Punic War Cavalry

Rebasing continues on the 20mm Newline Designs cavalry, this time Carthaginian and Italian heavy horse units. It was a straight up swap with no tinkering with the miniatures. The big push with the rest of the Newline cavalry continues  and nears completion. Next up are some Parthians, photographed and await a post to be written.  

 

Punic Wars Table Battle

In the constant quest for a gratifying ancient miniatures battle I came across Table Battles game from Hollandspiele. As ever I was inspired by Here's no great matter blog post,  I was intrigued by the clever use of miniatures to give Table Battles more pleasing visuals.

In brief Table Battles has opposing armies made up of some cards, each with how many hits it can take and what dice is required to undertake an action as well as what conditions trigger a reaction. There is no maneuvering instead each card has a target it inflicts damage on. Each turn is played by taking an action then a dice roll. In the first turn no action can be taken so the full six d6's are rolled then one formation per wing can be allocated dice if the right pips are present. Furthermore if a formation has to react to an enemy action that counts as their action phase and in their own turn will have to go straight onto the roll phase. There is a print and play version available too so I'll get that once it's been updated to 2nd edition.... and a few of the expansions, Alexander and Wars of the Roses perhaps! It has simple rules but it's the interaction between the cards in the various scenarios that provides the meat of Table Battles.

I thought it would provide a quick game and a good excuse to get the miniatures out so I hastily experimented with 6 formations each side. 2 cavalry, 3 heavy infantry and 1 light infantry formation, in its own wing to allow the skirmish screen to operate as well as being able to get the cavalry engaged or prepare the Heavy infantry in reserve. In practice the composition of formations in Table battles doesn't really matter it just adds a bit of flavour in this battle.

I did write a quick roster, but some home made cards would be better! I'll probably end up doing this once I've had a bit more play testing since I made a few mistakes. It would also be better to play the original game and expansions to get a better feel for the game itself, but I' had to seize the moment  and take what I can get for now gaming wise.

I made the Roman infantry better than the Carthaginians, they were able to attack without taking losses themselves, unless the Carthaginians were able to react and counter attack, the Carthaginian foot also had an extra strength point. I gave the cavalry edge to Carthage, it was much easier for the Carthaginian horse to launch attacks to the point where it was inevitable that they would break and pursue the Roman horse, at least on one flank. I also wanted to introduce an element of maneuver so gave the cavalry an ability to change their target formation representing their regrouping to fall on the Roman rear however it would cost a lot of dice in a particular roll to work.

I intended to have the other cavalry wing be a bit of a stalemate between Numidians who could screen and Italian cavalry who was also a bit slow to attack but I messed that bit up by getting mixed up. I gave them counter attack instead when I was being distracted. Never-mind, that's why some cards with info would be useful. Despite this I was able to have an enjoyable battle and all in about an hour including setting up and packing away:

The two armies deploy no need for measuring the formations target their opposing enemy formations.

Eagle's view; each light formation had 3 hits, each cavalry 4 hits, Roman foot 5, Carthaginian 6.
Heavy foot was in reserve, they could be allocated dice but unable to perform actions until the light formations fled or retired.  

As expected the Punic heavy cavalry quickly routed the Roman horse and began to peruse only to return if they were given 3 dice rolled showing 1,2,3.

Whilst the cavalry dueled, the light formations being in their own "wing" were able to load up dice as well as one other formation in the army. After a mutually wearing each other down  the Roman lights withdrew to make way for the Legionaries. 

The Carthaginian light troops stayed in place in the hope to slow down the approaching legions, sacrificing morale to keep the Carthaginian heavy foot fresh. 

The Numidians and Roman cavalry eventually ended when the Numidians launched a last ditch attack which broke the Romans but forcing their own to break. This was the best of a bad situation that prevented the Roman cavalry winning outright which would have given Rome the edge in morale.

The Carthaginian Right after some hard pushes managed to break the Roman Left

The rest of the Carthaginian line gave the Romans a good run for their money despite each attack causing a hit on themselves, but the Roman infantry without that problem finished off the Carthaginians. The Cavalry never arrived and with Rome gaining +2 morale won the field battered but victorious. 

It was an enjoyable and fairly quick game the simple game mechanics provided tension with punch and counter punch. It was tricky for the Carthaginians, they had to allocate dice to the heavy infantry it was difficult to get the dice for the command roll, there were some close ones but it made more sense to prepare the infantry line to attack or counter attack, especially since the Romans were rolling well and getting ready for a devastating attack on the Carthaginian infantry. Because of this pressure it was difficult for Carthage to get enough dice on a formation to make the attack worthwhile since the attack automatically takes a hit to the attacker and if the Romans were ready to counter attack another hit to the Carthaginian attackers. I'm not sure if that is how the counter attack rules work in Table Battles but its what I did for this battle which created dilemma and friction.  

Overall it produced a fairly historical result and being a close and tense battle was entertaining. It would be an ideal set to resolve campaign battles lots of food for thought. Although a very hastily put together and experimental battle I reckon it was a successful one.

Enemies and Allies of the Italian Peninsula

Quite a bit of rebasing done. I started with heavy foot units that didn't need any painting upgrade or additional figures. 

Glued onto the new sized bases and then a mix of filler, sand paint and PVA applied to give texture and blend the bases together. Painted with my basing paint mixes then a few applications of my static grass blend. 

The figures are Samnites Standing (with Roman shields) as Allied Legionaries, Roman Velites (with Gallic shields) as Penal/Emergency Legionaries or Ligurians and Samnite Advancing as above. All 20mm from Newline Designs.

Italians Allies Advance

This post has been a long time coming. I finished 8 bases of 8 Samnites at the end of November but life got in the way. Between Christmas, my computer breaking down again (losing lots of pics for the blog) and now a project in the house (painting walls instead miniatures, sad times). So now after getting some fresh photos and editing them I have them for the blog at last.

I also lost the WIP pictures which showed the use of spray paint and painting strips which sped up a lot of painting time. I used Army Painters Barbarian Flesh spray as the base coat and keeping the figures attached to the strips applied the base colours. A few of the figures got sprayed too heavy but in the end they all seemed fine. I have since acquired white spray for Hellenistic linothorax types and black for chain mail types to use for future projects. 

I used 2 poses from Newline Designs ANI03 advancing Samnite spearmen in these units. Again I swapped the shields from clipped shields for the Roman types to Romanise these Oscan warriors. The sculpting on these miniatures is great and the detail on the armour and helmets is exquisite.

I have also been trying to improve the photography again and had found an article as well as receiving some great tips from Hellboy over at Benno's Figure Forum. I think they are a bit better but I could still do some more work or have a bit more patients when it comes to the editing stage.

So thats another 8 bases done for the Punic Wars, I have been working on rebasing and highlighting some of my older Punic Wars miniatures which will feature in the next few posts once I get round to editing the photos. I should have more time for that next week since my painting desk is out of bounds at the minute because of the project upstairs. All of the stuff from upstairs is blocking off my workzone but I have some Triarii set aside to prep for painting in the mean time. 

Italian Allied Legionaries

The latest unit to the Legions of Rome or the mercenary contingents of Carthage. This contingent has been represented with Newline Designs 20mm Samnites standing. These miniatures come issued with clipped Scutum shields and I believe they are supposed to be the Samnites of the earlier wars Rome fought with the Oscan peoples of Southern Italy. However I'm going for the later 2nd Punic War era and issued the troops with a Roman oval Scutum shield. 

They come in 2 varieties and there is a 3rd standing pose in the Samnite range. The details are very crisp, they painted up easily and then lent themselves well to the mud wash.

I initially attempted to paint a variety of shield designs but the only one that was half decent was the laurel wreath design. The other designs I wasn't pleased with so to introduce variety I just used different colours.

With the Italian Allied Cavalry I swapped the standard with a vexillum but it looked a bit awkward at the join. This time however I went for disks which I think maybe a more Imperial Roman type of standard but it was an easy option to add to the standard. The trickiest bit was cutting the tiny disks which are cut from a cross section of a Hat sprue then super glued on. 

Again I undercoated with flesh to save time, which it did, but it still felt like a chore. Fortunately the rest of the painting was more enjoyable and I have a painting guide on my workshop blog. I tend to prefer more active poses however paiting and basing these models I have come to appreciate the humble standing pose they were a breeze to base and there are no spears hanging over the edge of the base. 

I have 2 x 32 man units of Samnite foot advancing ready to paint up. However the thought of undercoating my next units was putting me off continuing so I decided to give Army Painter primer spray a go and have ordered a flesh coloured and black tin. Hopefully this will give a quick basecoating option and give me a boost to get them painted. Meanwhile I have been highlighting and rebasing Spanish and Numidian cavalry so I will probably  post some updated pics of those units next.   

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.