Gauls for Infamy! – an army in a month.

by Derek · March 4, 2021

February 2021 was a very productive month for me on the painting front. At the start of the month I had 30 Victrix Gallic Warriors built and undercoated and a lot more unbuilt in their boxes. By the end of the month I had what you see below, a highly flexible force of Gauls for Infamy, Infamy! from Toofatlardies.

That gives me a lot of flexibility with over 170 pts in a game where all of the core forces all come in at 120pts or less. The army can be configured differently as most of the troops can serve as multiple types.

Most of them are Victrix plastic Gauls. A box of Gallic Cavalry (plus an additional sprue from Ebay) a box of Gallic Armoured Warriors, one of Gallic Warriors and one of Gallic Naked Fanatics. The slingers come from Wargames Foundry, and were a gift from Angus Konstam, author of fine books for wargamers and the Orkney Wargames blog. Thanks Angus.

Here’s some close ups of the troops.

Two units of Noble Cavalry – the elite of any Gallic army

Two groups of Ambaxtoi Noble Warriors – more elites. All these ones wearing mail and helmets, and there are lots of swords.

Warriors – a couple of armoured types in the front row, whole front row have helmets.

Tribal Levy – nobody wearing armour, one helmet for the leader and a few men armed only with javelins

Fanatics – an unpleasant surprise for the enemy that hides inside other units.

Tribal Javelins – figures that are also used for Tribal Levy

Mounted Leader, Musician and Standard Bearer.

This all makes for a hugely flexible force. The Gauls start fighting the Romans sometime around 390 BCE and their close cousins the British are still fighting them five centuries later. If you’re not too fussy (I’m not) the same figures can be used for the whole period.

Altering the balance of figures in a group allows more flexibility. For example I can do two groups of Noble Warriors all wearing armour, or I can do three groups with two thirds of them wearing armour and all of them with helmets. Similar arrangements gives me flexibility with Warriors and Tribal Levy.

That covers Romans from before the Manipular Legion and in the Republican, Caesarian and Early Imperial periods (to use wargames terminology).

They have great use as allies for other armies having fought in the Punic Wars alongside many different forces including Carthaginians, Numidians, Spaniards and Celtiberians. Later on they are found as allies of Rome and as allies or mercenaries in other barbarian armies.

They were really rather easy to paint, I’ve not done anything fancy like checks or stripes but they look fine to me. The bases and shield transfers (Victrix/Little Big Man) do much of the heavy lifting here.

What’s not to like?

I’m planning an expansion of this force sometime, I need chariots if I’m to do British along with some Tribal Cavalry and Woodsman Archers. But that can wait a while.