Age of Hannibal: Carthaginian Army in 6mm

 Howdie.

 As you may be aware, I was involved in part of the development of the Little Wars TV ruleset, Age of Hannibal.  Actually, I even provided the cover art....

Hannibal Portrait

 Not surprisingly, I have a few miniatures in 6mm for this game.

I will be following up with additional portions of my Punic army in the near future, but for now, I will only be discussing what I consider my "Carthage specific" portion of the army.  Given the nature of the Punic military, it will be understandable that this force of mine is separated into contingents.

Here we have the full weight of Carthage, 23 bases of troops (12 formed spear infantry, 6 heavy cavalry, and 5 elephants) with three commanders.  This represents the smallest of the three contingents in my Carthaginian army.

 When first choosing my miniatures, and before we had fully worked out the system, I decided to purchase small amounts of both Baccus and Rapier miniatures.  Both are 6mm, and both I think are fine ranges.  You will notice that the Rapier is somewhat larger than the Baccus.  Ultimately I chose to fill out my armies with Baccus, but the Rapier provide some variety to my army, and would certainly be an option for anyone's army.  Both paint up fine.

Here are the commanders, a general and two captains or sub-commanders.  I have used the general as Hannibal, however, I think I need a base with more flair to represent him.  I do have additional unpainted leaders, and may make a decision about the elephants, discussed below....

Here I have the core component of the Carthaginian infantry force, 4 bases of Baccus African infantry and 4 bases of Veteran infantry. 

They are supported by 2 bases of Rapier Punic Heavy Infantry and 2 bases of Rapier Libyan Heavy infantry.  Having different bases does allow to have different troops in your army be readily identifiable... or could even form part of an opposing force, like, say, rebelling mercenaries.  There are also a grand total of 6 bases of heavy cavalry, which are 5 bases of Baccus and 1 base of Rapier.  This is too much heavy cav at the scale we normally fight battles at in Age of Hannibal.  However, when first organizing them, I was not sure.  Now, I definitely do not have need of so many... and I also found I did not like the look of the 3x3 ranks I put the Baccus in.

And finally, here we have the iconic element of a Carthiginian army, the elephants.  There are 2 bases of Baccus elephants, and 3 bases of Rapier elephants.  You will notice a sizeable difference between the two.  You may also notice that I placed a couple of Numidian javelin men on each, to represent the coordination of skirmishers with elephants in combat.  If 6 bases of heavy cav is too many, 5 bases of elephants is way too many.  Again, this is because I was not thinking clearly about how to organize armies.  I am not sure that Porus would need 5 bases of elephants at Hydaspes.... but maybe.  Anyway, I am thinking about dismantling one of these bases (because 4 would be plenty for any Punic battle, including Zama) to secure a single elephant to create a dedicated commander base for Hannibal.

 

Some other notes.... I recently re-flocked the bases a bit to keep them consistent across all of my forces.  Most of the players in out club tend to go with darker, greener, flock styles.... and generally I think players in a club are serving each other better by having similar flock on their bases.  There is a visual appeal.  However, considering that these troops will fight in battles representing actions in North Africa, Spain, and the length of Italy, I really wanted them to look like they are in a drier, more arid, environment.  Not desert, not mountains, but also not a lush loamy farm valley either. Something that would not look out of place anywhere in the Western Med.

Anyway, hope you like them, and I will follow up with more of this army.  Until then, keep the elephants coming, and maybe learn how to complete sieges....

Thanks.