Sunday, 18 April 2010

Zama- "B" Day Deployment

Today I'll post some photos of our Zama game which was fought yesterday at the SOA Battle Day in Bletchley, and which we will fight one more time at Salute.  All phgotos are clickable.

Above is the 16' long field of battle before the arrival of the armies.  I was very pleased with the terrain, and the details that John Smillie made (olive and other trees, and the haystacks) set it off nicely.

Here is a view along the battlefield from behind the Carthaginian left rear.  If you look carefully, you can see the ladders on the haystacks!

And, finally for the moment (below) an aerial view of the battlefield; Carthaginians in the foreground.  The three lines of the Carthaginian deployment can be distinctly made out, with their elephants in front.  You should also be able to see the four Roman legions with their "elephant channels", and Numidian foot deployed to their right.   The two central legions have red shields, and the outer allied legions, white.
 

Friday, 16 April 2010

Eve of Battle!


Hannibal and Scipio parley on the battlefield of Zama, on the day before the battle.

Tomorrow at the crack of dawn, Muswell Militia and various associated malcontents will be driving up to the SOA Battle Day event in Bletchley to fight our version of Zama.  Hannibal has won every practice battle; but I have a feeling in my waters that Scipio will pip it on the day...

Hope to see some of you there!  

Monday, 12 April 2010

Yet more generals...


Here are some of the figures that Greg Privat painted for me, and I based.  These are Aventine Etruscans, and will be commanding one half of the Roman centre.  I'm still busy trying to finish off basing the Bruttians Greg painted for me; I'll get there!   I very much like the standard, which I think depicts Hercules.

Sunday, 11 April 2010

Towering haystacks and Carthaginians

My mate John has made some more trees and some "Roman" haystacks for me.  There are pictured on his blog
and should help to indicate that the battle was fought in the autumn period. I need to add a small pole coming out of the top of each one, as you see on Trajan's column.

In other news... 15 minutes ago I finally finished the boards.  Now I just have a couple of units to finish basing, the casualty minis to sort out, some counters to make and suchlike....  very doable.

Dr. Simon has also just posted pics of his Carthaginian contingent; I'm delighted to see them ready for the fray!

Saturday, 10 April 2010

No more snowballs...

After a week's reflection, I decided that the white map pins were unbearably... white.   Today my long suffering accomplace Ian came around and we pulled out the 350 pins we hammered in last Tuesday and replaced them with 350 pins I'd sprayed beige.  We then put another 350 pins into the remaining 4 boards, which are substantially complete (they just need a bot of drybrushing on the vegetation).


This is the board with the new pins, which are much less obvious than the white ones.  I'm very pleased with them!  A big thanks to Ian for his help.

Thursday, 8 April 2010

Keith's Zama Legions (B-8)


Aventine-Keith has just sent me this picture of the 2 legions (less 4 units of velites, not shown, which I've done) that he has painted for the Zama game.  Romans left, allies right.  They represent just under 1/3 of the Roman army for the game; can't wait to see them "in the lead"!   Not long to go, now...

Wednesday, 7 April 2010

Carthaginian Sub-General (B-9)

This grizzled veteran of many victories will command the Carthaginian centre.  The miniatures are Crusader or A&A, with the right hand standard from Aventine (I need to paint a design on that!).  Nick Speller painted them very nicely, for me.  I will admit I wasn't keen on the minis, in the lead, but they painted up splendidly and I'm delighted with them.