Hannibal's Army Receives a Coat of Paint

 

HaT Carthaginians. These would be the veterans from Libya and North Africa,

I am making progress on my 54mm Carthaginian army, slow, slower and slowest. It was a bit of a setback when I decided to increase the size of infantry units from 16 figures to 30/32 figures. That is, units that I had thought were finished are now only half way there. Nevertheless, I plod on.

I have completed 17 figures of 32 figures of my first Carthaginian infantry unit, comprised of North Africans from modern day Libya and Tunisia. This week I have the remaining figures on my painting desk and they should be finished sometime next week. The shield designs were a bit of a pain to do, at first, but the more that I did, the easier it became to paint the shields. I wish that I could say the same for the Romans, but more of that in another blog post.

Another view of the Carthaginian infantry showing how many more figures
I need to paint to complete the unit.

A view of all of the individual shield designs that I had to paint.

A view of the prospective Carthaginian army.

The picture above depicts four blocks of infantry and these will comprise the core of my Carthaginian army. The two units on the left, as you view the picture, are Spanish Iberians. The two unpainted units on the right will be North African Carthaginians. There is a fifth unit of Celts that are not shown in the above picture and they will likely replace one of the Carthaginian infantry units. 

View of the Carthaginian units after some of the painted figures have rejoined their units.

Thus the partial unit of Carthaginians, featured in today's post (and seen in the upper left in front of the building with the red tile roof), will be drafted into the third from the left unit. The extra figures will be removed and put back in the box. I like to set up the painted and unpainted figures in their designated ranks because this allows me to see the progress of the project, in terms of what I need to paint.

Balearic slingers cover the battle line and the elephants. 
These are HaT metal figures and are 60mm.

There has to be a picture of elephants if we are talking about Hannibal.
Two HaT elephants are shown with supporting skirmishers.
Two painted 40mm elephants can be seen in the background.
I acquired these at the recent Chicago Toy Soldier Show.

I finished 16 Roman Triarii yesterday, but the pictures will be shown in their own blog post within the next couple of days.

Stumbling Upon Best Way to Organize the Armies

 

Every once in awhile a good idea sneaks up behind and whacks you on the back of the head with a two by four ( a piece of lumber) in order to get your attention. I now have a huge lump on the back of my head where said piece of lumber knocked some common sense into me. Cue in the sounds of the fanfares as I present to you my new organization and basing for my Punic Wars Project.

Behold! I give you the new troop organizations

The infantry shall be based as fixed figures on multiple stands of 4 or 5 figures and a total number of figures at 30 per foot unit and 16 per skirmish unit. I haven't settled on the cavalry organization other than to know that they will be in groups or "squadrons" (squadrons probably didn't exist in 230BC, hence the use of air quotes) of 16 mounted figures. The cavalry will probably mounted two per stand with eight stands comprising a cavalry unit.

Four infantry units form the Carthaginian battle line.
Elephants, light horse and skirmishers in the upper righthand corner.

Carthaginian battle line from left to right:
Spanish Green Shields, Spanish Red Shields, Libyan White Shields, Libyan Red Shields,  
Elephants,  Skirmishers on foot, and Numidian light cavalry. The small unit in the back next to the
temple is Carthaginian Veterans from Hannibal's Italian Army.

Visually, the infantry blocks of thirty figures in three ranks of ten figures has the look and heft of what I was looking for when I started this project.

Binning the Previous Organization

My initial thought was to put all of the figures on individual 40mm round bases and place them on movement bases from Litko. This presented several minor problems, not the least including some difficulty in lining up spear throwers with the other ranks - those spears sometimes get in the way of other figures. The 40mm round system also required a frontage of approximately 14-inches, which takes up a lot of space on the table top. The new basing system cuts the frontage down to 11-inches. Now 3-inches may not seem like a lot of ground, but it adds up quickly with multiple units in the battle line and every inch counts.

Here is a picture of the old basing system that I was contemplating:

The old system of basing: 8 figures in three ranks or 24 figures.
I'd also considered just 16 figures in two ranks of 8 figures.
These are some new Libyans that I finished painting yesterday.

My initial thought was that there were 16 figures per box of HaT infantry and it was easy to consider that one box of figures equaled one unit of infantry. The frontage looked good to me and I would have been satisfied with this organization except for the fact that 3 ranks was nagging at me as a better idea. Thus, in the picture above, I have added a third rank of African Carthaginian figures ("Libyans") to see what a unit would look like with a third rank.

This was my original basing plan.

That Old Two By Four Played Whack-A-Mole on Me Noggin'

Last evening I finished painting my first unit of Carthaginian Africans and I set them on the table with the other units to see how the battle line was shaping up. I had some extra spearmen, posed with leveled pikes, that I probably was not going to use because the leveled spear made it difficult to line up the figures using the 40mm round individual bases. I wanted to see what a larger battle line might look like so I set the spearmen on the table. Some where falling over so I found some spare Litko bases (80mm by 60mm) and set them on the ground and placed some of the spearmen on the wood stands. Hmm, they kind of look like a phalanx or pike block. Nice!

I set the spearmen up in three ranks of 8 figures and liked the way that they looked. Yes, 24 figures would look better than 16 figures in a unit. I kind of like the extra depth that the third rank provides and I also like bigger units (so said the man who paints 60 figure SYW battalions). So now I had a frontage of 8 figures  and a total of three ranks, for 24 figures. That would have been four of the wood bases that you see in the above picture, each with two figures.

Yet still, something didn't look quite right to me. What if I expanded the frontage to 10 figures on five of the wood stands? Oh, and I should add a second and third rank so that adds 6 more figures, for a total of 30 figures in the unit. 

Eureka! The light bulb turned on and hails and huzzahs were heard from the heavens as angels and cherubs played a fanfare on their trumpets. The Wargame Gods signaled their approval. The Peter of Gilder turned to The Don of Featherstone and said, "took him long enough to get there, didn't it?"

I realized that basing the figures on individual 40mm round bases might be fine for a skirmish level game, but not so great for larger units in a set-piece battle game. And as stated earlier in this story, getting rid of the round bases saved me some space on the frontages of the units.

So There You Have It

So now my Carthaginian battle line will have a frontage of four large blocks of infantry, with cavalry supports on each flank. Let's throw in some elephants and skirmishers to boot. I recently read that Hannibal only had one elephant survive the trek across the Alps, which indicates that there were no elephants at Trebia, Trasemene or Cannae. However, there were 80 elephants at Zama. I like "nellies" and it's my army and so I'm going to have Heffalumps in my Carthaginian army.

Thus my Carthaginian army will have a front line of two Spanish allies, one Celts and one Libyan units. There will be a second line of two units, one of Carthaginian Veterans and another Libyan-Phoenican unit. The flanks will be guarded by 32 Numidian light cavalry and 16 to 32 heavy Carthaginian and Spanish cavalry. There will be at least two elephants and some supporting light infantry spearmen, plus a 16 figure unit of Balearic Slingers to annoy the Romans.

I haven't worked through my Roman organization yet, but it will be similar to that of the Carthaginian army in terms of unit sizes and basing. There will likely be four Hastatii comprising the first battle line (maybe more); and one or two Triarii and Princeps units in the second line. Those odd looking Velites wearing wolf skins will be out on the skirmish line. I haven't decided on cavalry yet, more on that in a later post on this blog.

Carthaginian Light Troops

One of my player commands will include the elephants, protected by light spearmen, and a small unit of Balearic Slingers. I might include the Numidian light cavalry with this player command. There will also be two commands of regular troops on the battle line (two in front and one unit in reserve in the second line).

A view of the Carthaginian forces that protect one of the flanks of the battle line.

I love elephants and can't get enough of them. However, they need some
light spearmen to protect them from those dastardly Roman Velites.

The Balearic Slingers.

The Numidian light cavalry - the core of Hannibal's cavalry contingent.

And Finally, Some More Eye Candy

I have been saving this picture for last. African/Libyan hoplites that I finished painting yesterday. The shields took a long time to paint, but now that I have some designs down pat in my memory, I can paint them faster going forward.

Carthaginian heavy infantry, the core of Hannibal's army.

I have 17 figures painted so far. Here I was thinking that the unit was done at 16 figures plus one spare. However, I now need to paint another 13 figures to top the unit up to 30 figures. I like to set the troops out on the table and fill in the painted figures so that I can watch the progress of my Carthaginian army.

And A Big THANK YOU To One of My Followers

One of my regular blog followers, and a long time acquaintance, scrounged up a couple of boxes of HaT Roman Triarii. This was totally unexpected and I am grateful to receive the news. Now that I have three boxes of Triarii, I can divided the 48 figures into two 24-figure units. One of my colleagues on the Virtual Wargamers Forum, yesterday, advised me that the Roman Triarii and Princeps units or maniples had fewer men than the Roman Hastatii. That works out fine because the Hastatii are easy to find and I can build 30 figure Hastatii maniples and have them supported by a couple of 24 figure Triarii.

If anyone can source some of the needed HaT figures, I remain receptive and can either buy them from you or trade  you some Minden/Fife and Drum figures as you so may choose.

I am really having a lot of fun with my Punic Wars Project and it has given me so much juice and energy of late. This project has been such a good tonic for my well being. Isn't that what a hobby is for?

Next In the Painting Queue: Roman Triarii and some more Carthaginian hoplites.

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You Always Remember Your First - Romans That Is

 

Scipio Africanus, surrounded by a centurion, cornicer, and signifier, plus a Triarius holding the large red shield.
These are John Jenkins Designs figures. The two figures on each end are HaT Roman Hastati that I painted.

The other day I painted two samples of the HaT Roman Triarii figures. These are what you and I would likely call "Legionaries" because they wear chain mail protection and carry large shields, etc. They were the third line of the Republican Roman battle formation. The first line was comprised of skirmish infantry called Velites; the second line was manned by Hastati; and the third line was anchored by the armored Principes and Triarii soldiers.

A pair of HaT Industrie Roman Republic Triarii, painted by me.

The reverse side of the figures.

These two samples were really fun, fun, fun to paint and I expect to have 16 painted by early next week. The shield designs were copied from the box art that comes with the figures. I suspect that the design is for the early Imperial Rome period but I wanted to give it a try. No one makes shield transfers for these figures in 54mm so the shield designs have to be painted freehand.

Shamelessly Begging For Figures

Sadly, the HaT Roman Triarii figures (set 9017) are no longer in production so the one box of 16 figures in my possession will likely be my only unit of these types of soldiers. Sigh (as Stokes would write). There must be thousands of them "out there" in either painted or unpainted form, but I have had no luck in sourcing any more of the figures. I have been scouring the world looking for these figures from distributors in places such as the UK, France, Germany and Australia, with no luck. If you happen to have any painted or unpainted HaT Triarii, then get in touch with me and I will gladly withdraw vast amounts of Dinarii from the Roman treasury to send to your barracks.

Visit to the Old Toy Soldier Show

Yesterday I visited the Old Toy Soldier Newsletter (OTSN) soldier show in Schaumburg, Illinois. Once a year, collectors of, well, old toy soldiers, convene with their wares to sell and buy and trade figures. I hoped that with all of the plastic figures for sale that I would find a box or two of HaT figures. I had no such luck but I did make a few, ahem, purchases while I was there. These included a display of 30mm Elastolin Vikings/Saxons attacking a castle wall defended by some Normans. The set include the Elastolin siege tower, which is hard to find and I had wanted one of these back in my youth. It also include a trebuchet, catapult and several mantles. I was very happy with this purchase. I didn't take any pictures, but will do so after I unpack the figures and set up the diorama.

I also purchased a 54mm section of the Alamo barracks that looks like it could used in my Sudan and Khartoum games
; some 54mm knights of Agincourt, and some John Jenkins Designs Republican Romans (including Scipio Africanus himself). The latter is expensive but how could I pass on a Scipio figure - a gift to myself. The company also makes a Hannibal figure that I will likely purchase in the near future. I also bought a pair of 40mm war elephants (with Howdah and two spearmen, plus a mahout), painted, that fit in nicely with the HaT elephants that I already have.

Scipio Africanus (mounted).
John Jenkins Designs

Afterwords I visited the Games Plus store in nearby  Mount Prospect, IL to pick up some primer and paint supplies for my Punic Wars Project. I am fortunate to have a really excellent Old School type of hobby and game store within a thirty minute drive from my house. The four cans of Vallejo grey primer and a can of spray gloss coating should last me through most of the project. I foresee a visit to Pet People to look for some aquarium Greek or Roman ruins to use for 54mm game terrain.

And finally, a preview of the next unit of Carthaginian Lybians that are currently on the painting table.

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Hannibal's Carthaginian Veterans

Hannibal's veterans from his army in Italy.

This afternoon I completed another 16-figure unit of Carthaginian soldiers for my Hannibal Project. The figures represent the veterans of Hannibal's army in Italy (HaT set number 9212) and many of them would have re-equipped  their kit with captured Roman chain mail, shields, swords, javelins, etc. For this reason, the figures are depicted wearing Roman chain mail and carrying Roman style shields.

My Brief HaT Rant and a Potted Finance Lesson

The set 9212 is out of stock and HaT seems to wait several years before they put "out of stock" SKUs into a production run. HaT has a Proboards forum and they actually ask members to vote on which out of stock sets to put back into production. Wowzers! This strikes me as evidence that the company may be having cash flow problems if they can't afford to make production runs of items for which they already have the moulds. 

They don't seem to want to make that investment in more inventory to keep everything in stock. Inventory is an investment and a user of the company's cash. If they spend the cash to put a SKU back into stock then that cash investment sort of sits in the inventory until the boxes of figures are sold and converted back into cash.

Most companies restock the SKUs when they sell down to zero. I'm a retired banker and back in the days when I was underwriting loans to businesses, I'd keep close tabs on the borrower's "working capital" as a proxy of its liquidity. Working Capital is basically total current assets (receivables, inventory) minus total current liabilities (payables to vendors, employee payroll etc.). In the odd world of "cash flow accounting", buying inventory and increasing ones receivables is actually a bad thing, because when you buy inventory you are using up your cash. Likewise, when you sell an asset that is a good thing because you sell something and that brings cash back into your coffers. So increasing assets - Bad! Decreasing assets - Good!

Back To Talking About Miniatures

So here are some recent pictures of my 54mm toy soldier Carthaginian army:

Spanish Allies based in three ranks.

Carthaginian Veterans based in two ranks.

That nice temple was made by Herb Gundt.

Companison of three ranks formation (Spanish) to two ranks formation (Carthaginian veterans).

As you can see in the last picture above, I am still wresting with how large to make my army units and how many ranks to deploy them in. I like the look of the 16-figure Veterans in two ranks, but I could add a third rank of 8 figures to field a unit of 24-figures, while still having the same 8 figure frontage.

This is what six units of 16-figures would look like. They take up a frontage of approximately four feet.

I don't need to make any basing and unit size decisions right now, but it is something that I need to decide in the near term before I start ordering movement sabots from Litko.

Hannibal's Spanish Allies Painted

 

Two units of HaT Industrie Spanish Allies for the Carthaginian army.

CLICK PICTURES TO ENLARGE

Today I completed the painting of a second set of 16 Punic War Spanish Allies for my 1/32 scale (54mm) Hannibal Project. The first set of 16 figures has predominantly red-brown shields and the second set has green-white shield combinations. This makes it easy to tell which figures belong to which infantry unit.

Two units of Spanish infantry: green shield and red-brown shields.

A pair of Balaeric Slingers skirmish in front of the Spanish.

My intention is to field the infantry in 16-figure units; however, in this picture I have pushed both units together to form a 4-rank by 8-files unit of 32 figures, just to see how this would look compared to the 2 x 8 organization. I have set up two units of Carthaginian African troops in 16-figure units (unpainted) for a comparison. I will have up to 5 single elephants.

I will eventually have 4 x 16 units of Spanish infantry, 2 x 16 Africans, 2 x 16 Celts, and 1 x 16 Veterans and 1 x 16 light skirmishers in the Carthaginian army. There will also be 5 elephants and one or two units of Numidian light cavalry and one unit of Carthoginian/Spanish heavy cavalry.

So while I seem to have settled on fielding 16-figure units in two ranks, other possible organizations might include 24-figures in three ranks or 32-figures in four ranks. While "bigger is better" seems to be my way of thinking, I want to keep the infantry units at a size that will allow me to use a 6ft by 12ft table and have three feet of open space on each flank. The math indicates that my infantry has to fit into a space of 6 feet in order to have three feet of open flank space on each end of the table. An 8-figure frontage takes up about 14-inches so I could pack in four infantry units frontage in the six foot area in the center of the table and have an equal number of units forming a second line of infantry.

If I used 24 figures in three ranks and eight files, then the frontage is still the same as that of the 16-figure units. However, this means that I would need one and a half boxes of figures to create a unit, whereas the 16-figure unit equals the contents of one box of figures. A 36-figure unit would have to be in four ranks by eight files. See the picture below for an idea of what this might look like.

Four units of Hannibal's infantry supported by a pair of elephants.

When going to four ranks, do you think that visually it looks better to have a wider frontage of, say, ten figures or even twelve figures? 

FYI, the figure bases shown in these pictures have 40mm round bases that fit into the sabot.

While I work these things out, tomorrow I will start washing more figures in soapy water, and then spritzing them with white primer as I will soon be running out of my stock of primed-and-ready-to-paint figures. I will start on a 16-figure unit of Carthaginian Veterans wearing chain mail, tomorrow, and plan on having them finished by the end of this coming weekend.

Notice: If anyone has any spare HaT Punic Wars figures that they would like to sell, then send me an email or leave a message in the comments section below. I'm particularly looking for boxes of Roman Triarii and Carthaginian Veterans. I'm also looking for Numidian, Roman, Spanish and Carthaginian cavalry boxes.

Monday Mail Treasures

 

Today was a good day for my Punic Wars Project, having received a huge stash of HaT plastic Republican Romans from a fellow Wargames (thanks Jeff 😀) and a couple of HaT metal Baleric Slingers from an eBay seller. I wish that I could find more of the latter.

Today’s treasure haul included one box of Roman Triarii, five boxes of Hastati, and three boxes of Carthaginian elephants. These have arrived just in time to make it onto the painting table towards the end of the week. The Triarii and Elephants are particularly hard to find in the market due largely to HaT’s strange business model. It appears that HaT places an order for stock from its supplier in China and then sends the stock out to its distributors. So far so good. But when the distributors run out of stock, HaT doesn’t order replacement stock with any sense of urgency.

On the HaT website they have a forum and the company asks its customers or followers to vote on which production items that the company should reorder. Let me say this again, when HaT runs out of stock they do not replenish stock, presumably until they get enough interest to run the injection moulds again. I cannot think of a more anti-customer service business model than this. 

The end result is that sets such as the Triarii, Elephants and assorted Roman and Carthaginian cavalry are hard to come by. So thank you Jeff for helping me to build out my Punic Wars armies.

The Baleric Slingers are another HaT oddity. They cast the figures in metal and sell them as painted figures, but not in enough quantities that anyone can purchase in any quantity. The HaT website indicates that the Baleric Slingers will be a future addition to its 1/32 scale (54mm) plastic range, but they are not in production. It would seem that if the metal version can be made and cast that it shouldn’t be too difficult to make the moulds for the plastic version.

Fortunately I have been able to acquire most of the HaT sets that I need to build out my Republican Roman and Carthaginian armies. I’m good with elephants, having five nellies on hand. If anyone has any spare Triarii, Baleric Slingers, Roman heavy cavalry, Spanish cavalry, or Carthaginian Veterans and Heavy Cavalry, then get in touch with me and I will be happy to take them off your hands.

PROJECT UPDATE 

I finished a 16 figure unit of Spanish infantry this weekend. I have a second Spanish infantry unit and some Carthaginian Veterans primed and ready to paint this week.

Ain't Amazon Amazing?

I hate to give out any kudos and complements to big bad Amazon, but their delivery service is nothing short of amazing.

To wit, Saturday evening at a few ticks short of midnight, I placed a book order with Amazon for a book titled, Roman Legionary versus Carthaginian Warrior, an Osprey book from its "Combat" series of titles.

By 5:30PM on Sunday, the book was delivered to my front door. How is that for instant gratification? I make an effort to purchase books from a local independent book seller in my town, but I have to say that it is hard to beat the service and prices from Amazon.