 1 or more core units inside it and no enemy units.

It is quite a challenging scenario tactically, because the both main armies need to decide whether to try capitalise on successful commands to try and get forces into the village (either to support or attack), or to try and advance as normal with a solid battle-line. The Carthaginians also have a difficult decision of how early to commit their best units 

In this battle I took command of the Carthaginian forces and Jon and Jan took command of the (evil) Romans.

As the initial ambushers Carthage moved first, but only the Numidians on the left flank moved at all! The Gallic centre and the Spanish light cavalry on the right wing stayed put. Not the start they needed to try and sieze the village before the bulk of the Romans could arrive.

In response Rome got one big legion brigade moving and in the village the commander sent the archers out to get a range on the gauls and moved the auxiliaries up to the wall.

Roman Archers looking a little exposed.

The middle period of the battle saw a lot of manoeuvring but no deceive combats. The archers frustrated the gauls by inflicted confusion on them and the Carthage skirmish screen began to lose odd stands to the main Roman force's artillery and archers.

The Gauls, strangely reluctant to move off their hill and get stuck in.

With the main Roman army now forming a solid battle line to either flank of the village and with their cavalry wing threatening to sweep through the Carthage left flank it was looking decidedly dodgy for them, even though at this stage it was still 0vps each.

As were playing to a time limit the final turn was predictably silly! I charged with most things that could into the village, but despite taking some stands off the Romans all the fights were lost and the Gauls pulled back, the Romans deciding to hold their ground. The Spanish light cavalry on the right managed to sweep right around the Roman's flank and attack their skirmishers in a rare moment of success.

In their last turn, as we knew it was time to call it a day Jon and Jan declared charges with anything that could! The Romans in the village leapt over the wall and charged the demoralised Gauls, while their cavalry on the Carthage left smashed into the Numidians. Both main wings of their battle line also piled in. The results were predictably devastating. Most of the Gauls were wiped out and there were break-through charges aplenty. The only real bright spot for Carthage was the Spanish cavalry chewing through the skirmishers on the hill at the back.

As an impenetrable mist descended onto the battle field the picture was far from clear cut. A count back showed a narrow Roman victory on VP by 85. However no-one was left in control of the village due to the hot headed leader of the patrol!

This was a fun game to play and it was a shame we had to call time on it when we did. I've played a lot of tournament/campaign games where the player going last almost always wins due to being able to call charges where they can wipe out a unit, but leave themselves horribly exposed, knowing there can be no counter-charge as they know it is the last turn.

In this game it was fun to do and I'm glad we got stuck in and rolled some serious dice, but it always feels a tiny bit unsatisfying when a game is nicely balanced and you don't get to see how it would have played out normally. I'm keen to try out a similar scenario in the future though, its good to play something a bit different as most of the games of WMA I play are 1250pt tournament style ones.

Carthage Commander

I've been very quiet recently, got sucked into 28mm for a while; Mantic Undead, Dark Elves for Warhammer and some zombie survivors. I think I'll start to post stuff about these as well. I figure its probably better to post regularly and be a little less focused, than to drop the frequency of posts and keep it restricted to Warmaster/10mm only. If you've got any thoughts let me know in the comments.

Meanwhile I have finally finished my Carthage army to 1250pts, which is the level that is commonly played round here. This fellow is one of my Leaders - he's a magister millitum Numidian commander figure.

 

I tend to use him to command skirmishers or the Numidian light cavalry on my flanks.

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!?

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!

Numidian Light Horse

I've now finished up the 3 units of Numidian cavalry, which now makes 4 units of them in total. These figures are again made by Magister Militum and are really nice. There are 4 separate poses in a pack of 12 and there is also a trumpeter and a leader figure in the Carthage command pack as well. This means they are fun to paint, even in large numbers as there isn't too much repetition. The detail is nice and crisp and the common complaint about MM, that their horses are a little undersized, is not a problem as Numidians rode small ponies.



I've only photographed a couple of the units, but I'll show them all together in an army shot in a few weeks as I'm only a few units away from finishing the initial force now. You can see that a couple of stands are a figure short as the two packs I got didn't stretch to 3 full units, but I thought I'd just paint them up anyway and I can add an extra figure later if I need to.



I again went with the stylised Carthage figure for one unit's shields, as with the earlier javlinmen, but I think this time I've got it a bit more crisp and consistent. The non-photographed unit has the rawhide shield designs I also used on the javlinmen.

I also went a bit more ambitious with the 3rd unit and painted on a hand-print, which was also one of the Numidian designs I came across in my research on shields. This was not that consistent across the unit, but it come out pretty well and I'm pleased with it.

I've also just got some Silflor grass tufts to liven up the desert type bases of my Carthage force, so I'll post some pictures of them with them also on some WM bases and a sort of review soon. Also coming up will be Hannibal's Veterans and hopefully some elephants finally!

Thanks for looking!

Numidian Javlinmen

After promising for a few updates I've finally got some pictures of my finished Numidian Skirmishers. These are Numidian Javlinmen by Magister Militum. They come in a pack of 30 figures with 2 different poses and I've spread them over 6 bases of 5 models each to give me two units for my money.

These models really were a pleasure to paint, probably the best 10mm models I've come across so far. I'm fairly pleased with the paint job as well, so I've posted the pictures a little bigger than normal (you can click on them to make them even bigger and even zoom in from there should you wish).

They have nice crisp details and only on the legs do you have to force the detail with the paint job, the rest of the model can be just highlighting raised areas.


The bases aren't totally finished, they need edging with yellow, and I'd like to add some dead coloured static grass or little silflor tufts of dead grass just to liven up the bases. I hand painted a different shield design for each unit, one has them painted like rawhide, the other has leather shields with the Carthage stylised figure in white, which seems to appear on a few Carthage shields. I rushed the stylised figures a bit and the finish is a bit shabby, but I'm hopeful of doing better on my upcoming Numidian Horsemen.

The actual leather shields themselves were painted with a basecoat of GW Scorched Brown and then stippled with a stiff brush with a couple of layers of GW Dark Flesh and then a final stippled layer of Vermin Brown. This give the effect of depth and texture on the flat surface.

A group shot of them ready to harass the enemy flanks!!


Hopefully next time it'll be their partners in crime the Numidian Light Cavalry. I'm putting the finishing touches to 3 units at the moment.

Thanks for looking!

Carthage Infantry

These guys are Magister Militum Libyan Spearmen, which are Carthage Infantry in Warmaster Ancients. They were quite nice to paint, as are most MM figures and have a fair bit of detail on them.



Seeing them all based and ranked up I think justifies the decision to base them 8 figures to a stand. Given their more bulky profiles 2 ranks of 4 is enough to fill out the stand without it looking crowded.



I've gone for mainly bronze coloured metal, as that seems to be the historical consensus of Carthage arms and armour. I was intending on painting on shield designs, but with the relatively large shield bosses I couldn't decide what design would work. I may revisit this later if I can think of/find anything suitable.



My wife saw this picture and rightly pointed out that the 1p coin is the wrong way round as it could be a 2p! I'll have to correct that for my next pictures.

A Gaul-ing piece of misfortune

The Gallic allies for my Carthage force are now finished, but sadly they will be my last Warmaster unit for a while as I've broken the thumb on my right-hand and it's in a cast. I can paint a bit with my left, but not steadily enough for 10mm!

Enough with my misfortune, onto the picture of the Gauls!

There are 5 units in total. That's 15 stands, or 120 figures!


They are not actually a "gallic" warband, in figure manufacturer's speak, as I used a mixture of different figures. I used 4 different packs of vaguely hairy barbarian types from Pendraken and mixed them through the units. My justification is that personally I feel all these barbarian hordes contemporary with the Romans would have been a fairly mixed rabble, with mixed equipment. It is more than likely that some would have scavenged mail off dead enemies, possibly helmets and shields as well.

The packs used were:
Gallic Warband AG1 (Long shields, moustaches, bare torsos. 3 poses; sword, 2x spear)
Dacian Javlinman AD6 (small oval shields, long spears, cloaks, full beards. 3 poses)
Anglo Saxon Great Fyrd AS4 (round shields, short spears, moustaches. 3 poses)
Anglo Saxon Select Fyrd AS3 (Round shields, chainmail, moustaches. 3 poses; axe, sword, spear)



I batch painted them on painting sticks (like lolly sticks), slowly building up to each model being individual. I'd paint an even number of models with 3 different hair colours, then paint alternate models with 5 different shield colours, then 3 different tunics. Finally I based them up and hand painted on some random shield designs with research on the internet into Gallic shields. The result is that even without any individual shield designs I can have 540 unique combinations of model and colour scheme. Resulting in a truly random, but hopefully unified, rabble.

These pictures have been taken using a backdrop, which I haven't used before (just a random landscape from the internet), and I'm fairly pleased with the result.

I'm going to take pictures of anything else I have finished and maybe some terrain as well. On the upside my hand means I'll be bored and more likely to update the blog more often, the downside is I'm not sure what I'll find to blog about!!

Numidians

I've been threatening pictures of my new Carthage army for months now, so finally here they are.

This was my test unit of Numidian cavalry, I've since got another 3 units on the go. I couldn't decide on shield designs, so at the moment they are painted to look like leather, or animal skin with stippling of different shades of brown.

See; they're tiny.

The Magister Militum figures are much more fun to paint, although they are not perfect they have a lot of nice detail and it is possible to actual paint by layering, whereas most of the Pendraken ones I've got really can only be base-coated and washed.


Finally my slingers. This unit was part of the Carthage starter pack I got, but to be honest they are not much good in the army when they also make the Numidian javlinmen which are a bit more charecterful (and of which I have a couple of units). I also realised after seeing other people's armies that basing skirmishers 5 to a stand looks better and makes your figures (and cash!) go further, so sadly I've fallen out of love with these guys a bit.

Hopefully I'll present my mixed barbarian types warbands soon..

Carthage Shield Designs

I've come across some shield design transfers for Numidian and Carthaginian shields. I believe these are by little big man studios and they are for 1/72 miniatures. I'm going to have a go at replicating some of the designs on my 10mm Carthage troops, but not sure how well it will go!!

I've linked the shield transfers below, shame that these are for larger scales as they look pretty nice