2mm Antonine Miniatures Painting and Basing

 

Following up with my approach to painting and basing the new 2mm Ancients from Antonine Miniatures; thought I’d nail down how I wanted to put together a Carthaginian Army for the Second Punic War.

As I was new to this range, and also had not yet obtained an actual copy of the Strength and Honour rules, I went my own way with planning how to depict the units - first off with regard to basing - I knew that this new Ancients ruleset was built around grand battles on 120mm by 60mm bases, but I wanted to make my initial purchase stretch as far as possible, so made the decision to have cavalry on the large bases, but restrict infantry units to 90mm by 60mm - more bang for my buck - I figured as the rules are structured around ‘no measurement’ area boxes on the terrain - I could get away with this - and I like the idea of horsed formations looking like they take up more ground.

I bought a couple of packs each of the various types of cavalry from Warbases, and multiples of the TT1 Trained Troops set - this combines a horde-looking block with some nice formed line shapes, as well as the useful SKI 1 Skirmish Troops with further smaller groupings of figures and lines.

Being no expert on the minutiae of the Ancients period, I felt a basic conglomeration of medium and light infantry types, some mock-legionaries, cavalry in both medium and light, as well as skirmishing cavalry to depict Numidian allies would cover a Carthaginian type force, with of course, Elephants ! ( as I mentioned in my previous post, I went in early with my purchase before the release of Antonines’ own ones, so used those from Irregular Miniatures).

 

So, on to painting: - I’ve had quite a bit of experience with the tiniest of troops from back in the day, but looking at the smooth block surfaces of this new range, I wanted to try something of different; whereas I’d tried in the past to do some justice  to any existing detail - these ‘blanks’ of the various troop types were going to get a much simpler, one-size fits all approach - there was going to be no attempt at painting faces or uniform colours beyond the most basic identifiers - with no weapons visible on the sculpts, it was a case of going for what you might see of real horses or men at a five hundred metres away - blocks of base colour and a few notional ‘highlights’ or brighter spots. This was going to be about the quick production of masses of miniatures - and with this in mind, I went wild and put the paintbrushes away - and pulled out the brush pens !

I thought the Posca range of paint pens from Uni/Mitsubishi would be perfect for this, so, after a spray undercoat of Humbrol Mid Earth Brown (29) to give some ‘tooth’, and provide a good pretend shade/stand in for gaps in-between the ranks, I started stippling away on all those hundreds of bobble heads….

Gold or bronze went in for the majority as helmets, with a break to brown and black to add variation, and then the odd red one to suggest some crests or other decorations……this saved a significant amount of time, in that there is no re-charging of a brush or cleaning in-between colours, and the stiff brush ends of the pens were perfectly suited for the round sculpted heads - splash a bit too much on? - no worries - in the mass, that’s just a glint of armour…..

 

This was followed up by working on the horses, and I must admit this did involve reverting to the paintbrush, particularly as I wanted to outline a horse ‘shape’ on the outlying riders of the blocks - the base brown would serve as one colour of horse, then some whites, some burnt siennas and umbers - with the way the sculpts are moulded, this often meant nothing more than adding blobs of colour - simples !

With the cavalry I also added in a stripe at the rear of the rider as a cloak colour, and then moved on to the shields of the infantry - the sculptings merely have a blank face at the front for this - so again, a stripe of colour as appropriate….

Colour a bit splotchy? - coverage not uniform? - no problem - again, in the MASS, this all blends in.

The final touches were a brush-on of Army Painter soft tone wash to the upper surfaces and rear of each block just to get back a bit of definition, and a little bit of shine, and then last of all, the lightest and driest of silver dry-brushing across the tops - just to restore the glinting metallic colours of the helmets….

Now, skilled painters might recoil in horror at this slapdash approach - but this was very much a ‘keep it simple stupid’ in/out/and done method - result - yep - that looks like a whole body of men on the march ! 

Basing wise, I have seen that most people have gone with corner to corner ground cover and flocking, but I wanted to leave a long label strip clear at the rear of each - I think this will aid my old age eyesight in identification and orientation, and also allow easy swapping in of differing labels - Punic cavalry and Equites Romana all in one - one block of block-figures is very much like the other !

I made use of the 2mm MDF bases from Warbases, as well as their Fine and Very Fine basing sand - I always make sure to use a spray-on Acrylic Sanding Sealer from Chestnut to seal the MDF and prevent warping when the white glue (ModPoge) goes on, then a mix of the sands to taste, sifted over, and some paint shading/drybrushing once done; - I find with the Warbases sand, that you could just leave them au-natural, but wanted a bit more of a temperate look, so a dark brown followed by mid green with a light green highlight, and done !

So, not much fuss, very little muss - and the job’s done ! - or at least is ongoing…… next up, I’ll have some shots of how the completed units look together, and will consider doing some of the traditional 2mm Irregular alongside, and of course - have a think about the opposition, namely the Romans.