Ltr Carthaginians v Hellenistic Greeks

"Bilious" commanded Later Carthaginians v Hellenistic Greeks (Boeotian b) under the command of "Angry" Anderson.



The Cartos fielded a 2xEl 3xWb combo, on a ground dominated by gentle hills offering the best terrain to the HellGreeks. "Angry" position his phalanx somewhat to his right, allowing his fast foot to use the hill on his left and possibly out-flank slower foot. He protected his left with a LH reserve.
"Bilious" positioned with Ellies front and center, well-protected by Sp. His fast foot and LH were also to his left, his Wb to his right.




The early stages of the battle saw Angry pushing his fast foot well forward, only to pull them back onto the heights as he realised that Bilious was also pushing his own left in an attempt to attack the phalanx's flank.

Angry fed his own CvGen in as reserve, supported by LH, achieving an early advantage.

A vicious and decisive battle developed around the HellGreeks' right. The Carto fast foot-LH group were thoroughly outclassed by a Pike-Mounted combination holding the hill.

Realising the momentum was shifting to the mounted threatening his entire left, Bilious pushed his right boldly forward upslope and paid for it, losing double-ranked Wb.

HellGreeks bt Late Carts 4-0.

Scythians finished at last

Huzzah! the Scythians are finished! and here are some piccies:

These are the General options: 3Cv and 2LH in front, and 3Kn at rear, for the later Scythian option.



The vast bulk of the army is of course LH. Here are a few of the lads:



Here's a closer look at some of the Orion minis, very attractive though the detail is not as perfect as Zvezda's.



One option includes foot, and they can even field a horde. I bought a pack of Orion Scythian foot, and there were heaps to choose from. I used crescent-shield guys as Ax, Archers as Ps (of course!) and rectangular-shield, no-shield and archers as Hd.



This camp, which I am proud of, is a Scythian ger fashioned out of a sports drink bottle, a skin cream tube, paper, silicon glue and thin strands of masking tape. The removable camp follower is one of two options.



And here is the whole army excluding camp and camp followers

Finally something to show

Wow, after so many weeks of looking at half-finished figures! These are all but one spare Scythian from the Orion sets I bought. There are plenty of unpainted foot figures left... but the next objective is to get cracking on the Zvezda mounted.

Another Scythian done!

Well, 3 down and 27 to go. Plus foot.

Sunny Easter Monday

Sat in the sun for about an hour, trimmed up a few of the Zvezda Scythians. I note that the "Command" types have longswords. According to my Osprey resource this makes them later Scythians. The catch is that I only really need three later Scythians, all Knights including a KnGen.

Scythians at last

Man oh man, this has got to be one of the very slowest projects I have ever undertaken. But finally I have begun actually completing the paint jobs on my Scythians.

I started them, then got discouraged and left off to do the Gallic chariots, then the Gallic command, then the Gallic cavalry - in fact it was beginning to look as though my workbench would have piles of red-brown and whitish minis lying around permanently! But after some motivation and art help from the fanaticus community I compiled enough pictures of Scythians to make a go of them.

It was still slow going but I now have the baseline paint on 12 horse, 12 riders, and 15 foot. There's a whole other pack of 18 cavalry to work on after that!

My approach now that I am this far is to treat each as it own work of art. Scythians loved decoration and even a lowly skirmisher could have panelled edges on a jacket.

Upgrading Gallic Cv

The old HaT Gallic Cavalryare nowhere near as attractive as their Gallic Command figures, which come with heads dangling from saddles and more realistic poses all round. I've refurbished some of the old ones (shown here below)


and added Comand figures, to complete this stage of the Gallic upgrade.

Recently Added

Added this fine 4Wb stand from HaT's Gallic Command set. Many happy hours spent on the plaid, which you'll have to take my word for as very little of it can be seen!

As a long-awaited addition to my old Gallic army I've just completed three Light Chariots, the General (left)

and his lesser nobles, seen here in two views so you can see the shield art.

Of course these look so much better than the rest of my Gallics I now have a complete re-do to do.

Why wargame in 1:72?

I generally have more than one reason for doing any given thing.

Reason 1: I had a lot of 1:72 armies left unpainted from when I was a kid, and decided to finish them, to use for HOTT, though I quickly converted them to DBA armies. One thing led to another and I just kept building.
Reason 2: 1:72 is a good compromise between 28-30mm, which allows fantastic detail but requires a house-sized space to game in, and smaller scales I would struggle to see.
Reason 3: 1:72 sets are pretty cheap.
Reason 4: 1:72 minis are very durable, and I am clumsy. I know that every so often I am going to drop an element from a shelf that is up to 6' off the floor and all the minis will be intact when I pick it up.

What's 1:72?

1:72 is modeller/wargamer shorthand for the scale of the individual miniatures used on the tabletop aforementioned. It also identifies me to the community as an outlier, which is a polite way of calling someone a nutball or pariah.
You see, most of the DBA wargame community plays in 15mm scale, and 1:72 figures or minis to use the American jargon are seen mainly as toys.
A 1:72 mini is typically made in softish plastic, with realistic human dimensions. It stands about 23mm tall, though variations between 20mm and 25mm are possible.

What's DBA?

DBA is De Bellis Antiquitatus, wargame rules for ancient and medieval tabletop battles.
So what's a wargame and how does it relate to a tabletop?
A wargame (setting aside the ancient history) is a game where some kind of army is set against some other kind of army. Typically each side is controlled by a single player, though there are any amount of variations: and the results are partly ruled by chance and partly by what the rules say about one type of force's capabilities against the other.
"Tabletop" means that all this happens in a physical environment with pieces you can touch, normally on a wargame table with opponents face-to-face with each other.