2mm Strength and Honour: Punic Progress

 

An update now, on the progress made with the 2mm Antonine Miniatures for a Carthaginian army for Strength and Honour - I’ve pretty much finished these off, just the bases needing some tidying up, and I’m  cogitating over whether or not to add any additional flocking/scatter as scrub or trees.

I’d originally intended to add magnetic basing for the labels along the rear strip, but haven’t really had the time or patience for this, so for now have just gone with some roughly printed labels in a rather lurid yellow !

I’ve ended up with fifteen bases all told - a core of three medium infantry types; being the Libyan and Italian Veterans, a base of Carthaginian Citizen Spearmen, supported by skirmisher options with a base each of Numidians and Spanish. These are backed up with two Gallic Warbands, and preceded by a pair of Elephant units with Allied Quadriga chariots.

Cavalry wise, I’ve done three bases of Numidian Cavalry making good use of the ‘caracoling/feigned flighting’ blocks of horse from Antonine, and these are supported by a base of light or medium Punic cavalry and finally some heavier Spanish in three ranks.

This should give me all the most common types, if not a truly historical picture - at least a good ‘wargamey’ one !

The smaller 90x60mm infantry bases have turned out quite well - means I can field more variety, if compromising on the massed look of a larger base - you can easily imagine how powerful a full 120x60 or even 80mm base would look….. I’m just on a budget right now !

The shield colours on the major infantry units are very plain - just a mix of basic colours - but I thought shield devices was going a bit far at this size of minis ….. the Veterans have blue, purple, scarlet and white, whilst the homegrown Carthaginian Citizens are all white.

On the more irregular units, there is some variation in shield and helmet colours, although the Numidians have only the heads/helmets picked out - the blocks are otherwise just left in the original base colouring - as I said in my previous post, keeping it simple…

Next up the various cavalry bases, and the chariots:

 

The chariots from Irregular Miniatures are actually incredibly detailed for their tiny size, but I went for a simplified colour scheme, not really worrying about picking out much of their crews - they are, too be honest, looking a bit underwhelming - perhaps I need to invest in the newly released ones from Antonine, which should scale better alongside the more hefty cavalry. To be honest, though, I think chariots are probably a bit out of date for the Second Punic War, so no loss, really.

Finally, those all important Elephants - again, Irregular’s ones are actually very detailed - you can see a mahout, the castle’s crew as well as the straps for the saddle cloth and a shield protecting the howdah’s sides - minuscule masterpieces - but again, I cheated by keeping things simple - no faces or weapons done here - although of course I bodged on some white for the all important tusks.

Garish labelling aside, I’m pretty pleased so far with these - the Elephants have small integral bases of their own which I need to finesse a bit to blend in with the ground cover, although, as I said, I’m thinking of adding more flocking when time and taste allows……

Having made (for me) relatively quick progress, I’ve pushed ahead with working on some Roman bases for the opposing force, and have here decided to mainly use 2mm Irregular - two reasons really, I feel that the currently available all-in-one blocks from Antonine are depicting solid formations that look a bit too deep to my eye - more Phalanx than Legionary - and more importantly, because I’d already amassed a huge pile of the strips from Irregular - so again, being frugal, decided to use what I had to hand.

I’m hoping as well to more faithfully depict a more Republican-looking Roman formation, with maniples arrayed, or indeed with the Velites out front, with the three lines of Hastati, Principes and Triarii to the rear.

A sneak peak of my progress so far - more to come in my next post !