Minis: 6mm Carthaginians - Libyan Phalanx

As usual, I have way too many hobby projects going on. One that has dragged on for several years is my 6mm ancients. I've got an Early Imperial Roman army pretty much complete (1000 pts in Warmaster Ancients, 700 pts in Field of Glory terms), although about halfway through I changed the way I based them. The new method looks much better, so I need to go back and redo a bunch.

Anywho, they need someone to fight, don't they? Well, even though they missed each other by a couple hundred years, I think I've got enough Carthaginian figures around to scrounge together a fight. Today I start on the Libyan Phoenician Phalanx (figures are Heroics & Ros, MAC04).

Step 1: Research & Inspiration
Painting Carthaginians is tricky. People are unsure about their skin color, the color of their clothes, the shield designs, and the uniformity of appearance. Some quick skimming of my library and the internet reveals:

• The Warmaster Ancients rulebook has the Carthaginian infantry painted up as having very dark skin, red cloth, bronze helmets, and white, undecorated shields.
• Osprey Campaign Series 36: Cannae 216BC depicts an African infantryman as fair-skinned and with a bronze helm. His armor is captured Roman legionary chain and the shield can't be seen, unfortunately.
• P. Connely's Greece and Rome at War has all kinds of eye-candy in it, but no illustrations of Carthaginians.
• This blog has lots of good Carthaginian miniatures painted up. Very ornate shields, Greek-style, large variety. Lightly tanned skin colors.
• The Corvus Belli site has them in white linen armor and red cloth, and either white shield or solid bronze. Bronze helmets.
• This gentleman's site depicts the Libyan soldiers white lighter skin, white linen armor, bronze helms, and a uniform shield motif of an abstract palm tree.
• Baccus, a manufacturer of nice 6mm minis, has their African spearmen with bronze helms and shields with a wide variety of designs on them.
• Firezone Studios painted his 6mm African spearmen the same way.
• Another blogger also has his painted like so.
  

I am going to with the Warmaster Ancients painting scheme: a medium dark skin and stark white shields. Because the only solid historical reference I could find (in my admittedly cursory review) was in Plutarch's Timolean: "...and then ten thousand footmen bearing white shields, whom they guessed to be all Carthaginians, from the splendour of their arms, and the slowness and order of their march. " If it doesn't look good I can always go back and add designs.

Undercoat: black
Skin: GW Tanned Flesh
Armor: GW Skull White
Shield: trim GW Brazen Brass, center GW Skull White
Helm: GW Brazen Brass
Spear Shaft: GW Snakebite Leather
Spear Tip: GW Chainmail

I suspect these guys should have greaves but the sculpt doesn't really seem to accommodate that, so I'll skip it.

OK, ready? Here he go:

2:35 - 3:10pm: Prep (clean-up, gluing to painting sticks, and priming)
3:10 - 3:50pm: Drying time, second coat of primer (also painted up some Roman archers)
3:50 - 5:00pm: painted 250 legs. That's a 3.5 legs per minute. If it seems excessive to take 17 seconds on a single 2mm tall leg, I think it's because there's a lot of non-productive time. Snacking, fiddling with iTunes (the Radio Lab podcast from WNYC is awesome), etc. Still, I'd like to pick up the pace more.

That's it for now. I'll pick up the brush again in a bit.