Forged in Battle Late Romans

 It was only fairly recently that I realised that I didn't actually own any proper "Late Roman" legionaries. 

I've got Lorica Segmenta guys with square shields, Republican mail-clad chaps, Middle Roman half-way curved shield dudes, and some early Byzantine spearmen who have stood in for very late Romans in the past.. but none of the actual Late Roman/Patrician guys at all. 

So rectifying that became a bit of a mission, especially after I somehow acquired some Forged in Battle LBMS transfers for Late Roman Legionaries - that I of course could not bear to waste!

And, after a bit of painting and purchasing, here is the finished result:

I now have some Legionaries who, thanks to LBMS, look exactly like everyone elses!

These are mostly from the mail-clad set from FiB, with a couple of leather-cuirass guys in there - most notably the chap at the front leaning on his shield, who is IMO by far and away the best figure in any of the FiB Late Roman packs. 

I have squeezed a couple more leather guys in the rear rank, so as to get 4 bases (32 figures) of "quality" legionaries and then 16 figures of all-leather "2nd string" ones out of the two packs I bought. 

Top down view.

Here is a more simple shield - easier to blend in the transfer from a brushstroke POV, but still a little challenging in terms of paint matching, as the transfer is really very, very vibrant and none of my collection of Reds quite managed to match it perfectly.  

Once the figures have been matt varnished it looks a lot better, but if you look closely you can see the painted in edges.

These are the leather-only chaps, with a less inspiring (or less "real-looking") shield design too. They also got black crests to make them even more less imposing. 

The poses in these sets are a little underwhelming TBH, and I also found the faces to be very small, often on many of them a little too small to do my latest "blob for the nose, cheekbones and chin" face painting style - however the GW Darkoath Flesh base coat seems to pick them out almost well enough anyway. 

As there was so much Hardened Leather Army Painter Speedpaint on these, the straps were done in GW Militarum Green contrast so it would stand out against the leather armour. 

So, I now own 48 Very Late Imperial / Patrician Legionaries !

Ostrogoths in Milton Keynes : Battle Reports from Campaign 2026

 This year I returned to Campaign for the first time in a while, as part of one of the CLWC teams of three players in the traditionally tightly themed event. The pool I was in was themed for the Wars of Atilla, with Huns, Patrician Romans, Gepids, Arabs and Ostrogoths as the only options.

Having already used Patricians, and Huns, and Gepids, and deciding that the Arab army in this time period was a bit rubbish, the Ostrogoths ended up being the default choice - rather irritatingly as I had recently sold my Sarmatian/Gothic cavalry on eBay prior to replacing them with some as-yet unpainted FiB figures!

That meant my Ostrogoths did look a tad Gallo-German, but they were close enough so that's how they rolled into Milton Keynes ready for battle.

All 5 battle reports are now published in video format. To try and be a bit different I took a lot of the photos from a "helicopter view", trying to take a shot after each player's turn. 

The general idea was to show more of the broad brush strategy of how the battles developed, but of course with a lot of Impetuous Cavalry Lancers on each side the amount of tactican finesse on display was often somewhat limited in practice!

Anyways, the reports are now posted on this website on a single page where you can view them in sequence, or in a YouTube playlist.  

Random Legionaries

No-one is quite sure how their bits box becomes a home for so many random figures, almost none of which you can ever remember buying - and mine is no exception. 

But every now and then my efforts to try out new styles of painting, and new paints collides with the contents of the bits box and I have a got at cobbling together a little unit of vaguely similar figures to see if I can make the old lead into something worthwhile. 

This time it's a very eclectic set of Imperial Roman figures that I noticed had somehow managed to get up close to double figures, allowing me to make up a full base of ADLG Legionaries.

  

My "EIR" Legions are all Old Glory figures, with LBMS transfers so these are very much a quick and dirty extra unit who look rather unlike the rest of them - maybe Praetorians, or maybe Penal Legion, take your pick!

The "test" aspects of them are that the lorica segmentata is done in Enchanted Steel from ArmyPainter onto a white base coat. 

I have no idea where the guy standing at the back is from - he was the shonky-est casting of the lot, so I sort of hid him at the back.

All of the leather is ArmyPainter Speedpaint Hardened Leather

The figures throwing pilums are I believe Donnington EIR legionaries, with one Auxilia in the middle so you can't really see his oval scutum shield.

I suspect the chap standing up holding his shield in the front row may be a Corvus Belli figure - how I came to own him I don't know as I don't have any more like him at all.

The standard bearer may well be a Chariot Miniatures figures, as he looks a bit skinny - but he is nicely detailed.

All the red is Armypainted Blood Red Speedpaint, and the super-simple shield design is kinda rubbish this close up, but from tabletop distances looks acceptable enough. 

When or if they will ever make it on table is anyone's guess - but at least the bits box is a little lighter now!  

 

Artillery!

After having a challenging experience at the Dorset Dodderers against an army with a Heavy Artillery unit in it, I decided to bite the bullet (or "large stone" I guess?) and pick up a proper Roman/Greek stone thrower unit to add to my collection.

This also meant having an opportunity to use some more of Donnington's excellent Roman artillery crew - great little characterful figures that I have already utillized for the "artillery on carts" (which appear in the  ADLG rulebook on page 137) - but the question then became where to source the engine itself?

In the end, after some debate with the CLWC massif I plumped for Xyston's Heavy Stone Thrower - which comes with some Greek-looking crew, giving me the dilemma of potentially wasting some figures (Yoiks!!!).

The solution to this issue was...magnets, or more specifically, some very thin magnets I'd had kicking around for ages, most probably bought to hold the turrets on resin-cast tanks (before hard plastic kits totally replaced them in the wargamers pantheon.. before being replaced by 3D prints in turn..). 

This allowed me to base up two sets of crew, and repurpose the artillery piece itself to be used by either.

 Add in a small ballista that I found kicking around in the bits box (in 15mm scale - not the full size one I saw at Vindolana) and suddenly I have two sets of interchangeable Heavy and Light artillery. 

Here's the rather over-crewed Light Ballista version of the Roman artillery base.

And the same tiny engine with Xyston Greek crew. The chap holding up a stone missile must be rather dissappointed...

Here you can see the magnets embedded in the two bases, and the corresponding magnet glued to the bottom of the large engine.

This Xyston piece is incredibly crisply cast. 

The Greek crew are simply painted with my current go-to "white" technique of Army Painter "speedpaint" Holy White with a top layer of Army Painter Matt White semi-drybrushed on top, leaving the shading that the Holy White generates visible in places.

The metal elements are Enchanted Steel, again from Army Painter, and the engine itself is ArmyPainter Hardened Leather speedpaint on a white undercoat.

Same engine, different crew from Donnington. 

Ready to ping !

Victrix Spanish - 28mm Roman-era warriors

The Republican Roman army I built a couple of years ago using mostly Foundry legionaries has always been whingeing away in its Really Useful Box asking me to get it some more interesting and colourful subject, mercenary and allied troops.. 

..and, amazingly, a few sprues of Victrix Spanish warriors somehow found their way into my eBay basket and voila, the Romans have some Iberian mercenaries!

In my continuing attempts to try as many painting styles as possible, I initially painted these with a matt white undercoat, and then applied Army Painter Holy White to the, erm, "white" ones, GW Aggaros Dunes to the "yellow" ones and did the "red" ones in Army Painter Blood Red.

I then painted over most of these "contrast" base coats with block colours, leaving the folds in the tunics as the lowlights - the contrast all bleed slightly into the top layers (not as much as the ArmyPainter first generation of these paints did though!) which also helps soften the distinction between shading and block colours.

The "experiment" bit of this process came as I opted to use AK paint pens to do most of the block colouring - the "white" ones using AK RCM034 Flat White, the "yellow" ones using AK RCM012 Wood Base and the "red" ones with AK RCM003 Signal Red. 

The pens have a "felt tip" nib that is fairly broad even though it comes to a point, so they actually worked quite well on these figures as the nib is way too big to go into the creases of the tunics, leaving the darker underlights (?) pretty much intact whilst skimming over the topmost layers.

The white in particular needed a few coats and run-overs with the pen to get decent coverage, with the yellow having more opacity but still needing a couple of goes. 

Annoyingly I managed somehow to break one of the spears, and also one of the swords when I was taking them outside to spray varnish (both in the back row). These have - as is usual with Victrix - very thin spears, and there will be casualties, such that I'm not even sure I will repair these two as it's very hard to see unless I point it out!  

The pens are sadly not sharp enough to do the patterns on the tunics, so those had to be done with a regular brush and paint - I managed to do the "darker narrow inner, lighter wider outer" type of stripes on some of the tunics, and got two narrow stripes on others.

They (of course) have LBMS transfers, which I found fitted really well for these figures. I painted the edges of the shields with ArmyPainter Enchanted Steel and/or Fanatic Bronze before applying the transfers, with the Enchanted Steel in particular being very flow-ey (..?) so it just runs nicely into the edges of the embossed edges and bosses to save on the need for all that much blacklining and infilling later on after the transfers are on. 

You can just about see a bit of proper blacklining on some of these shields, but as I've said before, these  transfers seem to fit absolutely perfectly on this set.

I now have 3 bases of swordsmen/javelineers to fight alongside my Roman Legions. 

Frankly I'm astonished how good these look - even if I say so myself! 

There are also a couple of javelin armed skirmishers, as the sprues I had seemed to make up 20 figures somehow - seems like an odd number, but hey! 

 

No LBMS transfers for these shields on the sheet though ! 

Here they are next to my Foundry "Classic Legionaries" 

They are a bit taller, but nothing to worry about at all on the tabletop. 

And here is a Nauk Nauk animation of the guys in action !