Back up a step, add shields

With four elements of Psiloi assembled and based it is time to add shields, sourced from HaT Carthaginian Command, to the shieldless four minis from Alexander's Lights. It should really have been done way, way back at trim-out time, but I wasn't sure it was needed.

Still, the source material says foot have shields just like their big brothers on horses, and these shields are a really good match.

The shields come with a hole ready for a pin, which is no good to me, so I use the same latex grout filler I use on bases to fill those. PVA glue gives a reasonable adhesion between figure and shield, then I glue a shield strap made from dental floss over. Just one - the hand grip is too fiddly for me and pretty invisible on the other readymade minis anyway.

The picture shows work in progress - the minis are actually finished but the shields are raw - and some based, but unflocked, other Psiloi.

Oh - and, on the based Psiloi, you can see the conversion to a couple of wee javelins, from one weird spear.

Numidians still a work in progress

I haven't posted for a couple of weeks, but I have successfully pushed on with the Numidians bit by bit.

Big decisions - I decide to cancel the head-swap, as too fiddly and a bit pointless; I go fully with Carthaginian "Hellenic" style foot to stand in for the Numidian "Roman trained" Blades; I carefully cut away the oddly-positioned spears of the Numidian light foot and give them each a pair of short javelins instead.

What else? I scavenge a "retired" Numidian rider who is a failed Irish LH rider, and he becomes a General mini for the LH variant; I use a Carthaginian as one of the "Iberian guards" of the Cv Gen element and a Carthaginian horse for the General mini of that element.

The other "big thing" I'm trying is to do as much work as possible to minis still on the sprue, adding patches later when they are ready to mount. It's a  partial solution to having a lot of minis all much the same in outfit and colour.

At present I have a lot of sienna-skin, grey-clothing painted Numidians, waiting for highlights.