Fond memories of Numidian cavalry

Numidian Light cavalry skirmishing and doing what they do best - annoying and irritating the enemy!

I have mentioned in the past about my various flirtations with ancient wargaming. I cut my teeth on WRG 6th edition and used a 25mm Carthaginian army with figures from Minifigs, Hinchliffe, Garrison and, I think, even some Lamming models for good measure. The army was of a fairly hefty size - over 3,500 points worth or nearly 500 models and whilst it was not the most successful army I have ever owned it was enormous fun to use. I think I mentioned the fact that the best ever result I had with the army was in fact a draw and trust me, under 6th edition that felt like a victory! One of the things I enjoyed about the army was the way that you could tailor it to suit the opposition and in fact this was historically accurate in that the army varied hugely over its career - especially over the course of the invasion of Italy. You could quite easily cobble together several DBA armies from the figure mix (although DBA was not around when I owned the collection) but the one part I always used to field was the famous Numidian Light cavalry.

These horsemen became the cornerstone of my battle plans and were routinely used for flank marches, happily popping up en masse behind an enemy flank just as the Gallic horse crashed into the enemy front - sometimes this even worked....;-)

I painted up a 15mm DBA Numidian army a few years ago with all the options - imitation Roman legionaries, elephants and a general with a Gallic and Spanish bodyguard - which was great fun to use and was really easy to paint. It was also undefeated, winning all three of the games it took part in.

Painting Numidians is very easy, even for me and so I may well revisit them in some way in due course - I am thinking about 20mm plastic DBA armies at some point - in order to recapture some of the fun I used to have with them - especially trying to tackle Seleucid Cataphracts and such like.

Mention of these fanous cavalry has come about simply because I was looking through the ancient section of my library and on the back of this have decided that my next game, by way of a change, will be an ancient one and so Numidia's finest can once again cause discomfort to the enemies of Carthage (and probably me as well given their track record!).