Gallic Army

Following from the previous post displaying the start of my ancient armies project, and the first completed roman legionaries, here is the first enemy up to face the Roman forces - the Gauls. I am sticking to Hail Caesar rules, and so have created a unit of Medium Infantry Gallic Warband, which has a very high clash value, but drops off significantly in sustained combat. It also has the Wild Fighters feat, allowing it to reroll missed attack rolls in the first round of combat, to further give the feel of an aggressive but less conditioned warrior group.

The figures used are HaT Gallic Warband Set 8089, which I bought for a very reasonable price. I found the figures satisfactory, however somewhat flat and also quite devoid of facial features in several poses. However for 48 figures, it is good value for money. They have been painted with Humbrol enamels, and painting the various checkered clothing patterns was quite a challenge.

Some of the shields are water-slide transfers from Little Big Men studios, in 15mm scale - some trimming and painting in the gaps was required, but the result was satisfactory in the end. I also tried Victrix 28mm shield transfers, but these were generally much too large. Lastly, several of the shields are hand painted by myself, the design often based on examples in the unused transfer decals.

The overall look of the models is quite good, but to be critical, the repeated poses seem quite apparent, which negates the randomized rabble-look desired from a warband unit. It is more apparent in real life, but doesn't look too bad in the photo.

I tried something new for the basing, creating a mixture of fine sand-less plaster mix, with oven cooked and dried dirt, and water and pva, leaving a DIY modelling paste. I found the paste quite good, however the application needs some practice. The finished surface is far too choppy - the ground is akin to a choppy ocean swell, not realistic ground. Also, i still don't have the right colour palette for the basing - this time the first coat was too dark, and I couldn't create a good light brown/beige from my basic acrylic set for the drybrush.

To compliment the Warband unit, there are one or two units of skirmisher slingers. Hail Caesar rules limits these units to Open Order, so individual round bases were the most suitable. Also, depending on how I want to play the game, I could designate a single unit as a group of four or eight models - likely to stretch the materials, I will call this two distinct units.

Lastly, there is one unit/small unit of gallic skirmishing archers, which I have decided to base yet again differently. This time, I wanted to experiment with a smaller group base, for this Open Order limited skirmisher unit.

Firstly, on the table top, it will be easier to move the unit with the models mounted onto half the number of bases. Secondly, in the Hail Caesar Germanic army list, there is a Light Infantry Archer unit, which I feel these models will be a perfect match for. This type of unit is able to form Closed Order and Open Order, so the 2-model bases could be a good compromise. One day I may create an army from this list, and will be able to integrate these models into it.

You may have noticed that these pictures do not contain all 48 figures supplied in the HaT set. They are all painted, but I decided to leave some figures in reserve, to be mixed into the next Gallic Warband unit that I will create, mixed with models from one of the following sets:

Caesar H064 Celt Warriors - excellent sculpt and range, difficult to buy;

Italeri 6022 Gaul Warriors - well detailed, limited poses;

Revell 02553 Celts (Gauls) - good sculpt and poses, rare to find.

I hope that the models will mix well, and help to produce an angry, wild mass of Celts, when combined with other manufacturers poses. Furthermore, I left out most of the chain-mail armored warriors from this set, and intend to combine them with other chain-mail models to create an armored unit, possibly designated a General's Guard medium infantry warband, which is limited to one unit in the game. It also benefits from the Tough, Stubborn and Valiant special rules, which reduce casualties taken in combat, increase casualties inflicted and reduce chances of unit breaking.

For the future, I intend to buy one more set of Gauls/Celts, and create two more warband units to complete the infantry for a Gallic Hail Caesar army division. Also, I will need the cavalry units - not only for the Gauls themselves, but also for the Romans, as the Early Imperial Roman army relied on mostly mercenary cavalry, one of the top recruited groups were the Gauls. Options are:

HaT 8022 Celtic Cavalry - average sculpts, 12 mounted models;

Italeri 6029 Celtic Cavalry - great sculpts, inaccurate weaponry, 15 mounted models.

As per game guidelines, standard Medium cavalry units should contain 8 models (which I will base as two models per 25mm x 25mm base), so with both sets giving me 27 mounted models, I will be able to make three full units, plus some spares. Lastly, I will need to make some suitably gallant commander units to lead the divisions of Gallic horde...

FYI, suitable Germanic sets:

Caesar H040 Ancient Germans - great sculpt, range, nude warriors, specifically Germanic; 

Esci 225 Barbarian Warriors/Italeri 6048 Barbarian Warriors - good sculpt, more generic warriors.

Hail Caesar Armies

Alongside my World War 2 project, I have an ancient armies project ongoing too, focusing on Rome and her enemies. I haven't specified which era of Rome I am focusing on because I like the Republican and Imperial eras, and want to keep it flexible. 

To begin with, my first roman units aren't even within either of these categories, they are Caesarian legionary units (which puts them in the post-Marian reform era, or 1st century BC). This wasn't something I specifically chose to do, but ended up with a box of Italeri 1/72 roman soldiers (set 6021), so that's what I painted. 

This was my first ever attempt at painting soldiers, in any scale. I tackled the box in two halves, finishing one half then moving on to the next. 

I used Humbrol enamel paints, and created my own washes with the paints thinned down. The bases are 20mm x 20mm (standard Hail Caesar size) square cut sections of self adhesive floor tiling. To base, I spread on some pva and added sand. This Italeri set was ridiculed for its poor range of poses (there are basically two) and while I agree that the range is poor, it doesn't look too terrible when arranged in a regimented pattern such as this. I later painted the bases and dry-brushed them.

The colour palette for the basing turned out far redder/pinker than I'd hoped, so in the future I will search for a more suitable Burnt Umber -like dark brown for the first coat. But anyway, here are my first two legionary units suitable for a Caesarian ancient battle. 

There aren't too many options available for plastic 1/72 sets in this era, so next I will be moving onto later, Imperial roman legionaries. I feel that these Caesarian units share many qualities with later legionaries (standardized uniforms, weaponry, etc.) anyway, and so I will be happy to include them into  Imperial Rome battles.

Hail Caesar rules ask for Commander units, so here I've created such a unit (for now will serve as the head General no less). 

You can maybe guess, he is certainly styled on the great general Caesar himself, with the short blonde hair, and flowing red cape. I chose white for the horse colour, and was happy with how it turned out. The basing was painted and dry-brushed like the main units, and I much later added the vegetation (which I will discuss in a later post).

For the next post, I will discuss and present my first enemy units to face off against my Roman units - who better to face such a challenge than the Gauls..!

Decided to keep a track of my projects and progress by creating this blog.

I thought I'd start off by showing my first completed 1/72 scale tank, an M4A1 75mm Sherman, finished last year. This is the Italeri M4A1 model kit.

I built the model and primed it in grey Tamiya primer, and used Humbrol enamels to paint the main olive drab. It was quite a lot of work just to get the base colour down, so will use spray primers in the future. Next I've painted small gloss varnish squares in the areas i would place the decals - to prevent ghosting. After applying the decals, I gave an overall dark brown wash and finished with dry brushing a lightened olive drab colour on the raised edges.

Quite happy with the outcome, especially for a first attempt at a 1/72 scale ground vehicle. The homemade enamel wash nearly destroyed the base coat, so that is something to definitely avoid again. The level of detail of the model is high, but probably unnecessarily so for a wargaming piece. Next I will try the simpler easy build kits from Italeri and Armourfast.

The completed model has been built as part of an ongoing 1/72 (20mm) scale World War 2 Normandy 1944 themed project. Using Bolt Action rules and army lists as inspiration, I'm trying to create a US Army and German late war forces, plus all the buildings and scenery.