Numidian CF/Celtiberians

This pic shows the idea I had for finishing the Numidian CF element. I already have an ex-member of HaT Greek Artillery (extreme left) and I thought, maybe a RedBox 1920 Gangster's Moll, with veiled-headwear added and coat suitably lengthened, would be a fair match (lower left).

The other project in hand (centre top) hints at where my next army build effort is going. The two minis (out of focus sorry) are made of top-half puny Britons or Gauls, bottom half Hannibal's Africans. Celtiberians wore Gallic top tunic, but were bare-legged or had Iberian style greaves. These are the least ambitions conversions, and are more or less just cut at belt line, drill for wire peg, then peg-and-superglue.

I'm not planning an army of these hybrids - for one thing I don't have enough discards - but I dearly wanted a couple of Celtiberian elements for my Ancient Spanish/LaterCarts options.

II_40 Numidian

We open the Numidians with two command options, 1x General as Cv with Spanish bodyguard (and looking very Punic) or as LH. As mentioned in the blog the LH general's figure was re-reworked from a Medieval Irish conversion that wasn't needed, hence the cloak, fuller beard etc.

Next up is compulsory 4 x LH and 4 x Ps:

The LH on the left is the element prepared for II/32 Later Carthaginian - you can see the slightly deeper brown used. I decided to leave the shield faces 'raw' as in  dark wash-varnish over the original. It will be easy to paint white if I want to later.

The Ps at left are from HaT's African foot, converted to hold javelins/darts. The Ps on the right are from HaT's Alexander's Lights, with Numidian-style shields added from the Carthaginian Command box.

The mighty Ellie is resplendent (and with a fruity-themed backdrop!) as technically an option, but the main point of why I chose to get this army so I'm never going to field a slinger/bow Ps, the alternate.

I already have the 2x4Ax javelinmen with my Carthaginians. This is the alternate and 'tougher' option. Under two different rulers, Numidian fielded close-formation troops that DBA 3.0 is happy to name Bd. If they enter the Carthaginian ranks, they will be Sp.

And the army assembled:

Numidian LH painted up

Two days of good motivation and as I hoped, the LH are all done! Should get the basic basing finished today, which will mean the whole army is ready for flocking.

A lesson: preserve your wisdom

Putting the Numidian LH together underlines to me the lesson I already took out of my prep. That 'how to' wisdom you built up over years of the hobby: don't let it go.

I had wanted to see how useful it would be to take minis prep much further than usual, before removing them from the sprue. All the mounts were varnished and had wire posts ready, and all the riders blocked out with base paint colours.

But it didn't work.

HaT Numidian riders have a relatively tight, difficult seat on their mounts. And of course by guessing where the wire posts would sit, I made my job all the harder. Much fumbling, scraping and refitting later, I realised I had wasted my time and everything would need to be varnished again, then repainted.

All 11 riders are now mounted. (The LH general is already complete). About half the riders need a wire post, the others more-or-less sit right with the aid of PVA glue alone. All mounts are base-painted. Since I want dun-coloured mounts right across the board, I mix a medium brown sort of colour for base. Applied with a light hand over dark varnish, many of the original lines won't need lining-out again.

I must fetch my Later Carthaginian LH in for comparison before I get to the real paint stage, I want them to be compatible. I also have another element with my Impy Romans which almost certainly needs redoing.

Numidians: blades, command and look! elephant

After many days of procrastinating, where in the weekend I would say 'I can do that weekdays' and each weekday evening I would find it all too inconvenient and put it off to the weekend, I finally got back to my Numidians.

The 'on the go' minis are command, which is a Cv element of Spanish and Cartaginian horse and a LH mini that has a bit of conversion on the general; blades, which are just plain old Carthaginian foot and swappable with my LaterCarts; and the elephant in the room, which is a normal Carthaginian El with a slight tweak on the soldiers up on the castle.

Skin tone varies across the minis, but is relatively dark compared to their Carthaginian neighbours. I've also gone with black for hair, not something I do as a rule.

I had a setback on tunic colour. I really must remember that light grey dries to grey. Most are now highlighted with white.

Shield faces are white, awaiting suitable transfers. The exception is the Spanish horseman, who still has his caetrati-sized shield.

I've got the blades onto bases - part complete - and expect to finish basing this week. Then it will be LH assembly-line time.

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.