Civilians for Dux Italica

 Civilians and loot markers for Dux Italica. 

More Sword and Sandal

 I've completed work on the second of three Roman Fabii Clan Leaders. While doing the second I realised where I'd gone wrong with painting the shield of the first. Instead of painting the background red then drawing the design, I should have painted the shield with a very dark brown background, then done the design and painted round it in red. So I redid the first one's shield, which now looks a bit neater and I'm much happier with it. 

I've also repainted the shield and rebased the Crocodile Games Theseus figure who will be the Warlord of the Veii faction in this project. The shield used to have a dark blue background but the white is so much better. This pale blue colour scheme with white shields will contrast them so very nicely with the Fabii Romans, I think. 

Work continues apace on the final Fabii Clan Leader, a unit of Sodales (companions - hoplites, basically) and a unit of Clientes (client warriors) with bows. I'm enjoying this immensely. the large scale figures are a joy to paint! 

Sword and Sandal Movie Style Fabii Clan Roman Test Model

 I've always loved the 1960s Italian 'Sword & Sandal' movies - dodgy plotlines and wooden acting notwithstanding! years ago I bought a whole warband of Crocodile Games Wargods of Olympus Athenians to do a Sword & Sandal style force intending to set up a legendary antiquity campaign using Dragon Rampant at my old club but for many reasons that never happened so the models got put in a box. 

Fast forward a few years and I find myself hankering for some solo games at home, but with limited space so have decided to do two Dragon Rampant warbands using half-sized reduced model units. The theme will be the wars between Rome and the Etruscan city of Veii in the 5th century BC but with a Sword & Sandal vibe. Here's the test model for the Roman Fabii clan. The shield design was hell to paint and I'm not 100% happy with it, but as decals of this design aren't available to fit these Anvil Industry shields (or any other shields come to that!) I'm gonna have to stick with freehand! 

The model itself is beautifully sculpted and makes my 'dip & highlight' technique work like the proverbial charm! 

As I only need about 20 models per warband, I'm hoping this won't be too lengthy a project to get onto the table, although it's just one of three I'm simultaneously working on sporadically!

Caesarian Legionaries for Infamy Infamy by Too Fat Lardies

Caesarian Legionaries for Infamy Infamy. Foundry models (apart from one Centurion, who is Aventine) with Aventine shields (don't ask!) and LBM shield transfers. These were painted for WAB a few years ago and have been 'repurposed'.

The unit with plain shields will eventuallly be joined by another, although as the 4th picture shows, they can be placed within other units to give a more battle-worn look. As I need to use the 'Caesar in Gaul' base force due to the other models I have available, and as I have no unarmored legionary models, I need some way to differentiate the recruits from the normal legionaries. I'm thinking that the Wolf-shield chaps can be recruits entirely as they are while the Boar-shields or the Horse-shields can have some plain shields amongst them to show their more battle-worn appearance...

Preparing for Infamy Infamy

I'm quite excited  by the pending release of 'Infamy, Infamy', the ancients rules from Too Fat Lardies and am busy sorting through my old WAB Caesarian Roman models to repurpose them for these rules. The first job was to rebase some 'big men' - Centurions, Optios, higher-ranking officers and allied leaders. The Centurions and Optios are on 30mm rounds and the higher-ranking chaps are on 40mm. No idea yet how many I'll need, so I've just done Centurions and Optios for each set of shield designs I have in the collection.

I still need to do a Gallic cavalry leader, so have bought a sprue of Victrix models.

My army was originally based on the army that Sulla took into Greece to take on Mithridates of Pontus (you know how I loved to theme my WAB forces) so I'm trying to use it as-is without buying loads of new minis as, due to lack of work, I'm not blessed with spare cash these days.

Here's what I have done so far to rebase the leaders: These first two are an Aventine Etruscan Centurion and a converted Foundry Caesarian Roman Optio (like all the Optios, converted with a couple of feathers that broke off some A&A Samnites I'd stored carelessly!)

 This next pair are both Foundry models...

 ...as are these.

 This chap will lead my allied Chaironean Thureophoroi (proxy Spanish Caetrati, as there's no options for allied Greeks as far as I know...)

 This fella below is an old GW Dogs of War character with his helmet crest re-positioned and with a Victrix Republican Roman shield.

 The mounted fella is an A&A Carthaginian General.

Romans Rampant!!

Just lately, Cameron (who just turned 8 years old...8...where has the time gone?!) has been enjoying playing Rome Total War on my Mac and, as the other weekend included a Saturday with a deluge of almost Old Testament proportions, we decided to combine toy soldiers with Rome Total War and play 'Romans Rampant'!!!

Yes, we dragged out Dragon Rampant and played it with Late Republican Romans! Both forces were identical with 4 units of legionaries (offensive heavy foot), one of which was the 'commander', which meant we stuck a nice 'genera;' figure with the unit as a reminder; 1 unit of Gallic horse (heavy riders, or whatever DR calls them); 1 unit of either Cretan archers or Balearic slingers (scouts) and a unit of auxilia (Greek peltasts/Spanish Caetrati types) which we classed as bellicose foot.

We attempted to design a special rule to give the legionaries the pilum, but it was crap, so I won't bother explaining my failings!! cavalry and bellicose types also had short range missiles, although I soon realised that given their wild charge, this was pointless for the latter (I wasn't having a good day, clearly).

We reduced the distance between units from 3" to 2" (which looked better) and adopted the TMWWBK approach to activation, so failure didn't end the turn - far better when playing with an 8 year old!

Anyway, we set up a standard bearer model in the middle of the table as an 'objective' and off we went!

In the event, it was fun to move some models and roll some dice, but the identical forces did make it a bit 'best dice wins', although tactics and deployment did play a part. We enjoyed it and it passed an afternoon that otherwise was boring us due to the monsoon outside and nothing of excellence on telly!!!  Here are some pics...

Next time we may try another 'pilum' rule, perhaps something like allowing legionaries to re-roll 1s in the first round of combat for each unit...needs more thought...