Protect Your Elephants - Carthaginian Light Infantry

Carthaginian war elephants with light infantry forming a protective zone around the Hefalumps.

Having recently painted some Roman Velites light infantry, I thought that I had better paint some light infantry for my Carthaginian army as well. The HaT light infantry box has four different poses and four figures of each pose, for a total of 16 figures per box. The figures are 1/32 plastic figures (54mm).

As you can see in the pictures below, the skirmishers form a protective zone around the war elephants.

Balearic Slingers on the far left and a mix of Libyan and Numidian light infantry.

The Carthaginian light infantry served two purposes: (1) act as a screen in front of the main battle line and engage the enemy light infantry, so that the latter didn't have free rein to pepper the main battle line with javelins and arrows; and (2) to protect the elephants from the Roman light infantry.

Here are some pictures of the HaT Carthaginian light infantry.

The light infantry will not fight as formed troops.
The base trays are for purposes of shooting the photographs.

I was short one figure (that had broken off at the ankle) so I drafted a Celtic warrior to serve in the light infantry.

Here are a couple of close up pictures of the Numidian figures and one Celt. It is hard to get all of the detail of the figure into a picture of dark skinned figures, but they do have nice detail on their faces. The figures were easy to paint due to the lack of equipment that one needs to paint.

I liked the way that the Celt turned out. I used the Reaper Tanned Skin triad of paint colors, which has a subtle change from dark to light hues. I don't like seeing pictures of figures (naked or bare chested) that have a severe dark red-brown color as its shade because it is too stark a change from the red-brown to the skin highlight. The Reaper triads have a more gradual and subtle change from shade, to base color to highlight.

I look forward to painting a 32-figure unit of Celtic infantry to use in my Carthaginian army. The Celts have some good looking poses, although I do not look forward to painting lots of plaids.