Painting Ancient Italian Cavalry

This guide is going to be very simple and mainly to remind me of the general steps I took for Italian Allied Cavalry.

• Undercoat horse and rider with black.
• Base coat rider with GW Tallern Flesh. 
• Base coat horses in various colours.
• Paint rider's tunics and flag various colours.
• Paint Armour VJ Brass.
• Paint reigns, straps spearshafts dark brown.
• Paint Feathers black.
• Paint leader's cloak with dark grey.

• Apply GW Delvan Mud Wash over horse and rider.

• Highlight horses in original base colours (black with GW Granite).
• Dry brush horses' mane and tail with original base colour. 
• Highlight rider's skin with GW Tallern Flesh (face with GW Elf Flesh).
• Highlight rider's tunic and flag with original colour.
• Highlight armour with VJ Old Gold.
• Highlight reigns, straps and spear shafts with light browns.
• Dry brush leader's cloak light grey.
• Base coat spear tips black, paint with GW Chainmail. 
• Metal shields as above, apply transfer, gloss varnish.
• Other shields, base coat GW Deneb Stone, GW Mud Wash, highlight original colour.
• Shield boss base coat with GW Boltgun Metal, highlight GW Mithril Silver.

Allied Cavalry

These horsemen represent the Italian Allied cavalry. These miniatures are from Newline Designs 20mm Samnite and Etruscan range and there are 3 regular poses, 2 command poses and 2 horse variations. There is a nice variety in armour; triple disk, pectoral and muscle cuirass. They are probably meant to represent the Samnite cavalry that Rome fought against before the Punic Wars. The Allied cavalry equipment  by the second Punic War probably differed very little from their Roman contemporaries but it is nice to have some variation between the Roman and Allied cavalry units.  

These miniatures usually come with a small rimmed shield but I swapped them for a mix of Roman Parma shields, Celtic Cavalry shields and a Macedonian Aspis shield types. This was an attempt to bring them closer to the Roman cavalry whilst showing a bit of Greek influence. I think to use them for Rome's Samnite Wars they should probably be un-shielded like Hat's 1/72 Italian Allied Cavalry (currently in my plastic mountain and have spare shields for them!). 

The only other thing I swapped was the standard bearer's pole for a vexillum, which was a bit of a hash were I made the cut. The shield transfers are from Veni Vidi Vici, expcept the laurel wreaths design from an abandoned home made set, which needed painted over so acted more of a painting guide.

I managed to do these fairly quickly the steps I took are covered in more detail on my WIP blog. There wasn't much in ways of horse furniture and leather belts and straps which really helped speed up the process. I am continuing on with the Roman (and at times Carthaginian) Allies theme by working on a unit of heavy infantry.

Hat 1/72 and Newline Designs 20mm Carthaginian Comparisons

I received a request on Benno's Figures Forum, where I posted about my African Mercenaries with the blue shields, about comparison shots between Hat 1/72 figures and the Newline Design 20mm figures. I am popping them here in the workshop for future reference.

I have said before how I collected 1/72 Ancient miniatures initially following army lists in Field of Glory supplements. However I looked into filling blanks at the time with Newline Designs 20mm lines, namely the Thureophoroi and I asked about African Veterans in Roman armour. After receiving the metals I loved them and over the years I have been collecting Newline miniatures with 1/72 plastics as secondary.

Newline miniatures tend to be chunkier than the Hat plastics depending on the sculptor. Earlier Newline miniatures seem noticeably smaller than 1/72 and I think that as quite a lot of people asked Sean at Newline about how close they were to 1/72, later miniatures were made a bit larger and fit better height wise.

Some Hat figures appear to be full of action, mid-slash, running throwing etc. and some of the earlier Hat Ancients have shields cast on which lead to flat looking and sometimes awkward poses. Newline poses tend to be more conservative with most heavy foot either standing or advancing tucked and hunched behind their shield. These factors also accentuate the size difference.

I generally don't mix manufactures on the same base/unit but I would definitely mix within an army. I have seen them mixed within units and I think they mix well when painted and based in a consistent manner.

Some examples I have seen around the web:

20mmgamer.blogspot.co.uk

20mm Gamer

cameronian-onlyagame.blogspot.co.uk

jpwargamingplace.blogspot.co.uk

Painting Libyan, Liby-Phoenician, Carthaginian or African Spearmen etc.

Painting guide for African heavy infantry.

GW = Games Workshop Citadel Colour, VJ = Vallejo.

1. Undercoat with GW Foundation Flesh.
2. Linothorax with GW Foundation Stone.
3. Tunic, crests, cloaks with VJ Red.
4. Straps, scabards, spear, in GW Dark Brown.
5. Metal, helmet, greaves, armour, spearbutt with VJ Brass.
6. Sandles with light brown, hair with black/brown.

 

7.   Whole figure GW Brown Mud Wash.

8.   Highlight Skin with GW Foundation Flesh except face, use GW Elf Flesh.
9.   Highlight linothorax with GW Foundation Stone.
10. Highlight tunic, crests, cloaks with VJ Red.
11. Highlight straps with GW Vermin Brown, scabards, spear with GW Snakebite Leather.
12. Highlight metal helmet, greaves, armour with VJ Old Gold.
13. Speartip, swords with GW Chainmail.



Shields:

1. Undercoat with VJ Light Blue.
2. Wash Front with GW Blue Wash.
3. Paint alongside of spine with GW Ice Blue.
4. Highlight VJ Light Blue.
5. Paint Shield Boss GW Boltgun Metal.
6. Highlight shield boss GW Mithril Silver.
7. Apply transfers.
8. Highlight VJ Red if neccessary.
9. VJ Matt Varnish shield.

Carthage's Professionals

Why get citizens to fight when you can employ full time mercenaries? Carthage employed or levied North Africans to serve in her armies and here are a few units of heavy infantry representing Libyan, Liby-Phoenician or Punic spearmen  in 20mm by Newline Designs.

These spearmen types are usually associated with a large round shield like the ones carried by Hoplites but I liked the idea that they could have been using the oval thureos so went with the Iberian style Scutarii shield provided from Newline's Scutarii figures. I also have some pikemen miniatures set aside to be African Spearmen with Hoplite style shields for future projects.

These units stem from updating these 32 African foot to the double DBX style basing I have been using.  I dug around my lead mountain and organised the African Infantry into groups of 32 including 3 command figures. I set aside 2 units worth with Macedonian commands for future Hellenistic armies, then grabbed 6 Carthaginian command figures and 26 African Infantry for the pictured units.

I hoped to have them all in the Thracian style helmet but I was 6 short so I used the African wearing the conical looking helmet with cheek plates. I attempted to add a visor using PVA glue built up in layers to give them a more Hellenistic look. I have made a separate post on the PARADE GROUND WORKSHOP on how I painted the miniatures. With the 32 older miniatures I removed the shields, highlighted and generally got them to fit in with the newly painted miniatures.

The shield transfers are a mix of 15mm Hellenistic Veni Vidi Vici transfers and some home brew transfers.

Although I achieved what I set out to do they are too uniform for the ancient world, even for freshly raised troops. However I like the uniformed contrast to my Roman Citizen soldiers so decided to go for artistic rather than historical painting. Hellenistic rulers sometimes gave military cloaks as 'gifts' to mercenaries. I like the idea of Carthage recruiting for their armies with a promise of regular pay and all clothing and equipment provided for service... maybe something like this happened to some degree.  Also uniformity helps get the production line moving. Next on the bench are the Italian Allies cavalry and infantry.