I bought this army at one of HMGS Great Lakes' one-day conventions in Cincinnati (I believe it was Warparty, in the summer of 2004). A vendor was clearing out his stock of Old Glory Ancients, and I was thumbing threw them figuring out which enemy of New Kingdom Egypt I could field from the stock. My friend Zeke beat me to the Early Libyans, so the Canaanites were second choice. Basically, it was assembled from the purchase of 3 bags: 1 chariots,1 spearmen and 1 command.
The Canaanites are actually a fairly effective Biblical army, in my opinion. They have a nice mobile force of chariots, solid base of speedy auxilia and psiloi, and even a Blade element to frustrate the odd troop type. Thus, this a very mobile army, with only the Blade moving slowly. I won the Biblical Theme of Cold Wars 2005 with them, so they can't stink too bad! Of course, it seems I've been using a number of armies based around Auxilia lately, so perhaps I'm just getting the hang of that troop type!
I thought I'd indulge myself in purple, here, as the cities of Canaan (specifically Tyre) were where the Ancient dye for the color purple came from. I thought the general's two-tone bronze and silver armor came out really nice, as did the decorations on the chariot cab. Looking at the base, you can see a good closeup of my "Biblical Army" flocking style. After coating the base in Liquitex and painting this Polly Scale "sand yellow," I put brown "Turf" flocking on, from Woodland Scenics. Then, after it is dry, I put 2-3 blotches of glue on and sprinkle a blended grass flocking on that. Next comes the tiny pebbles (Woodland Scenics ballast). Believe it or not, I then put a black wash over the pebbles to tone down their color. I think the final result is very striking, and works well on a "desert" style or green grass type board.
As mentioned, the strength of the Canaanite army is its speed and mobility, and these guys are the most mobile of them all. Four chariots provides a solid striking force, enabling you to feint one way and send these guys enveloping and crashing down on another section of the enemy battleline. Since the chariot-riding warriors in a Canaanite army were the nobility, I painted them up in rich colors with matched teams of horses. I thought they turned out really nice, too.
One interesting thing on Old Glory chariots (at least all the ones I've painted), is they don't come included with a yoke bar. The piece that lays across the backs of the horses? I had to scratch-build that. Every illustration I've seen of chariotry has the yoke bar. If you assembled your chariots without this piece -- or without rigging reins of any kind -- the chariot pole would go from the cab, in between the horses, and connect to nothing. Strange. Not sure why Old Glory chose to sculpt this way, but it was easy enough to take a lead spear, snip it and bend it into shape, then glue it across the horses' backs.
This is the main infantry strike force of the army. I like to form them into one or two columns and have them spearhead into a peice of terrain that is centrally located, then branch out from there, seeking the enemy's flanks. I think opponents sometimes underestimate the potential of an Auxilia strike force. Its speed sometimes catches them off guard. Before they know it, they've turned the enemy battleline and are rolling up their flank.
All the sources I found seemed to agree that Canaanite armies wore white tunics with various colored fringes. The headpieces are meant, I believe, to be feathers (at least Egyptian tomb illustrations show them bending like feathers), so I painted them in contrasting or matching colors. Nothing fancy here with these guys, but the bright colors on white look good.
Tactically, these troops work well with the overall method of the army. They can form a rear rank support for either the Auxilia, or even the sole Blade (below). They can use the "psiloi ambush," as I call the first turn abililty to move as many times as pips are available. And there aren't TOO many of them that you have to toss them into the battleline very often. One drawback of the ultra-cheap way I purchased the figures for the army is that the spear armed miniatures are pretty much the same ones as in the Auxilia stands. Normally, Old Glory has a stunning variety of figures in their infantry bags, but in this particular one, there weren't many poses. Oh well.
I kind of scratched my head when I saw the army list for the Canaanites in the DBA rulebook. I wasn't sure what this stand was supposed to represent. Since the more detailed DBM army list book doesn't match up 100% with the DBA one, it wasn't so helpful. My guess is it was supposed to represent the spear armed Royal Guard that was available to those armies. Accordingly, I used the Command Bag for the Canaanites, and culled a few armored spearmen to be the royal guard. That explains why they're all pointing...they're not nervous about the enemy advancing towards them -- they're Blades, after all! Maybe, since they're the slowest troop in the army, they're saying "Hey...look at the rest of the army go! Hey, wait up!"
I've made this type of camp vignette to sell to other folks, so I wanted one for myself. I used a Falcon Miniatures donkey loaded down with equipment, and converted a Canaanite spearman to be his handler. An Arab looking civilian became a merchant hawking his wares (a couple fancy beads) from in front of his tent. Simple, but effective. This is another chance to get a closeup look at my flocking style for my Biblical armies, described above. The "rear view" of the camp is below.
