A very long time project has been collecting 54mm Punic Wars figures to replace all the blocks in the C&C Ancients boardgame with figures; using one figure per block. I had managed to collect a fair few figures and then become stuck as the Hat figures were no longer in stock anywhere and I struggled to get things like slingers.
Eventually, I found some metal slingers and some other figures being sold off by Rupert at Drum and Flag and then the Hat figures came back into production and I was able to put together all the figures I needed.
The effort of painting everything was a little daunting, but then I hit on taking a leaf out of Norm from Battlefield Warrior blog and undercoating each side a different colour and playing with them like that while I worked through painting them...
I undercoated the Carthaginians white and the Romans grey and finished all the bases to make all the figures look consistent.
The edges of the bases are painted the appropriate colour for the block type - green = light, blue = medium, red=heavy. Things like auxilia and warband have a white stripe down the middle of each side as their blocks have a white edge around the colours.
My regular opponent Anthony and I played the first game last week using Trebbia as the scenario and it worked well and looked good, even with unpainted figures.
The game was very close and I lost 6 to 7 as the Carthaginians, not helped by the ambush by Mago not turning up.
The game has certainly inspired me to get on and paint another set of figures...
I have built up some rather large HaT Punic Wars armies. Several years ago it was easy to find Roman Hasatii and Velites and cavalry, but there were no Triarii were as difficult as hens’ teeth to find. Now the Hastati are difficult to find.
ReplyDeleteOn the Carthaginian sides I can find elephants, light infantry, Africans, Celtic foot and cavalry, and Spanish infantry. Celt-Iberian Spanish foot, Spanish cavalry, Carthaginian cavalry and Carthaginian Veterans are difficult to find.
I will have the left overs up for sale at some point soon - if you are still looking for figures let me know and I’ll see what I’ve got
DeleteI think C&C with figures is a great idea - though I suspect 54mm are a bit large for me! Looks great though, and Norm's undercoating idea is a good one, gets them onto the table and motivates further painting..
ReplyDeleteWe are playing another game today. I have so many projects on the go that being able to play something keeps some focus on it.
DeleteI think C&C works very well with ancient figures. I too have been using 1/32 size figures with very pleasing results. I found that Army Speed paints were a good solution to churning out figures quickly. The figures are initially sprayed with white primer and when dry the paint goes on very quickly and dries fast. I can paint a box of 16 figures in a day using this method (not counting primer). There are some examples on my blog.
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