Old Glory 25mm Gauls

Back in the summer of 2005, I painted my first 28mm armies, building the starter EIR and Gallic armies from the WAB main rule book. I had won Merrimack's photo contest and received $150 of merchandise of my choice, so I bought Romans and Gauls and set to work.

I was a little disappointed in the Romans. I've since bought enough Crusader EIR legionaries to build three cohorts (you can see a painted cohort here). But Old Glory's Gauls are first rate. The usual complaints about Old Glory figures (overly animated, weird poses, too much variety) actually work in these figures' favor. You want your Gauls to look like a lunging, ill-disciplined tribal band.

CWG-10 Gallic Medium and Light Cavalry

The cavalry come in five poses. One, not pictured, is holding a spear upright. These are savage looking horsemen, perfect for making a reckless charge.

CWG-08 Gallic Cavalry Command

The cavalry command pack contains armored and unarmored men. The fellow on the white horse is my Gallic general. The yelling man on the left is my army standard bearer.

CWG-11 Gallic Slingers

These are probably my least favorite troops from the range. Something about the proportions on the two leftmost figures seems a little off. You can see that I was attempting to paint eyes on my early 28mm figures. I've since abandoned the practice, since it never looks right to me. If the eyes are big enough to see, they're too big for the figure scale. If they're small enough for the figure scale, they're too small to see.

CWG-01 Gallic Foot Command

CWG-02 Gallic Heavy Infantry

CWG-03 Gauls with no helmet, bare torso

CWG-04 Gauls with helmet, bare chested

CWG-05 Gauls with tunic, no helmet

CWG-06 Gauls with helmet and tunic

The infantry really look the part. With Old Glory figures, you can build a shrieking mob of warriors guaranteed to fill the heart of any Roman with fear. I took most of these photos after I bought my first order of Little Big Men shield transfers. Although I've painted almost 150 Gauls, not all of them made it into these pictures.

The Gallic infantry comes in a wide variety of poses. I count 68 different figures in these six packs. Old Glory also offers different Gallic figures in their Carthaginian range, which I haven't painted, but which offer another 45 poses. Add in head variants, and you really can field a large army with very few repeated figures. How many other ranges offer 113 different poses for Gallic infantry?

If I were building a 28mm Gallic army from scratch, I would definitely use North Star spears instead of those Old Glory monstrosities. I would cut them down to javelin length so I could more easily rank up my figures on their movement trays. And I would use LBM transfers on the whole shooting match. But I would still use Old Glory figures. I've been painting 28s for a while now, and I've seen (and even painted) Gauls from other manufacturers' ranges: 1st Corps, Foundry, and Gripping Beast.

The Old Glory Gauls still give the best overall impression of any of them.

Old Glory Austrian Cuirassiers

This is a unit I painted for the Aspern-Essling game back in October.  As the battle turned out, I could have saved my time.  These heavy cavalry failed all their maneuver rolls and never got into action.

Armies of the period tended to mount each squadron on similarly colored horses.  At least that was the ideal.  I imagine that, under the stresses of actual campaigning, that ideal was rarely attained.  Still, I like the look, and I paint my brigades accordingly.  These cuirassiers got blacks, befitting their status as elite heavy horse.

The Old Glory figures painted up very well.  I have some AB French cuirassiers, and they're beautiful figures.  For my next batch of Austrians, I'll probably use ABs.  Still, I got these figures for $.64 apiece, and I'm happy with them.

Current Reading

I love historical fiction because it lets me get inside history. Rather than a cold, objective analysis of historical probability based on incomplete records, we can read a plausible narrative, presented from within the characters' minds. But good historical fiction is hard to come by. Most authors seem content to put 20th century characters in a more remote setting. The characters' attitudes are contemporary, and only their surroundings change. (I'm thinking of Clan of the Cave Bear, World without End, the Sharpe series, and their ilk).

Not surprisingly, the best historical fiction tends to produce series. Once an author creates a plausible historical world, it makes sense to keep writing within it. McCullough's Ceasar series is one of these. So is Owen Parry's Abel Jones series. To my mind, the very pinnacle of historical fiction comes from two authors, Patrick O'Brian and C.S. Forester, and both deal with the Royal Navy of the Napoleonic Wars.

I got into Forester by watching A&E's Horatio Hornblower series. Each episode (and there are eight) tells a 100 minute story from the young Hornblower's career. The TV show led me to the books, which I've read a few times. I've been making my way through the series again the past few weeks, and I'm up to the penultimate book now.


As always when I'm reading anything historical, I'm getting inspired to try some wargaming with the period. I'm leaning toward Too Fat Lardies' Sharpe Practice to game out some shore actions, but I'm having a heck of a time finding figures that fit my mental picture of the Napoleonic Royal Navy. There's definitely a gap here that an enterprising figure company could exploit.

Lest you think I've gone soft with all this fiction, I'm also reading Gibbon and Thucydides at the moment. If you've followed this blog, you'll know that I don't need much encouragement to game classical ancients.

November Painting Totals

It was another busy month for me. I started and finished a complete 15mm Carthaginian army, and I worked on a few other figures without finishing them. Here's what I painted:

15mm Carthaginians, 137 foot, 43 mounted, 2 elephants, and 6 elephant crew
28mm Greeks, 2 infantrymen

That's a total of 388 SPPs. Not a bad month, but not back to my old pace.

October 08, 368 SPPs
September 08, 299 SPPs
August 08, 654 SPPs
July 08, 362 SPPs

Figures painted so far in 2008 (1,675):
28mm Foot: 526
28mm Mounted: 59
28mm Elephants: 2
15mm Foot: 815
15mm Mounted: 150
15mm Limbers and Teams: 12
15mm Guns: 1
15mm Gunners: 2
15mm Elephants: 2
15mm Elephant Crew: 6
10mm Foot: 100
10mm Mounted: 39

15mm Carthaginian FoG Army

I took advantage of the Old Glory 15s prepacked sets and bought some Field of Glory armies. This is the "Later Carthaginian" army from the "Rise of Rome" book, suitable for the Punic Wars. The army contains:

3 generals
2 BGs of Libyan spearmen (6 bases each)
1 BG of elephants (2 bases)
1 BG of Spanish scutari (6 bases)
1 BG of Spanish cavalry (4 bases)
1 BG of Gallic swordsmen (8 bases)
1 BG of Gallic cavalry (4 bases)
2 BGs of Numidian light horse (4 bases each)
1 BG of Numidian javelinmen (6 bases)
1 BG of Balearic slingers (6 bases)

First up are the army's three generals. Field of Glory calls for these to be cavalry bases, but Old Glory gives you three foot command and one mounted general per base. I've found that the cavalry general bases tend to blend in with the army during a game, so I really like Old Glory's approach to generals. These command bases stand out, making your generals easy to spot.


Here are the African heavy infantry, the solid core of Hannibal's army. I gave these men a pretty uniform look, going with simple white linothorax armor and blood red tunics. The shields really make these units pop. I went with a wide variety of designs.



I had never painted 15mm elephants before, but I have painted a few elephants for my 28mm army. Old Glory provides two different heads, which really make the elephants come alive. This might be my favorite unit in the army.


FoG classes Spanish scutari as medium foot. I didn't want these men to look as uniform as the African infantry, so I varied their tunic colors and helmet crests quite a bit. Their shields got a uniform design to make them look semi-professional. I was careful to paint the bands on the sinew helmets.


The Spanish heavy cavalry got a mix of shield designs, but uniform tunics and horsehair plumes. I painted the horse tackle in the famous Spanish crimson. The cloaks on these figures had a lot of deep relief, which made it very easy to paint good looking folds.


The Gallic contingent provides the most color to Hannibal's army. I painted checked and striped designs for the clothing, and I really mixed it up so no two soldiers are alike. The shields got a wide variety of colors and ornamentation. No two shields are alike either. These swordsmen are heavy infantry. Between their dress and their shields, they look like an undisciplined, but savage, body of warriors.


The Gallic cavalry got the same treatment as the infantry. I painted the horse tackle in a natural leather color. The only quibble I have with Old Glory's packaging is that I got four copies of the same pose (the fellow stretching his sword forward).



I have to admit, I love painting Numidian cavalry. I used the exact same technique on these 15mm figures that I did on my 25mm Numidians, and it worked just as well. The 15mm packs came with quite a few poses, which really makes the Numidians look like a swarm of undisciplined light horse.


The Numidian javelinmen are plain figures, so I went all out on shading the unbleached linen tunics. The shield designs help make the figures more visually attractive.


The Balearic slingers also got the full treatment on their unbleached linen tunics. I painted slightly different shades for the Numdians and Balearic islanders. Even though the figures don't have a lot of ornamentation, these are two of the best looking figures in the army.

All bases are Litko. I spent a pretty penny on bases for the 15mm FoG armies, but I think Litko bases are always worth the extra money.

To flock the bases, I used Woodland Scenics light brown fine ballast, which I secured to the bases with a white glue wash. I then drybrushed the ballast with Delta's "latte" to make the dirt really pop. I glued tallus and clump foliage to break up the dirt a bit and add some color.

All told, the army has 137 foot, 43 mounted, and two elephants with six crew. I'm painting these for sale, so if these catch your fancy, email me and we'll negotiate a price. I usually get between $4-$5 per foot figure and between $8-$10 per cavalryman when selling on eBay, so I figure this army is worth somewhere between $900-$1,150. But I am willing to budge a bit on that number.

The Old Glory figures were a joy to paint. These are proper 15s, exactly 15mm from bottom of foot to eye level, so they can't carry the amount of detail of Xyston figures, but they come very close.

I'm very impressed with the army packaging. It lets me build a FoG army without having to worry about excess figures, and it actually costs less than buying the figures in their normal bags. Now I have four more armies to paint: Punic Wars Romans, Marian Romans, Gauls, and Alexandrian Macedonian.

Crusader Greek Hoplites

Matt, one of my students, is building a Greek army for Warhammer Ancient Battles. These are his figures. He used Little Big Men transfers for the shields, Litko bases, and North Star spears. Click on the pictures for larger images.

20 man hoplite unit

20 man hoplite unit from the rear; check out that linothorax armor!

Command. You can really see Matt's technique for shading the tunics.

Rankers. It's tough to shade the faces inside those helmets.

Matt has been painting miniatures for just over a year. He's 14 years old. If he keep progressing at this rate, he'll embarrass me within the next year or so.