Lots of buildings - click the picture and scroll down

 Well, I've finally finished these off, all ten of them. Scroll down to see the lot;

All of these buildings are in 15mm scale and are resin casts from Hovels. The mounted figures are for scale and are officers from the Lurkio Nine Years' War range, now sold by Gripping Beast.

I am pretty happy with these. I think that they'll be good for everything from the late-17th century right up to WW2. Some clearly suit the Netherlands/Belgium more than elsewhere and a few really need to be used together to make up an urban setting, but others might be OK for Normandy (at a pinch). In any case, I think that these models have a certain charm that you don't get from MDF buildings and I deliberately set out to paint them in a kind of impressionistic way rather than going for a totally realistic appearance.

The backdrop is, once again from a Jon Hodgson Handiwork Games book.

Gripping Beast Later Roman Cataphracts

I say "Later" Roman but these could fit in pretty much anywhere from the time of Hadrian until the 5th or maybe 6th century.

I've mounted them in groups of three to give me two units of 6 riders, which I can use for Sword and Spear or, more likely, the new Midgard rules from TFL. 

I've already got my Midgard rules and I'm looking at creating a Late Roman army using my already quite large Gripping Beast collection of Late Romans, which you can find elsewhere on the blog by searching for them. I've got more cavalry to get assembled and painted, which would give me more heavy cavalry and some horse archers. I'm also painting up some Saxon Thegns who I think will serve perfectly well as Germanic foederati with a few Roman-style shields mixed in with the round ones and some suitably generic shield transfers. After all, they are all just blokes in mail with shields and spears.

And now .... at long last ..... Dux Britanniarum!

First, a mea culpa. I've had the Dux Britanniarum rules for ages but never played a game until now. A few of us at the club talked last year about starting a campaign in 2020, but we also thought we should get to grips with the rules before getting things too wrong during the campaign games. So, yesterday, Brian and I played out a basic game as a battle.

First, here are my Romano-British troops. First the Comanipulares, the elite Bucellarii of my British Lord.

Now, my Lord, on the larger base, with his two junior leaders and his Champion. No names yet, as we are still experimenting with the rules.

Next, two groups of six Milites, basic Warriors. I've given these all the same shield design to ensure that they are distinct from the Comanipulares;

Four slingers, representing the force's Harassing missile troops;

And finally, three groups of Numeri, levies drawn from the peasantry.

All these troops are taken from my existing Gripping Beast plastic Late Roman army that I use for Sword and Spear and Saga. I love the idea of figures that have multiple uses.

So, on to the game itself. Brian's army were supposed to be North British, but we used them as a Saxon horde for this game. The table had a fairly shallow running stream across the centre of the table, classed as a Medium Obstacle, with two fords, classed as Minor Obstacles. On the Saxon side, was wooded country and there was a villa complex on the Roman side. The buildings we used were actually of a later period, bought by the club for a pirate campaign about 10 years ago, but a reasonable match for Later Roman structures (apart from the chimneys). They would be perfect for Peninsular War Sharp Practice too.

After initial movement and skirmishes between missile troops, the battle pretty much centred on the Saxons getting across the stream and the Romano-British  (henceforth just "the Romans") holding the high ground between the two fords. The Roman Shieldwall formation remained strong on the hill, fending off all  comers, aided by some helpful Fate Cards.

The Saxon main force was eventually forced back across the stream and the Saxon Lord reduced to Status I. The Saxons had previously lost a Noble in combat with my Numeri.

I also managed to drive off the Saxon archers with a flanking attack from a single group of Numeri on my right.

There were plenty of things that I am sure we got wrong, having never played the game before, and we were unsure if the Champions should have a Leader Card in the deck or were just stuck with the Lord. I am pretty sure now that we had the Fate Cards all wrong too, keeping things like Shieldwall in play, rather than discarding it once used. We also forgot to replenish our decks as they became depleted.

Having said that, the game was a lot of fun, and the mechanisms simple to understand, seeing as we are both seasoned Lardy gamers. I wonder if there is a FAQ somewhere online?

I am sure we shall be playing again before long. It is nice to see my Late Romans in use.

Planning a Dux Britanniarum campaign

A few of us at the club are thinking about getting a Dux Britanniarum campaign going next year, so we are looking at our existing armies to see what would fit. 

As I already have masses of Gripping Beast Late Romans, augmented with slingers, levies etc from the "Dark Ages" boxes, I automatically assumed that I have everything I'd need and wouldn't have to do any work at all.

Unhappily, as things transpired when I started looking in depth, the one area where I was lacking was basic levy troops. It isn't that I have too few, it is more that I have based most of them up eight to a base for Sword and Spear.

So, I had to assemble and paint up six individually-based levy types using some of the many spares I have lying around, and here they are;

I wanted to make them look a bit muddy and battle-worn, so I put most of the effort into making their shields look old and battered. I think that they fit in pretty well with the existing dozen individually-based levies I have, although those guys look a bite more nicely turned out. Perhaps the new ones might represent a group of really unwilling peasants pressed into service at the last minute?

They'll also fit in with the slingers I intend to use as missile troops, although I'll only need four of those;

The rest of my Dux troops will be taken from my Late Roman armoured and unarmoured infantry.

And I was supposed to be painting more Condottieri troops ..............

Well, that was the plan, but then I decided to finally use my Late Romans for a game of Sword and Spear, but realised that I had 40 foot figures half-finished and that I'd need them to bulk out my army.

Anyway, I've spent three days finishing off a load of Gripping Beast plastic figures that were basically either undercoated or half-painted. Not as bad as if I was starting from scratch, but still a fairly big task. The first eight are above. To be honest, I am not that sure about the green/lilac colour scheme I chose, but it was too late to go back and change it, so it will have to do. It came from a picture of a mosaic I saw somewhere so it does have the merit of being based in reality.

In total, what I finished were 24 unarmoured Romans, all with either spears or swords, plus a couple of standard bearers and a bucinator for variety, and 16  Dark Ages warriors, some with head swaps to represent some poorly-equipped limitanei or perhaps just foederati. I know that there is a mistaken belief that the limitanei were low-quality troops, but this is not actually the case. However, I wanted to have at least one unit that could represent a lower standard of troops, so that my army wouldn't just be powerful units of comitatenses. 

For Sword and Spear, I will be deploying a standard unit on a 12 x 6 cm base, with two such bases stacked to represent a Large Unit.

I have also decided to deploy some of my existing unarmoured units with a rank of spearmen in front and archers behind, to represent melee troops with a educed shooting capability.

Anyway, here are the rest of the 40 figures that I have just finished. I think that I like these more than the first lot. Note that these are all glued as groups of 8 to a 12 x 6 base., whereas my original Roman troops (for Saga) are on individual bases but placed on movement trays. This allows me to treat those ones as multiple purpose figures.

First the limitanei, both separately and as a single unit;

And here are the rest. I wanted these to have a more uniform appearance, although there are differences in the shades of red used for the trim on the tunics. I see these as maybe being troops from the auxilia palatina, first recruited by Constantine I and the oldest of which were recruited from Gallic and Germanic tribes. The names of many of these units were listed in the 5th century Notitia Dignitatum, which is an excellent source for Later Roman shield designs.

A few more Late Romans

I've been clearing the decks ready to start work on the main body of Bad Squiddo Shieldmaidens, and these are the last of my Gripping Beast 28mm plastic Late Romans for a while, although I do have 40 more foot troops to work on at some point, plus a box more armoured cavalry and another of Dark Ages unarmoured cavalry. I intend to turn the latter into javelin-armed skirmish horse. I've also got a lot of Saxons, but more about them below.

As people who have read the blog before, I am working on expanding my original Saga Late Roman warband into an army for Sword and Spear, the Great Escape Games ruleset.

Anyway, I wanted to have more armoured Roman foot troops, so I decided to use the Gripping Beast plastic Saxon Thegns figures as Late Romans. This was pretty much just a matter of head swaps and using Roman shields because, when it comes down to it there really isn't a lot to choose between one 28mm early mediaeval body in a tunic and a chainmail shirt and another one. To be honest, even a headswap isn't always necessary.

Here are eight armoured infantry, mounted on a single 12cm x 6 cm base for Sword and Spear. Annoyingly, I didn't notice the blue paint on one of the faces until after I'd taken the photo, but I've fixed the figure now. These are a mixture of armoured Roman bodies and Saxon ones. I really don't see any problem with these at all. Absolute uniformity was never a thing for the Romans, as I've discussed before.

Next are two command stands for my S&S army. These are all Saxon thegn figures, but Romanised with helmets and shields, except for one, who has a Saxon head, which looks fine to me, seeing as it is just another variant on the conical Spangenhelm shape so common in later Roman armies. I liked the idea of using the cloaks which come on the Saxon command sprue for my Roman leaders. 

Both of these command groups are standing in front of walls I've made for Frostgrave. My Elementalist wizard has the "Wall" spell, which allows her to create a 6" x 3" wall within 12" of her. These are a lot better than using random bits of card, or even just a line of dice on the table.

All the shield transfers and the image on the vexillum are from LBMS.

More Late Roman Archers

I've had a lot of Late Roman Gripping Beast plastics ready to paint for ages now, but I really needed a break from Romans, plus it was too hot to paint and I was also on holiday for a while. Anyway, I've completed all my remaining Late Roman archers, eight more designed as additions to my Saga warband, above and, below 16 archers based up ready to be used in Sword and Spear. Of course, I will be using all my Saga Romans for S&S too, I just need to buy a load of movement trays for them.

I am planning for my S&S army to be on 12 cm wide bases, mainly 6 cm deep, but deeper for cavalry, obviously. My idea is that foot units will be on 12 x 6 cm bases, which can be stacked one behind another to make up large units, with skirmishers also on 12 x 6 cm bases, but with only six figures per base. I am hoping that I can get Warbases to make these up as a special, together with a number of 12 x 6 cm bases with 4 rectangular 4 x 2 cm slots for cavalry. I need to ask about this, though.

Gripping Beast slingers for my Late Romans

I didn't get these finished in time for my photos of my Romans, but I don't think that matters too much. They are Gripping Beast 28mm plastics again, from the Dark Age Warriors box set. I got them finished off yesterday while waiting for a parcel to be delivered, which didn't actually turn up. Annoyed was a mild word for my mood, but at least the day wasn't completely wasted.

The GB Dark Age Warriors box is a pretty useful set. You can make them up as spearmen, swordsmen or axemen, or arm them with javelins straight out of the box, but you also have the option of turning some of them into slingers. You do this by cutting off right hands that are holding other weapons and glueing on hands with slings, of which there are a huge number (32) on the sprues. This isn't exactly difficult and there is plenty of variety possible when it comes to poses. Because they aren't supposed to get into hand-to-hand combat, they don't really need shields, but I suppose you could stick some on if you wanted to. I think that they look better without, personally.

These slingers would do for pretty much any army from Late Antiquity and the Early Mediaeval, but for me, they are going to be levies for Saga and skirmishing light infantry for my Late Roman Sword and Spear project.

I decided to paint them with a fairly muted colour palette, after all these aren't elite troops, they are peasant levies, foederati or limitanei (i.e. defensive garrison troops, literally "the men on the limes" that is, the borders). There has been much discussion over the years about the difference between the limitanei and the comitatenses or field units, who are often referred to as being "mobile", which is a bit misleading because all armies were limited to movement at the speed of the slowest components, which were the foot troops and the baggage train. It is often also suggested that the limitanei were somehow inferior troops, less well trained or poorly equipped and somehow lacking in fighting spirit, but this is also misleading, certainly during the early Dominate period. At first, the only real difference between the two types was their role. The limitanei were there to defend the limes (borders) against incursions and were locally recruited (and therefore likely to fight doggedly to protect their homes and communities) whereas the comitatenses were units held centrally and used to create field armies designed to fight larger battles and act as a reserve. It is certainly the case that among the comitatenses there were more "elite" units, the scholae and auxilia palatina for example, but limitanei units could also be attached to field armies and these were then referred to as pseudocomitatenses. The Notitia Dignitatum lists out the names of many comitatensis units, as well as a huge number and range of imperial administrative offices from those associated with the imperial court to provincial ones.

However, the limitanei were apparently paid less than comitatenses and scholae units and their status certainly declined over time until they were pretty much just local militia by the 6th century, by which time the western provinces of the empire were gone, replaced by Romano-Germanic successor "kingdoms" across western mainland Europe and by a patchwork of competing small British and Germanic ones across the former Roman Britannia. When we look at post-Roman Britain we should consider that most, if not all units would have been classed as limitanei or, in the case of Germanic troops recruited to fight against Pictish and other incursions as foederati.

The Romans Are Coming

After playing a couple of games of Saga yesterday, I took the opportunity to use some of the club scenery to act as a backdrop for some photos of all my Gripping Beast plastic Romans, well all the finished ones anyway because I have a lot more in the pipeline to stick together, as well as a load that are made up but need to be undercoated. These are unarmoured Roman spearmen and archers, plus some Dark Age infantry with spears and slingers.

I also have another box of Roman armoured cavalry to do and a box of Dark Ages cavalry who I will make up as light cavalry with javelins (to be skirmishers). I also have more Dark Age infantry, who I will probably make up as spearmen and a box of Saxon Thegns. Both of these who will be deployed as Germanic foederati heavy and medium infantry, and I will also be using a few of the Saxons as Roman armoured infantry with head and shield swaps. By the time I've finished, I think that I'll have a pretty large army to field in games of Sword and Spear. I am also thinking about using a set of the newly announced Gripping Beast metal Roman Cataphracts as elite cavalry.

Even without all the extra figures, what I have at the moment looks pretty impressive en masse and they will only look better when there are even more of them.

Late Roman unarmoured cavalry

Having completed the heavy cavalry, I went back and finished off the Late Roman light cavalry that I'd started a while ago. These are based on the Gripping Beast "Dark Age Cavalry" plastic box set, with a few head swaps to make them look a bit more Roman. Also, the majority have been given oval shields and all of them have Roman-style designs (from LBMS) on them.

The main thing that I wanted to do here was create some degree of standardisation in how the unit looks, but also keep some variation in their dress. I've discussed the lack of an absolute uniform appearance in Late Roman troops in a previous post, so I used a similar approach to the one I used on the infantry figures, i.e.using a range of fairly muted colours that suggest natural undyed wool or linen. However, I wanted to tie the troops together so I painted "Roman style" embellishments on the tunics in a mixture of red or light blue tunic edging and other designs such as the roundels and shoulder panels seen on Late Roman tunics.

I decided to use a standard red shield design with a yellow Chi Rho for eight of the riders, plus four riders with different shield designs. I did this so that I have a degree of flexibility in how I combine my various cavalry figures for tabletop deployment.

My main idea about these guys is that they can easily represent post-Roman British cavalry or also Germanic auxiliaries in the Roman army, such as those used in both the Eastern and Western halves of the empire from the late third century onwards.

Anyway, here are some more views of the latest recruits to my growing Late Roman army.

These last four figures, who I think of as the unit's "characters", really suggest post-Roman Britons to me. 

Late Roman armoured cavalry

I bought a box of the new Gripping Beast Late Roman armoured cavalry as soon as they were available. I was already working on a box of the Dark Ages cavalry to use as Roman light cavalry, but what I really wanted was some armoured riders to boost my Saga Late Roman warband, use as Romano-British "Arthurians" and also to enable me to field a warband as Last Romans as described in the Age of Vikings book for Saga 2. These guys would work as part of a warband from the 6th or 7th century, i.e. the period between Justinian the Great and Heraclius, but don't look right as troops from one of the Tagmata or Thematic units that made up later Roman armies from the 8th-10th centuries.

Anyway, although I'd started the light cavalry, these armoured riders jumped the queue and have been finished first. Here is the complete unit of 12 cavalrymen. Note that there is one rider with a different shield design (n.b. all the shield designs are LBMS transfers). More on him later.

There are six figures armed with spears;

And five with swords;

Now, here is the chap with the different shield design;

Notice that I've put him on a larger round base. This enables me to field him as the leader of my warband, as well as including him as just another member of a unit. Here he is from his open side;

I have to admit that when I was painting these I had a real crisis of confidence over how they would turn out, partly because I really do not like painting horses at all, but also because I was finding it hard to visualise how they would look once they were inked. This was because I wasn't sure that I'd picked the right colour scheme for them. However, I think that they have turned out fine.

Regarding the actual models, I am quite impressed with them. There are plenty of head variants, allowing you to create figures that are not all identical, plus the usual different weapons options. There is also a vexilla included, which I didn't use, but which would work fine, with a bit of cutting and glueing of one of the spear arms in the box. I did find, though, that once I'd assembled and undercoated the horses that the body halves hadn't gone together perfectly and needed a bit of Milliput to fill the rather visible gaps in the alignment. I expect that this was down to my assembly rather than any actual defects in the mouldings themselves. Anyway, I've already bought another box to paint up so that I have extra armoured cavalry for my Late Roman Sword and Spear army.