Another addition to my Roman auxilia

 I've had this guy around for a while but I only finished him yesterday.

He is a mounted vexillarius based upon the mounted centurion figure from the Victrix Roman generals set with a head and animal skin cloak from the Early Imperial  Auxilia set's command sprue and an army from the Early Imperial cavalry set. The SPQR vexilla transfer is from one of the LBMS Late Roman transfer sets. The backdrop is another Jon Hodgson one.

I think that he's come out OK and I'll probably use him in my planned Principate Roman auxiliary army for Midgard and other things too, maybe Infamy, Infamy if people I know start playing those rules again.

Six various figures

 I finished off six more figures, you'll have to scroll down to see them all.

 First, these were from the Victrix British chariots set that someone game me. I decided to paint them as a Druid and a Gallic or British Warrior Queen. 

Next, two more officer types using the last two bodies from the Victrix Roman auxilia set. They are an Optio and a Centurio;

Not sure what I'll use them for, but the Optio could fit in with the dismounted Decurion I posted previously.

Finally a pair of figures designed to represent the same character with and without his armour.

 This pair are for our long-running D&D campaign. They represent a character who the party has just rescued from a band of Goblins. The figure on the right is him at that point. All his war gear is missing and he just has a borrowed sword and the clothes he was wearing them we liberated him.

The figure on the left is him once he has acquired a new helmet, mail shirt and shield. The armoured figure is a Gripping Beast plastic Saxon Thegn and the unarmoured one is from the Gripping Beast plastic Dark Age Warriors box. Clearly, in his captivity his beard has grown bushy and later on he will have found time to give it a nice trim.

The shield transfers in all the photos are from LBMS.

Another group of auxilia

I did a group without javelins, for variation, and I added in a couple of figures from the command sprue, based on the Cornicen and Signifer bodies.

I used the Imaginifer arm from the auxiliary cavalry set, because I thought it would make a nice variation to have an Imago for my cohort. I also gave the other body from the command sprue a gladius and a small parma shield (this is actually because I am running out of oval shields).

I have enough bodies left to make up another group and also another deployment point vignette. I shall have to stick these together and get them underoated.

Auxiliary archers

Another rush job! I need these for Sunday and only had them undercoated this morning.

These are from Aventine Miniatures, a company that I haven't bought anything from until now, but who are definitely on my radar now. The best thing about these figures is that they scale up well against the Victrix plastics that form the rest of my cohors equitata. They are also really nice sculpts and clean castings too. They were a joy to paint.

There is a decent amount of variation in the figures, some are in mail and others in scale armour and there are little details that make them all look a bit different from the next one along.

Six more auxiliary cavalry

Well, I finished off my second group of six equites for my cohors equitata, and the rain held off long enough for me to varnish them. My DIY augury (would I see sparrows or magpies first if I looked out of the kitchen window?) worked for me. I shall continue to put out food for the sparrows.

I don't really need a tubicen but seeing as arms with a tuba (the Latin word for a trumpet) are included on the Victrix sprues, it seemed a shame to just ignore them. Similarly, I used an optio head for one of the equites, just for variety. I don't need an optio equitum either, but he looks nice in the group.

For a bit more variety, I have chosen a sword arm for one of these equites, and you will note that the middle one of these is wearing scale armour rather than mail. This is because each sprue in the set has one body in scale lorica, so it has to be used for ordinary troopers as well as leaders to make the most of the available models.

I have also chosen to give this group blue neckerchiefs, for variety. The first group I did have red ones. 

I have seven more horses and riders left (because I bought an extra pair of sprues on ebay to give me 20 equites in total), so I'll get them made up at some point, but I have no urgent need for them. When they are done, I'll have a second leader and one more group of six equites.

Auxiliary cavalry

Wow, this was a rush job! I was worried that they wouldn't be finished ready for this afternoon. I couldn't varnish them until this morning because of rain and humidity.

First, we have a group of three Equites and a Decurio, the commander of a turma, that is to say, a group of 30 cavalry.

Here are the remaining three men in my group of six, as required for Infamy, Infamy, including a vexillarius. The standard isn't necessary for the rules, but it makes the unit stand out nicely.

These are intended as the cavalry component of my cohors equitata, the Cohors Primus Syldaviorum Equitata Luperci.

You will notice that their shields don't match those of the cohort's pedites, and that is because LBMS don't make the same design for the slightly smaller Victrix Roman cavalry shields. I suppose I could have cut the edges a bit smaller on some infantry shields, but I decided that the equites of the cohort were distinguished by a separate shield design. In actual fact, we don't know whether all members of a cohort would have carried identical shields anyway. It seems a reasonable assumption, but in the absence of any firm evidence, I think it gives us the opportunity to do what we see fit.

So, for the Cohors Primus Syldaviorum Equitata Luperci, I have decided that the turmae of equites would carry a separate design, which I shall justify by reference to the entirely invented Annales Syldaviorum of the little-known 2nd century writer Lucius Porcus Crustum, himself of Goganian origins, who lived in Istriodunum during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. 

In Book XIV of the Annales, he writes that "the turmae of the cohort of the Brothers of the Wolf were distinguished by their red shields which were decorated with entwined vines in flower, honouring the god Bacchus, Father of the Vines, known as Dionysos Eleutherios by the Greeks and Illyrians".

So, there we have it. Who could possibly disagree with L. Porcus Crustum?

Anyway, I have more cavalry to finish, which I will work on in groups of six, and eventually there will be two more groups and another separate character figure.

The last group of auxiliary infantry (for the moment)

The last group? Well, yes, because I need to get on with the cavalry for my cohors equitata.

Here they are, pretty much looking the same as their comrades I've already posted;

I don't really have anything new to say about them, because everything has already been said.

I am currently working on some auxiliary cavalry, once again Victrix plastic ones, and I need to get at least one group of six plus their Decurio finished before Sunday, because the Lincombe Barn Wargames Society is back in action and I have a game planned for the 26th. I want some hooves on the table as well as caligae.

Eight more auxiliaries

The strength of the Cohors Primus Syldaviorum Equitata Luperci grows as eight more recruits are mustered before their Praefectus.

As you can see, I am now able to put these on their movement sabots from Warbases. I decided to do all of these carrying their javelins, mainly because it means I don't have to take a scalpel to their scabbards!

Once again, these are all Victrix plastic auxilia and the shield transfers are made by LBMS, and can be purchased from the Victrix website too. 

I now only have  one more group of eight auxiliaries to finish off and then I can start on my cavalry, who are all primed ready for painting.

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.

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.

Late Romans WIP

I don't usually post any WIP pictures, but these Romans are such a lengthy and complex project that I thought it would be worth showing how far I've got with them.
               

I'm not going to say too much about what is there, because I will leave that for the finished figures, but they have been quite interesting to paint. I've not done any 28mm plastics for ages, and I'd forgotten that they always look a bit crude until the shading, dry-brushing and inking stages are over. Now that I've inked them (using Windsor & Newton Peat Brown drawing ink) I think that they are coming together nicely.

Apart from on my two original test figures, I've undercoated the shields separately, white on the outer side and brown on the inner.

I've also made up 12 Dark Age Warriors as javelin-armed Levies, and made up the four command figures from my second box of Roman Infantry to offer up a bit of variation to my Roman units, two as armoured swordsmen, one unarmoured swordsman and a vexilla bearer. I have undercoated these in brown because I am thinking of painting these levies up in fairly rustic dress, using a pretty restrained palette. For the four Romans, it doesn't really matter what colour they are undercoated, because they will end up looking very different once finished.

The reason I've done the shields separately in white is so I can apply these rather lovely shield transfers from Little Big Men Studios before I glue them onto the troops. The range of different designs is pretty wonderful, and I intend to use a few different patterns over the course of the project, not least on the recently announced Late Roman plastic cavalry from Gripping Beast. I also understand, because I emailed GB and asked about it, that later this year there will be some unarmoured plastic Roman cavalry too, with the option of making some horse archers. That please me greatly.

Now that I've broken the back of the work, I can start thinking about the Dark Age cavalry and how I want to use the rest of the foot figures still on their sprues.