15mm Carthaginian Elephants

When I think of Carthaginians I automatically think of elephants, even though Hannibal only managed to get a handful across the Alps; according to some sources such as Goldsworthy, just one.

The DBMM army list allow up to nine but I ended up purchasing an even ten, again from Xyston miniatures:

There are two body poses with a choice of two different heads, one with armoured tusks, so it is possible to make up four different elephant combinations:

They are each supplied with two crew from a choice of three figures, plus two different mahouts:

The elephant figures themselves were supplied in two halves with, as mentioned, a separate head, and the figures fitted together very nicely with the mahout conveniently sitting on top of the exposed join between the head and two halves:

and the tail blending in with the rear join very nicely:

The only downsides are that the tower comes in four bits so took a bit of lining up, one of the crew figures had a massive arm which made him look a little as though he was suffering from elephantiasis and was difficult to file down, and the extended trunk meant I had to line them up diagonally on the base to allow them to be positioned line astern if required. Minor quibbles about what are otherwise excellent models:

The tower comes with cast-on shields, so I used some of the Little Big Men Studios decals to again give them a bit of variety:

I now only have a few stands of character figures and eight early Carthaginian chariots left to go, which means the end of this particular project is now very much in sight.