Back to the Punic Wars!

Hail Caesar, Midgard Heroic Battles

My historical wargaming kick is still going strong (I’ll get back to you Fantasy gaming I promise!), and I’ve put some birthday vouchers to good use, picking up some models I’ve been eyeing off since they were released last year: Warlord Games’ Punic War “epic scale” range.

I you’ve been keeping an eye on this blog for a while you might remember my foray into Republican Romans back in 2021. This was in 28mm scale, which is home for me scale wise (well that and the associated 25, and 32mm scales), but while I enjoyed painting the models I was always troubled by the fact that to get some of the formations in the historical record (e.g. the famed Triplex Acies for the romans, with its triple row of supporting infantry blocks) I would need a lot of space on the game board (not to mention crazy amounts of miniatures!). That took the wind out of my sails for this project and the models have sat unprogressed for a long time. When I saw the Warlord announcement last year I knew this was the way forward, a smaller scale letting me have the number of units to play games with some semblance of the historical formations. This doesn’t solve my unused miniatures problem for my 28mm romans however, and the plan there is to repurpose them for smaller scale games in the Caesarean invasion of Gaul which is something else I’d like to wargame.

Another tricky aspect of the era was finding rules that captured the kind of gaming that I’d like to do for the period. That was resolved when I discovered Midgard last month, the game is fun and simple to play and has some great rules to reward the in depth formations the Roman’s adopted. In fact the author has published some army lists for the Punic wars specifically, making using Midgard for the period very easy.

Armed with some rules and a model range I plunged in and picked up the Roman/Carthaginian/Allied division boxes (and most importantly the elephant set) from Warlord, which gave me more than enough models to play a large game of Midgard.

The models come with bases for Hail Caesar, which aren’t quite right for Midgard where units are more standalone. So I decided to make my own bases, larger than the Hail Caesar bases, and put more models on each. The bases are of an 8cm frontage, 4cm deep for infantry and 5.5cm deep for cavalry. I modelled these and 3d printed them. If you’re interested in the files I put them up on Cults3D as a free download.

That’s enough context, onto the models! The models are Warlord’s epic scale which seems to be around 14mm so half size from what I’m used to. The detail is really quite good given the size and the models took washes really well which is very helpful. I painted this base of gallic slingers as a test unit to try out a few things: what washes work well at the scale, and what basing scheme I was going to go with. Wash wise, I was worried that my usual go-to Agrax Earthade might be a bit much (too dark/strong) for the scale so I looked for something lighter. I settled on Army Painter’s Soft Tone wash, which I think worked really nicely.

The process I used is as follows: I airbrushed some leather brown all over the models to get a nice brown base to work with, which would work for any leather items (belts, shoes, slings), and let me focus on painting cloth, shields and skin. I then basecoated these areas in nice bright colours (probably inspired by my reading and re-reading of Asterix comics as a kid!), basecoated the skin in AK Beige Red, and gave the models an all over wash of Soft Tone. Once that was dry I gave the skin areas a second wash of Citadel Reikland Fleshshade (somewhat diluted) to get some red into the skin. I then used the basecoat colours to highlight the models back up. The hair was then painted, basecoating it with an off-white, and using GW contrasts for colour (Aggaroth Dunes for the blonde hair, and Gore Grunta Fur for the reddish hair). Nice and quick!

For the basing I wanted to aim for a generic Mediterranean look, which could work for Summery Italy as well as the North African coast. To that end I used and AK texture paint called Sandy Desert, and while it was wet sprinkled on a couple of Woodland Scenics foams and some old GW sand mix I had lying around. The base rim is Vallejo Russian Uniform WW2. Overall I’m happy with the look, it’s probably a bit too deserty for Italy if I’m being honest, but hopefully close enough that suspending disbelief is easy enough!

17 thoughts on “Back to the Punic Wars!”

  1. These are really nice, Nic! 🙂 Will be good to see more! My regular wargames opponent (also John) has built two Punic Wars armies in 15mm scale over the last few years and I’ve had a couple of games with him using the Hail Caesar rules! So different games for me and I haven’t had to buy or paint a thing!

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    1. Thanks John, glad you like them! Hail Caesar was going to be my planned ruleset until I discovered Midgard, it seems like a great fit for the period. It’s always nice to be able to join into a game like that, I’m leaning that way myself these days, build up both forces and invite friends over to play some games. It makes sense for the more niche games out there, no need to worry agreeing on a scale and or system with everyone.

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  2. I didn’t realize you dabbled in Roman stuff, Nic! That’s wonderful as I’m a big fan of it myself. I’m not very knowledgeable about the Punic stuff though, unfortunately. I reckon your skills are a great match for Hail Caesar and the large troops blocks that it requires. Those Gauls look great and I love the basing as well. Its very eye-catching stuff!

    I’ve been tempted to do something Roman with our hobby for years now and never followed through. One of these days I surely will though I’ll have to get over my dislike of making trees if that is indeed the case!

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    1. Thanks Jeff! Glad to hear you like the period. I’ve been thinking of using the MESBG rules to play skirmish games in the period – Romans vs Gauls etc I think it would work quite well. Might be an easy way for you to get into it!

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      1. I like that idea! I could probably manage to paint up forces that big given enough time too. I was doing some research into Gangs of Rome while painting because of this conversation and I’m not sure that is a good route to go down. It would require a lot of terrain work and a good amount of miniatures for a skirmish game. Your idea is a bit better, I reckon!

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      2. The good thing about MESBG is it already has all kinds of base human profiles, and rules for most of the equipment you’d need. Could easily have Romans use the foot Rohan rider with throwing spear profile for example. That and if you want to go a bit more fantasy like, use the magic rules for druids/priests. It’s a very flexible system and you already know it well.

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      3. You’re making a pretty persuasive case, mon ami! I will have to do some further research and think about what I might want to buy and paint. I’ll also have to figure out terrain as my collection outside of Fallout is fairly limited but its definitely something to mull over 🙂

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      4. If you focus on the many North African forays of the Romans your desert mats should work nicely (and avoid trees)! Just need to find some scatter terrain that’s a bit less post apocalyptic!

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      5. My mat is actually post-apocalypse themed and has rubble so I’d probably want to get a new mat down the road but that’s easily done. I think you’ve just about managed to talk my into this idea 😀 You could also do Roman forays in Syria, if you were so inclined and still not need proper trees. You could also do some fun Ancient Fantasy wargaming using Broken Legions which is a book I’ve had for a while and haven’t done anything with despite finding the setting pretty intriguing.

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      7. At a conceptual level, its a really fun idea for a game. I haven’t tried the rules myself but I know they’re heavily inspired by earlier LOTR SBG rules. One other question/thought I had today. How would you go about finding scenarios to use, if at all? I would think you could try and repurpose some of the narrative ones GW has created but I was curious if you had any thoughts around that.

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      8. The standard battle scenarios should apply pretty well, after that I suspect a lot of the more return of the king/two towers narrative scenarios (when armies get involved and ambushes and the like occur) should be able to be lifted almost directly. The tricky part may be to replace the characters as I suspect Lotr characters are more powerful than what you might go for in a more historical game. I would suggest getting a rough size of the scenario forces (points wise) and replacing with what you’re playing.

        That’s if you’re going more skirmish armies than a small group of heroes. I remember seeing a (white dwarf?) article on an “alternative” fellowship composed of different characters from the game which just played the normal scenarios. You could do this too, creating a band of characters and running through reskinned scenarios from the fellowship book (substituting the evil models for some enemies of Rome!)

        Then you also have the opportunity to do your own which is something I’m trying more these days, either based on some historical event or just off a cool idea!

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      9. I was thinking along similar lines with what scenarios would work well. The supplements where GW use less special characters would be good as well. Heroes in general can’t be too powerful or too common to make it work, I would think.

        Then again your Fellowship approach could be cool too. You could have Romans as a “fellowship” versus more mundane enemies as more of a horde. I don’t know how balanced it would be, but there’s only one way to try, I suppose.

        I’ll keep thinking about this and doing some research and see what ideas I have 🙂 Thanks for all the suggestions, Nic!

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