What a Difference a Day Makes!

Following on from my previous post, outlining my decision to re-base my Carthaginian skirmish force to an army based for Swordpoint big battle rules, the first units have very quickly rolled off the painting table...

Admittedly, both these infantry units are fairly small light infantry skirmishing units, but it is certainly motivating to have a couple of battle ready units completed so quickly.

The unit above has four 2 figure bases of Spanish Caetrati. They are armed with javelins and a small shield and would cost 8points per base in Swordpoint rules, for a total of a mere 32 points.

Again, four bases of 2 javelin armed skirmishers with a small shield, but this time, these North African warriors are classed as Inferior Fighters in the Swordpoint army lists and, as such, only cost 5 points per base, for a total of just 20 points for the lot!

The 'unit' most straightforward to re-base was the elephant!

Since I last based the beast, I've added the final touches to the model itself; the shields on the sides of the howdah and the two javelin cases which fit on the back.

The new Swordpoint base is slightly bigger than the one I used earlier, so I employed the same idea that I had used with the cavalry, and simply cut another piece of board and glued it to the original to make it the correct dimensions.

There are a good two pages of special rules devoted to elephants in Swordpoint and I've not even started to get my head round those yet. A basic elephant costs 60 points in the army lists, although with the howdah, it would cost a minimum of 65 points and the lists only permit one elephant to be fielded in armies fighting in Italy.

The grand re-basing continues, with my unit of veteran African spearmen the next to get the treatment. So far, I have added a command base and now need to paint up a further eight figures to complete the 24 figure unit.

You Can Always Change Your Mind When You Can't Change Your Shirt!

Not that I'm bitter or anything!

Back in May 2017, I messaged the lovely people at Victrix Miniatures to ask when their eagerly awaited skirmish rule set, Warriors of Antiquity would be published and I was told to be patient, as they were to appear on the book shelves by the end of the year. Encouraged by this news, my paint brushes became a relative blur of activity as I painted up units of infantry, cavalry and a very lovely elephant for my Carthaginian skirmishing force. So, here we are and, at the time of posting this dispatch, April 2018, Warriors of Antiquity has still not appeared. Furthermore, from what I can gather, the rule set is unlikely to be published at any time in the near future, which means that I need to decide just what exactly do I do with the sixty odd figures I have painted and based for a set of rules which are conspicuous by their absence!

The gradual realisation that I was probably going to have to resort to some other skirmish rule set, sent me rummaging through my store of old publications at the back of the garage and nearly lead to a disaster of major proportions for my Carthaginians. In amongst the pile of booklets and bygone rule sets, I stumbled across a copy of Simon MacDowell's marvellous and timeless little book "Goths, Huns and Romans", which I'd purchased at the Sheffield Triples show sometime back in the early 1990s. Since reading that for the first time, all those years ago, I've had a passion for the anarchy and chaos of the Later Roman Empire and I always fancied building the rag tag horde of some despotic provincial warlord. Sitting on the shelf above my painting station, was a copy of Gripping Beast's Swordpoint rules and in my head closely packed legions of Late Roman Infantry and swarms of Gothic cavalry started to form. With this idea in mind, I began packing away some of my Carthaginians when, with a copy of Swordpoint in one hand and a Carthaginian war elephant in the other I stopped and thought, "Hang on! I can't waste all that time and effort just to pack these away and start a whole new project from scratch!" I've got a rule set that I quite like the look of, with some innovative mechanisms and simple to follow game play and I've got a load of beautifully sculptured figures that I really enjoy painting; why not combine the two? Yes, I'd have to re-base the figures I've already painted and I would need to paint at least twice the number of figures done thus far, but I would have to paint an awful lot more if I started a Late Roman army from the beginning. A wargamer's logic is an unfathomable thing.

So, Victrix, I'm afraid, if you publish Warriors of Antiquity anytime soon, I wont be buying a copy, but you'll probably get your hands on more of my hard earned cash, as I'll need to expand my collection of Gallic warriors and Balearic slingers, to name but two, so that I can convert my skirmish force into a 'proper' wargames army!

The first re-basing for Swordpoint was these two Spanish Caetrati. 2 down, just 148 to go! The bases for skirmishing infantry seem huge and will use up a lot of my very expensive basing glue! The army lists say you can have three figures on these bases, which would use less glue, but my habitual Yorkshire penchant for being miserly means I can make three bases with every six figures rather than two!

Re-basing the Spanish cavalry proved to be a relatively easy task, as a single cavalry base in Swordpoint is exactly double the width of the bases I'd already put them on. Using a bit of carefully administered contact adhesive to stick two bases together and covering up the join with some basing flock was all that was required to make the conversion.

It's funny how things turn out; ten years ago I would have happily used the delay (if that's what it is) in publishing Warriors of Antiquity as an excuse to abandon one project so that I could start another. My Dad was a model railway enthusiast and he spent his entire adult life getting part way through a layout only to abandon it in favour of starting something new instead. Perhaps I've finally turned a corner and developed the resilience to see a project through to completion! The sheer gorgeousness and variety of figures Victrix have produced to enable you to put an army as diverse as a Carthaginian one together is certainly a factor in this case. Turning the sixty figures already done into the one-hundred and fifty or so required for Swordpoint will certainly be a test of character for someone like me, (particularly so as I have a box of Warlord, Bolt Action, German infantry sitting in front of me!) so check back periodically to see how this change of shirt develops.