Victrix Warriors of Carthage
/Now my Celts are just about complete, it was time to think about what my next army would be. Looking at the lists, the obvious crossover with the Celts is a Carthaginian army of some kind (Early, Middle or Later), as the Celts that I have just finished would provide all the heavy cavalry and around one third of the infantry needed for Hannibal’s boys.
A quick visit to the Victrix website saw me purchase the Warriors of Carthage pack: an excellent acquisition which, when painted, would provide three units of Libyan light infantry with javelins; one deep unit of mercenary Hoplites; and two units of African spearmen wearing captured Roman armour (“Hannibal’s Veterans”). That’s half the extra infantry I would need all for the princely sum of £35: a bargain at around 57p per figure.
First on the painting table were the Libyan light javelinmen: a very easy paint as they have minimum equipment, especially if you don’t give them shields! I used a 50/50 mix of Contrast Darkoath Flesh and Guilliman Flesh for their skin; and a dark red highlighted, washed and highlighted again for their tunics.
Having painted a few hundred 15mm Hoplites, I was not looking forward to doing the mercenary Greeks, but it turned out that they were almost as easy to do as the Libyan javelinmen. I undercoated in Grey Seer, then painted the panoplies in either white or a linen colour using different techniques to get variety: some were painted with acrylic white over Grey Seer, some with acrylic Wraithbone over Grey Seer, some with Contrast white then highlighted with acrylic white, and some with Contrast Skeleton Horde over Grey Seer. Then, on some of the panoplies, I outlined the seams in a variety of colours.
The flesh was painted as above, with the rest of the figure/equipment done as I would usually do so: Contrast Snakebite Leather for the leather, Wyldwood for the spear shafts etc. The aspis shields were painted on the sprue: undercoated in Grey Seer on the rear and Corax White on the front, then the backs were painted Contrast Wyldwood with the holding-cord picked out in an acrylic leather colour, and the fronts with decals from Little Big Man Studios via Victrix and then edged appropriately. I’m very happy with the result.
The two units of Carthaginian spearmen gave me a few more problems. As most of the figure is effectively chainmail (captured Roman armour) I decided to undercoat in black…which made the chainmail easy but meant that I could not use my belov’d Contrast paints for everything else…which meant painting everything else with the Holy Trinity of basecoat, layer and highlight or, in my case, basecoat and highlight as I always was a heathen…but once I’d got the hang of this retro painting system, building and painting the two units didn’t take too long at all.
The shields were as easy to do as always, but haven’t come out as well as the hoplite shields, above. Not sure why, perhaps it’s something to do with the shield designs or, more likely, something I did differently!
So that’s most of the Carthaginian infantry now done: just a couple of units of non-Roman-armour spearmen and the elephants to do now…and some Numidian cavalry…and all the command bases, casualties and heroes…and maybe some Celtiberians/Scutatoi…the list goes on!
