A Few Gauls

 

Minifigs PB57 South Gaulish Javelinman 

A modest contingent of Gauls has been added to my old-style Minifigs Carthaginian army. Nothing to trouble the Romans as yet, but a decent start none-the-less.

The figures are from the original PB Armies of the Macedonian and Punic Wars range, harking back to the early 70s. These examples first appeared in the 1972 catalogue with 'S' sppended to the serial numbers indicated they were conceived of as part of the 'S range', i.e. 25mm 'specials'. In point of fact, they were the same size as the original 'S range' Ancients, and in some cases even the same models or updated versions. As time went on the new releases would creep up a bit in size, until the original line was replaced by bigger and chunkier versions in the late 70s.

The South Gaulish Javelinman is a simple figure in a standard pose for javelin-armed models. As I've covered on many occasions, there was an early release with very thick spear and javelins (telegraph poles as they have been dubbed) and a later release with spears and javelins that were much thinner but very fragile. These come from the later batch, and - true to form - the javelins were either partially or entirely missing. All have received new weapons made form brass rod, which should last them out.  

Gallic Warband in determined mode. PB57 with PB56 and PB153 in attendance. 

The skirmishes join my Gallic warband of PB56 South Gaulish Swordsman. I've been on the look-out for these for quite a while. They don't seem to come up very often on the second-hand market, and I suspect were not a great 'troop choice' when these figures were new. I managed to get enough to field a modest unit of 16 models. They came in two separate batches, one of which has been quite vigorously animated by a previous owner. Hence, some of the chaps of waving their weapons about in an irregular fashion. Rather than trying to neaten everything up, I've just gone with the slightly irregular appearance, and it doesn't look too bad overall. 

Rather than attempt the usual highly decorated shields, not to mention stripy rugby shirts and pyjama bottoms beloved of gamers half a century ago, I've stuck to my usual plain colour palette for these chaps and given them solid red shields. As ever. I've stuck to old-fashioned WRG base sizes and mounted the models without base decor to emphasise a clean 'toy soldier' aesthetic. I was tempted into using mdf bases for the skirmishers, and the result is a little thicker than I ideally like, but does save messing around with card. 

That standard bearer lurking in the background is from the Armies and Enemies of Imperial Rome range, PB153 Gallic Chieftain with Standard. He arrived with a broken standard, so I've replaced the pole with brass rod and re-affixed the boar standard, which led naturally enough into painting him up. 

These were definately not the best or cleanest of castings, with quite a bit of clag to carve out around the sword arm and behind the shield. Overall - rather hard work for such a modest result - but made up for by the rather nice hairstyles, which rather put in mind of 'Revolver' period Beatles. Tomorrow Never Knows!