Numidian cavalry

 

REC5, African auxiliary cavalryman with javelin and shield, unarmoured

To make him closer to a Numidian I just sanded most of the shield detail away so I could paint the shield as hide. It would probably be more accurate if I also sanded down the javelin case, but I didn't bother. To distinguish the figure from a Moor I painted the Moor in the Roman army with chocolate skin, the Numidian with medium flesh. Purely arbitrary of course but... 

Like the Moors I also gave the 'officer' figure a cloak.

The Carthaginian army list I'm using as a 'base' lists these as 10-50 figures in the army (WRG 1981 lists) so I'll probably do another unit. 

Spanish long shield cavalry

Unit of the Spanish long shield cavalry finished - Greek cavalry officer and conversions from Gallic GAC1 'Cavalryman withspear, shield and cloak, unarmoured'. I've gone with the same  'Lowland' red cloak with these, still need another unit or so and will probably give them black Highland cloaks.

Command group... I did think of rounding the edges of the shields to make them oval, decided against considering a google search suggested most people use them with round shieds! Might use this figure with a rounded off shield for Spanish infantry. The apparent yellow paint on the tunic of the standard bearer isn't visible on the figure! It's actually at the back of the shield and the shield outline is nowhere near as obvious as it is here. Which is why I didn't notice where the shield edge was!

RE12 Roman slingers

 

Started painting these before I got sidetracked by the Gauls!

For the paint scheme I've painted them in a Spanish Carthaginian scheme - purple edged white tunics and black cloak. I wanted to see how well they would look as Balearic slingers with the possibilty of producing them with the shield detail sanded down. Probably won't bother, this lot does the job OK anyway. I did think about the sword being on the right, but then I spotted the fact that a lot of the Gauls had their scabbards on the right as well. So I'm just writing it off as a Garrison thing :)

Increasing the herd

One of the vagaries of my Ancient armies is that I had a load of Minifigs elephants but only four Garrison. Thought it was time to redress the balance.

So the first part of this was to do a load of straight Carthaginian elephants. I've done them quite simply, no shields on the side or bowcases! At some stage this will allow me to take the howdahs  off my converted  Minifigs Carthaginians elephants so they can join the Indian army.

Plenty more to do - these 12 have been allocated to provide four Vanha elephants to supplement the mammoths plus eight that will be used as Sassanids or fantasy Persians.

Once this lot are sorted, my next lot will hopefully be a dozen to act as Atlanteans. 

Obviously, of course, just because I intend to follow this plan doesn't mean that I actually will...