28mm Gauls: Light Infantry and Cavalry

The Commands and Colors system rewards a general who can make good use of his skirmishers. They are highly mobile, with the ability to move and shoot AND evade close combat. They cannot provide a killing blow, but they can wear down the enemy with missile fire and slither away from most attackers. I consider CCA's treatment of light troops to be the best I have seen in any game system.

The Gauls have a variety of light foot troops. Archers and slingers act just the same in the rules, with a range of three hexes. Javelinmen and light cavalry have a range of two.

The slingers were the only light troops I had painted for my first army. Everyone else here has come across the painting desk within the past two months.

28mm Gauls: Chariots!

 My old Warhammer Ancient Battles army had four chariot models in it. Commands and Colors does not call for many Gallic chariots except for one scenario, Caesar's landing in Britain, when the Britons field seven units of chariots, or 14 models!

The first picture shows chariots that I painted away back in 2005. To my eye now, they look too dark, and the paint does not have enough contrast between layers.

The models I finished this summer pop much better.

All my Commands and Colors troops get stored in these 12" x 9" plastic cases, each labelled with the contents.

28mm Gauls: Auxilia

 One of the more interesting troop types in Commands and Colors is "auxilia." They are a hybrid of light and line infantry, able to use missile fire or fight in close combat, but lacking the full mobility of skirmishers and the full striking power of line troops. That description makes them sound underpowered, but as always with Commands and Colors, a good player can find ways to make them a devastating force. 

These seven units all use Old Glory figures. I painted these this summer and finished basing them in September.

Auxilia get the light green base sides of light infantry with the white stripe to denote auxilia.

28mm Gauls: Warrior Infantry

 Another long term project that is coming to a close is my ancient Celtic army. This one started as a force for Warhammer Ancient Battles back in 2006. I had expanded the army for Field of Glory, which were a little fiddly for my group's taste. Now I have completed the army and can play any scenario in Commands and Colors: Ancients. 

Most of these warriors are leftovers from the first two iterations of the army. The base scenarios call for up to eight units of warriors. I have enough for 11 3/4 units here (47 bases).

Warrior units count as medium foot in Commands and Colors, but they have a couple of tweaks. They can charge two hexes into combat, they ignore one retreat flag, and they fight with reduced dice after they take their first casualty. The blue base edges denote "medium," and the white line in the middle marks them out as warriors.

Most figures are Old Glory, but there is a smattering of Gripping Beast in there. The Gripping Beast sculpts are no longer available, which is a shame, as they painted up very nicely.

28mm Macedonians: Light Bow Cavalry

My Commands and Colors Macedonian army requires two horse archer units. All figures are Old Glory.

 

1/72 Napoleonic British Infantry

Blogger is getting tougher and tougher to use on my desktop PC. I don't know if the aces at blogger are trying to optimize their product for cell phones or if they are trying to push me to use Chrome as my browser. Neither of those are acceptable for me.

That is only by way of explaining why my updates have ceased. I have still been painting. Today I photographed these plastic 1/72 British infantry in stovepipe shako by HaT Industries. 

28mm Classical Greeks: Cavalry

I had set a goal of June 1st for my Greek and Persian project. Here it is April 19th, and it is done! These four Greek cavalry units complete the project.

This is the first set of units that I am not completely happy with. The sculpts are great, but my painting has let them down. They will do for my own gaming.