Cartage

hi again!
It seems that I am on fire...I spent every night painting during last week, and I still want to paint some more. So here is last week's result; Cartaginians:

The Camp; Paper tissue on styrene block for the tent. Had a bug with the soldier holding the horse: I had to bend them into shape to get this pose, and, after the paint job, the plastic bent back to it's original shape a little, thus the space between hand and bridle... next time; pose the plastic minis long before painting them...

 Cartaginian Cavalry; with the general holding a sword. By the way, I do not like the open hands... it never look like the general is actually holding the sword.

 Cartage/libyan spearmen; Hand painted shields, far from award winning, but they look good from 4 feet away!  had fun doing those. I saw the design for the shields on the net; not sure where... google image...

 Same spearmen, from the other angle.

 Same soldiers, this time, as auxiliary. Not sure about that figure choice; see comments below.

 Libyan warband. Again not sure about the figure choice. See below.

 Numidian elephants; with skirmishing escort...

 Numidian light cavalry; very nice miniatures.

 Numidian psiloi, again superb miniatures, if we exclude the single weird pose of the guy twisting his shield arm...

 Group shoot.

I am very satisfied with these. The colour choice was limited, and gives a unified look, which I like. I got this idea from this guy; who is VERY good with colours...
http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=324714

There are a few difficult choices when it came down to figures; specifically the warband and the auxiliary. As I am building armies for many major players of the punic wars, to use in a campaign, I did not want to include allies into the national armies... that meant no gauls nor spanish miniatures in the Cartaginian army. I then used some figures identified as libyan spearmen with a very dynamic and agressive pose to make my warbands, and I used three guys in lose formation to represent auxiliaries...

hope you like it!

next in line:
Spanish!

Bitten by the bug... two times!

Here is my second army; Gauls.

The army is a mix of Italeri, Caesar and the venerable Airfix. I did not bother to make chariots, because I don't think that the gauls used them that much, or even at all during and after the Punic wars. I did most of the painting for this army a long time ago, and only recently based them for DBA. This army, like the romans, was also speed painted. But while the romans received an army painter DIP (which was really fast, I have to admit), the gauls received a more traditional basecoat, heavy brown wash, and then highlight... 

The camp was super-fun to do... I was inspired by the bovine merchant in the first Asterix movie:

"Je suis un marchand de boeufs, et vraiment très malheureux... "

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai67yPC-Uyk

Ok, then the Idea kind of drifted to a more serious version of a poor guy trying to convince his beast to obey... the fun thing is that particular figure began it's life as the wounded gaul from the airfix kit... poor guy has no luck...

bitten by the bug!

Hi There!

That's it. I've been bitten. I read everywhere that DBA armies were immensely fun to collect and paint, and after two complete ones, I understand why... hard to put words to it without simply repeating what have been said before; but the basic is that it is a small size project, perfectly suited to my easily turned mind.

Without any more comments, here are my republican romans (polybian romans):

Velites : Psiloi elements

Hastati : Blades

Princepes : Blades

Triarii : Spears

Equites; including the general : cavalry

the camp

The miniatures are mostly HAT 1/72, with about half the cavalry Italeri roman cavalry. I have mostly speed painted that army, simply to have quick playing pieces. When I began, my goal was to build a large army, to play "bigger" rules set than DBA. I still based my army with the DBA standards, just in case... and it turns out I was right, this is how they finally ended!

I found the "need" for a camp to be tedious at first, until I actually built one! THAT is where all the creativity goes in a DBA army. so. much. fun !!!

I also have a Gauls army paintd up, that I will present next time, and I am currently painting Cartaginians (and numidians as a byproduct), and I am also assembling Iberians... and Campanians... and Syracusans... and probably much more after that!

I am going to take the next few armies a bit more slowly, as a nice looking DBA army is easily achievable!