Old Glory 25mm Carthaginian Libyan Spearmen

The gaming group ran through a trial of Field of Glory a couple weeks ago, pitting Carthaginians against Republican Romans in a Punic Wars battle. I like the game, and although it probably won't replace WAB as my go-to set of ancients rules, I will definitely play it again.

We used my WAB-based troops on 60mm magnetic movement bases. It worked pretty well, but if I'm going to keep playing FOG, I'll need some dedicated bases for it. I did find that the Litko magnetic sheeting was very weak, with figures popping off throughout our game. My old standby magnetic sheeting from Warweb did a much better job.

The game did inspire me to dig out a pack of Old Glory Carthaginians from the lead pile. With 30 figures to a bag, I had some wiggle room to base some in 60mm groups and some on 20mm squares. While I'm waiting for my 60mm Litko bases, I thought I'd share some pictures of the painted figures.

PPC-04 Libyan Medium Infantry

The figures are dressed in linothorax armor, just like classical Greek hoplites. They have Old Glory's cylindrical Carthaginian shield, which has a dimple in the center that makes painting designs a little tricky. Unlike the veteran spearmen, these figures do not have leg greaves. The standard bearer, officer, and musician are the same poses from PPC-01 and PPC-04.

The figures do not come with weapons. I used Old Glory spears with my older Carthaginians, so for the sake of uniformity I used them here, but I'm growing to dislike those enormous spear heads. If anyone has any tips on where I can find some decent turned steel spears (preferably with sharp points), please email me!

I prime black before painting. As always, these figures are painted with craft paints. The skin base coat is my own mixture from Delta dark brown, territorial tan, and medium flesh. The skin highlights are dark flesh, which I though appropriate for ancient Libyans. Any beards got a drybrush of storm grey. The sandals are drybrushed autumn brown. The linothorax armor got a basecoat of mudstone and highlights of oyster white and designs with vibrant green and opaque red. The tunic has a basecoat of cinnamon and highlight of cinnamon with a touch of white mixed in. Cloaks are dark burnt umber with highlights of dark burnt unmber and a little white. Spearheads and sword blades are Apple Barrel bright silver, and spear shafts are Delta dark brown. The scale armor, breastplates, and shield backs got a coat of brown iron oxide. All the helmets, sword pommels, armor scales, breastplates, and shield rims are Testor's enamel gold.

All 30 Carthaginians

I based 12 of the figures on 20mm square Litko bases with Litko flexible steel on the bottom (my WAB movement trays have magnetic sheeting). The other 18 will go on 60mm x 20mm Litko bases. This way I can use the FOG bases for WAB by using my singles as "change" to fill out the ranks.

All these shields have hypothetical designs inspired my Little Big Men transfers. LBM doesn't make transfers for Old Glory Carthaginians (I assume because the shield dimple would make attaching them very difficult), so I painted these by hand.

Rear view

Greek art depicts colorful designs on the linothorax armor, and I figure that the Carthaginians would have adopted this tradition along with the armor. I painted a mixture of geometric designs, "Macedonian" stars, Carthaginian palms, and totem figures. With their bright shields and decorated armor, this is a very colorful unit!

I've painted most of Old Glory's Carthaginian line now, and I think it's one of their best. Are they as nice as Crusader? Well, no. But they are half the price, and they make nice looking units. It's great to have good sculpts, but it's the brushwork that really counts, and Old Glory's figures paint up just as nicely as anyone else's.