Painting the Punic pachyderm

I finally finished elephant #1 for my FoG Carthaginian army. I actually finished it last week, but held off posting until I took pictures. This was the first 28mm elephant I have painted. It seemed like a daunting task at first, but I learned a lot in my first try and I expect that elephant #2, which will complete the unit, will go more quickly and smoothly.

As I posted earlier, the Crusader Miniatures model doesn't exactly look like an African elephant should. It's a nice model, as elephant models go, but the round porcine body makes it look a bit more like Shep from George of the Jungle than a real elephant. But I have to say that that's par for the course with elephant models. I can't think of any other manuafacturer's model that looks any more like a real elephant. I also think that if any manufacturer came out with a real-looking elephant model, people would complain that it doesn't look right.

My first task was partialy assembling the model. The elephant itself comes in three parts, the howdah in five parts, and the crew are three figures: mahout and two fighting crew. I built the elephant using the miraculous Gorilla Glue super glue and a bit of ProCreate professional scultptor's putty. The Gorilla Glue is my new favorite. It works great and is impact resistant so you don't lose spears or see your model fall apart on the tabletop after a wee bump. The two-part sculptor's putty is pretty easy to use, but stiffer than I thought it would be. Long ago, I picked up some steel sculpting tools on a whim (I had no idea what I'd do with them, but they were really cheap). I finally found a use for them shaping the putty after I applied it to the assembled elephant model. Then, after the putty fully cured, I carved off the excess with an X-Acto knife and went over it all with a bit of fine sandpaper. The result was a smooth, seamless look.

I left the howdah separate from the elephant for priming and painting. It's easier to work with the parts separately. I didn't assemble the final model until after the elephant, howdah, and crew were painted separately.

In progess: elephant on its base with the howdah being painted separately

I started by painting the elephant's skin and eyes. I used a base color of Vallejo Basalt Gray over which I drybrushed lighter versions of the same color. I used Vallejo Ivory for the tusks and toenails with a dark gray wash around them. While painting the elephant's skin, I could hold onto the blanket part, but I didn't want to grasp any part I'd painted while painting the blanket and howdah straps. So, I decided to attach the elephant to the base for further painting.


The business end of the Carthaginian elephant corps

I terrained the base first using the coarse pumice gel medium. Only two of the four legs of the elephant touch ground and I wasn't sure how sturdy it would be while painting, so I drilled a hole in one of the feet and used a short bit of brass rod to connect the model to the base. I'm not sure how much more secure that makes it, but I thought it would help keep the elephant on the base. I use magnetic sheet on the bottom of the base and line the storage box with metal. It can be a pretty good stick and I fear that pulling the base off the steel may put strain on the model if I pick it up that way. (I'll need to line the box in such a way that I can easily pull the model out by the base.)

The base I used was 80mm square (I'm using bases for the 28mm figures that are twice the dimensions of the 15mm base sizes). Painting the elephant on that base was pretty awkward at times, but I managed. I opted for a yellowish tan for the blanket with a blue border. For the straps, I wanted to use Reaper Paints Oiled Leather, but my bottle had dried out and I couldn't find more anywhere in the greater Seattle area. Instead I used Regal's Realms Leather Work paint. It's not very opaque, so I had to use several coats to get it right. (I finally got the Oiled Leather paint, so I'll use that on elephant #2.)

I painted the howdah's interior Vallejo Dark Red and used Vallejo Red Leather for the exterior. I also drybrushed lightened Red Leather over the exterior to bring out the texture.

I decided to go with a darker flesh color for the crew. I figure the mahout would be Numidian and the crew Libyan (although, really, they could just as well be all Numidians). In any case, I figured they would be darker than Iberians, Guals, Italians, etc. I went with Howard Hues Middle East Flesh as the base coat. I think it turned out OK, but I might have wanted a shade lighter for the Libyans. From what I've read, ancient Libyans were lighter skinned than one might imagine, but not exactly caucasian.

The elephant's crew

After finishing the elephant, I attached the fully-painted howdah and mahout, but not the howdah crew, and gave it coat of polyurethane as a protective coat. It's pretty glossy once it dries and I had to apply several coats of dullcote to tone it down. I sprayed the howdah crew separately with the polyurethane and dullcote. Then I completed terraining the base with the rocks and various layers of Woodland Scenics turf.


Somewhat aerial view of the base

Finally, I put the crew in the howdah. Up to this point, I was never sure they would both fit, so I was very happy to discover that there is ample room for both fighting crew.

I still have to get elephant #2, which John is having a hard time getting from the dustributor. There must be some kind of run on Carthaginians since I started painting my army. I've already talked to three people in the Seattle area who are working on armies. We may have a Carthaginian civil war brewing...

One hephalump coming up!

I hoped by now to be able to post about a completed Carthaginian elephant. I started it some weeks back, but progress slowed. I'm no further now than I was a week ago. The heat and a few days' illness stopped me from finishing. So, rather than finish it now, I'll post on how I haven't finished it.

It's a Crusader Miniatures model. Overall, it's OK, but I have a few nits to pick. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure it's not an African elephant, as I believe it should be for Carthaginians. Of course they may have imported Asian elephants from the Greek East, but Ptolomey IV's army at Raphia notably used the smaller African elephants against Antiochus III's larger Asians. I get the impression that when in Africa, use African elephants. The model looks quite big compared to the infantry manning the howdah, so my guess is that it's either modeled as an Asian elephant or an indiscriminate large pachyderm. As the following picture shows, it's definitely not an African.

Also, it has a howdah. As far as I know, no known image of a Carthaginian war elephant with a howdah exists and no description of them mentions whether the crew was mounted astride the back or in a howdah. The assumption, I think, has always been that the crew were more likely to have ridden astride--again assuming that the elephants are African and too small for a howdah. But who knows.

The model fit together mostly OK. Just a few points of disjoint. On Kevin Smyth's recommendation, I used two-part epoxy modeling compound to fill in the seams. This was especially important around the neck. Once primed and painted, the seams disappear.

I have just a bit more to do. By now, the elephant itself is painted and the howdah is mounted on top. I'm finishing the crew. After that I will apply the base coat of clear polyurethane, let that dry for a few days, dullcote it, and complete the last steps: flock the base and mount the crew in the howdah. I haven't tried yet, but I think it will be a tight fit (another of my nits). Also, the mahout looks like he'd fit better on a horse than an elephant. He won't seat properly, so I'll have to fudge it some way.

I hope to have the elephant completed this week and pictures of it posted. After that I need to complete a second one to finish the unit for my nascent Field of Glory Carthaginian army.

Punic firepower (We will rock you)

Hot on the heels of the first two bases being completed for my Spanish scutarii, comes a complete unit of Balearic slingers, which is only impressive until you realize that it's only 12 figures--and easy figures at that. Still, it's something.

The figures are Crusader Miniatures, like all the rest of the Carthaginians I'm painting. However, I saw pictures of the Companion Miniatures range online and was very impressed. They looked like the business. 

Balearic slingers were some of the premiere mercenaries of the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. Crusader, who market their figures as "Spanish slingers," designed them to look a lot like shepherds who've taken a break from abiding in their fields to lob rocks at someone. They've got their tunics, their bag o' rocks, a sling, and a small knifey thing at their waist; just a bit more military than Hillary Clinton (but not as menacing). 

The Companion Miniatures, on the other hand, bear a caetra (a wee shield) and carry a falcata in addition to their slings. They are much more as you'd expect buff BC mercs to look. This means that I may at some point transfer the allegiance of my just completed slingers to Rome and paint a new unit for Carthage using these figures. Field of Glory (FoG) rates these guys superior quality; they should look the part. Nevertheless, in a wikipedia article about the sling, the illustration of a Balearic slinger looks just about like the Crusader Minis.

In any case, I have my first complete unit painted for my Carthaginian FoG army. In fact, it's my first completed 28mm FoG unit at all.

Slingers are a fairly potent force for Punic War armies. The western Mediterranean didn't produce massed missile troops. The most typical skirmish weapon was the javelin. Roman velites, Italian states' skirmishers, Numidians, Gauls, and Spanish caetrati were armed with them. Even the Greek states used javelin-hurling peltasts as their main light infantry troop type. But the javelin lacks something in range, which the sling makes up for. Ancient sources, such as Xenophon, Strabo, Cassius Dio, and Vegetius, claim that a sling-shot outdistanced a bow-shot. Yigael Yadin claimed the same from the evdidence of Assyrian reliefs that showed bowmen in front and slingers to the rear. Nevertheless, most writers of ancients rules sets pretty much consistently give slings a shorter range than bows; FoG is no exception. Slings shoot 4 MUs (movement units of 1" or 25mm) while bows have an effective range of 4 MUs, but can shoot out to 6. Slings are otherwise as effective, or ineffective, as bows in FoG, but I'm not sure that this should be so.

In WRG 6th edition ancient rules, slings had better shooting values against armored targets; in some cases dramaticallty better. However, their maximum range was half that of bows (12" versus 24"), but unlike bows, they never suffered for long range, which bows did for any shot over 6". Also, WRG, gave staff-slings at 24" range. FoG doesn't consider the staff-sling as a separate weapon type and instead just lumps them in with slings. It's too bad; they should be separated and given a longer range. FoG is a great set of rules, but I find myself scratching my head sometimes over a detail that strikes me as an oversight. This is one of them.

I have to admit that I'm something of a slingophile. I just like 'em. Every time an army list gives me a chance in to use slingers, I will. I painted these fellows with plain tunics, though with a variety of colors. No units in an ancients army has any business looking uniform. I like how they turned out, except that the faces, as usual, aren't what I want them to be. The eyes are a little bit like what you see in Japanese anime.

I just hope these fellows don't fail miserably in their first game and get forever cursed. 

Scutarii first fruits: A tale of two bases

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I completed the first 10 figures of the Spanish mercenary scutarii unit for my nascent Field of Glory Carthaginian army. Since the basing I'm using calls for four on a base, I've still got two odd men out, but the other eight are fully based and ready to rock and roll.

I used 80mm x 40mm Litko bases (3mm thick) with a magnetic base stuck on underneath. Litko bases are a godsend. They are cut precisely to size within 0.0001mm. I used to manage all kinds of quadrilateral shapes when I was cutting bases out of plastic. I even managed to trim off bits of thumb as well. Litko is a vast improvement.

I glue the figures to the base using superglue, partly because it does a great job binding the wood and metal, but mostly because it inhibits me from ever rebasing (on which more in a later post). After this I slather on a coat of Golden's good ol' coarse pumice gel medium. I apply it with a medium sized palette knife. I always make sure that there is a little bit of the medium overhanging the base so when I trim it later, there's a nice edge. I let the gel medium  dry overnight. If I get too eager, I wind up ruining things.

Once the medium is dry, I trim the edges with an X-Acto knife to get a nice clean look to the base. I paint the base coat on the medium using watered down Mud Brown from the Vallejo Air line of paints. Ater that dries, I dry brush some Howard Hues Colonial Khaki to bring out the highlights of the rough surface.

Now I attach a few rocks. I like the look of them on an individual base because it adds character like a vignette. However, too many per base and the unit, once complete, looks like it's straggling into combat through a boulder field. I use the model railrod talus produced by Woodland Scenics. They come in four grades. For these bases I used the coarse grade, but I will likely mix in some extra coarse and medium as well on other bases. The trick with them is to file down the side you'll attach to the base. This makes it look like the rock is partially buried in the earth, which is natural. Speaking of which, I use the natural color of the rock. I can stain it any color I want because the shade is neutral. For these bases, I applied a very thin wash of Vallejo Desert Yellow, just enough to settle into the crevasses and create a textured hue.

Once the rocks are on and stained with the wash, I apply multiple coats of Woodland Scenics turf. I used two coats of Blended Earth turf. I allow several hours between the coats; preferably drying overnight. I use Mod Podge, which you can get in craft stores, to glue on the scenic turf. It dries slowly and maximizes "stick." The first coat is straight out of the bottle. The second coat is watered down and daubed over the turf from the first coat. The two coats add depth to the texture of the base. In some cases, I've added three or even four coats to get the look I want. Finally, I topped off the base with patches of coarse turf. I'm pretty happy with the result.

Painting the figures was pretty straightforward. The sources I read, spoke of off-white tunics with magenta trim. Some few of the sources said it was a national costume. I did a few off white, using Howard Hues Linen, with various colors of trim, but I prefer a more varied array of color for the infantry. I don't want uniform unitl I get to the 17th century.

I painted the shields my self, but I got the inspiration from the Little Big Men Designs shields. LBM decals are very nice, but I feel like I'm cheating if I don't paint my own shields. 

Finally, the faces look a bit better than lipstick on a pig. This is a cruelly close picture of one of the best results, but no one truly wants to face his day with this mug. 

Fortunately, the figures are smaller in real life and most of the gamers I play with are older and have poor vision. 

Now I have the remaining 14 figures, which I've started. I'll finish six first and get another two bases complete (along with the orphans from my first batch), and then finish with the remaining eight. I think this scheme of painting in bits rather than attempting to do battery painting on all 24 figures at once is working.