15mm Carthaginian Elephants

When I think of Carthaginians I automatically think of elephants, even though Hannibal only managed to get a handful across the Alps; according to some sources such as Goldsworthy, just one.

The DBMM army list allow up to nine but I ended up purchasing an even ten, again from Xyston miniatures:

There are two body poses with a choice of two different heads, one with armoured tusks, so it is possible to make up four different elephant combinations:

They are each supplied with two crew from a choice of three figures, plus two different mahouts:

The elephant figures themselves were supplied in two halves with, as mentioned, a separate head, and the figures fitted together very nicely with the mahout conveniently sitting on top of the exposed join between the head and two halves:

and the tail blending in with the rear join very nicely:

The only downsides are that the tower comes in four bits so took a bit of lining up, one of the crew figures had a massive arm which made him look a little as though he was suffering from elephantiasis and was difficult to file down, and the extended trunk meant I had to line them up diagonally on the base to allow them to be positioned line astern if required. Minor quibbles about what are otherwise excellent models:

The tower comes with cast-on shields, so I used some of the Little Big Men Studios decals to again give them a bit of variety:

I now only have a few stands of character figures and eight early Carthaginian chariots left to go, which means the end of this particular project is now very much in sight.

15mm Numidian Cavalry

I had originally hoped to complete these prior to a game we had last Saturday, but they didn't make it on to the table in time. I managed to put the finishing touches on them this week, before starting on some Carthaginian elephants:

As with the Carthaginians I have continued to use the Foundry North African skin triad on these figures, and selected a variety of horse colours and experimented with a few shield designs to try to mix things up a little:

The figures are as usual Xyston, with four different poses in each pack:

I have another sixty or so of these figures to complete, but for now it was nice to be able to paint something different before returning to complete the Carthaginian army, for which they will form a useful ally:

We lost the game on Saturday and it would be nice to think things may have turned out differently if these guys had been available, but Hannibal being killed played a larger part in our defeat. That's two generals in the last two games I have now lost so I am probably being a little careless with them, although we did manage to scrape through with a win in the previous game regardless.