More Basing Success - Gallic-Celtic Infantry

A couple of weeks ago, I was feeling pretty happy with myself for finally settling on a basing mix I was happy with for my Ancients and Dark Ages figures and finally getting to properly finish my Gallic-Celtic cavalry (see here for the recipe). Well, now I'm just as pleased to note that I've been able to finish off their accompanying infantry: ...all 96 of them - sheesh! - so I thought I'd briefly outline what minis are used here and how it's all gone together.

The figures themselves are mix of Warlord Games and (newer) Victrix models. Although they blend really well together, I prefer the look of the Victrix ones as the arm poses are more natural and none of them are hunched right over - those figures bent almost double are all Warlord ones, and they substantially limited my options for placing them on contiguous small bases (20x20mm square per man). This led to them over-populating the front two ranks of each block of troops, thereby relegating to the rear two ranks their more upright Vixtrix fellows.

Just like their cavalry counterparts, they were painted with Citadel's Contrast Paints as an experiment.

Shield decals came from the same sources as the minis (via Little Big Men in the case of Victrix, although they have to be purchased separately). Whilst they all look stunningly intricate and colourful, I much prefer Warlord's waterslide decals to the fiddliness of cutting out the self-adhesive Little Big Men counterparts.

All the shields ended up shiny after application, so were varnished with the entirely excellent Windsor & Newton Galeria Matt Varnish.

Just make sure you shake it well!

After a little re-basing, faffing around and experimenting with different frontages, I settled on the following layout for my infantry, enabling me to remove any number of casualties whilst maintaining the convenience of multi-basing and flexibility for different formations and frontages - 20x20mm for single men; 40x40mm for four men:

The command units and the archers are a little further down the 'Painting Prioity List', so they'll be a while longer in coming. Still, it's great to be making such progress...

To finish off, I thought I'd share something I'm trialling to help extract the movement trays from their storage. It's still a work-in-progress, and my daughters needed their hair accessories back, but the broad ribbon worked really well!

"Onwards, Men!"