Trajan's Column

On a recent trip to Rome I kinda stumbled across Trajan’s Column - rather hard to do I know given it's sort of a big stone column in the middle of Rome, but there is a lot of construction work around there at the moment due to the new Metro line, and to be honest I'd rather forgotten it was there as there is just so much other stuff to see in Rome! 

Anyways, I took the opportunity to take some photos and videos of it to share, as for wargamers and modelers, Trajan’s Column is an near-legendary goldmine of first-hand information. 

The carvings provide rare, direct insight into Roman legionary gear—such as segmentata armor, scutum shields, pila, and helmets with varying crest styles. 

They also depict auxiliary troops in distinct dress and cavalry in motion, giving hints to tactical formations and battlefield logistics. 

Importantly, the Dacians themselves are richly portrayed, often wielding the distinctive falx—a curved, two-handed weapon—and wearing flowing garments and Phrygian-style caps, setting them apart visually and culturally from their Roman foes.

Erected in 113 AD in Rome, the Column is a monumental celebration of Emperor Trajan’s victory in the Dacian Wars. 

The 30-meter-high stone column has over 150 scenes depicting Roman legions in action: constructing camps, crossing rivers, engaging in battle, and interacting with both allies and enemies. These finely detailed reliefs offer one of the most comprehensive, near-contemporary depictions of the Roman military in the early 2nd century AD.

While some artistic license may be present, especially in the repetition of certain motifs, the overall fidelity and variety of military details make the column an essential reference for reconstructing units and skirmishes on the tabletop. 

Whether you're painting an army or designing scenarios based on the Dacian campaigns, a closer look at Trajan’s Column may well be useful - so hopefully these pictures (which you can click on the blog to see full size) and videos will be of interest and use.

I could have taken more, but at some point I had to get back to my actual holiday... so enjoy! 

3D Printed Numidians

 Another week, another dabble with 3D printed models.

This time it is some 15mm Numidian cavalry from the 3D Breed March to Hell range, which I picked up as I have never really been happy with the mix of Essex, Baueda and Old Glory Numidians that I already own. 

So, having flogged off some of the metals as part of an eBay sale I then spent some of my ill-gotten eBay gains to pick up some of these prints mostly to see what this now well-established and well-known design shop (is that the right wording?) could offer. 

And here are the results:

I did this as a set of 4 to see how they worked initially.

Horses are mostly done in GW Contrasts - Aggaros Dunes, Gore-Grunta Fur, Templar Black and then the grey is Warlords Speeedpaint Holy White.

The rope "bridle" is also a Speedpaint, hardened leather - all done with white base coat.  

The horses are lovely sculpts - the riders come as separate pieces and I was immediately fearful of the spears as they are thin and rather brittle, to the point I was a little nervous about snipping off some of the "flash" even with a sprue cutter. 

 

These chaps have rather luxurious hair - David Ginola must have had Numidan ancestors somewhere down the line! 

They are a well animated bunch and take paint nicely too... however ... 

... whilst taking them outside for some spray matt varnish I dropped them onto a wooden floor from I guess just over 3 feet up... and this was the sad outcome:

 Yes, every single one broke off its base at the ankles, with a couple also suffering further damage to the horses legs - some very tiny bits of which I knew immediately that I would never find. 

One of the riders also lost the upper part of a set of javelins which he was holding in his shield hand too - but that I did spot and managed to reattach.

To be fair they all went together again with some superglue pretty easily, but that does no doubt mean they could also break again pretty easily too. I've therefore put only minimal magnabase on the bottoms of these units, as they don't need to be desparately gripping the bottom of the tin to stay in place as the figures are so lightweight anyway. 

Once I start doing the full set of 24 my plan is to try and base them up such that the horses and riders can be glued together at some hard-to-see point, giving the entire base a bit of extra stability and structural integrity in the process.

So, in summary, these are very nice figures, and a real upgrade on my rather old metals - but the combination of "materials" and "design" for these 3D prints still perhaps isn't quite there as yet to make them robust enough for butterfingered wargamers like me!

The Roman Road Heads Down South

2025's PAW competition in deepest Devon (aka The South West's 2nd biggest Festival of ADLG & Pastys) provided me the opportunity to put the recently painted 28mm Triumverate / post Marian Reform Roman army on table in a Roman-themed event. 

This would see as many of the figures I've been painting and trailling on my blog in the past few months being shoehorned into a single army list, with maximum inclusivity trumping potential effectiveness by some margin!

The end result is these four 28mm video battle reports from PAW in Plymouth which you can watch in a YouTube playlist, or embedded on a single page on madaxeman.com.

The embedded video page also has a post-event summary from Nasty Hannibal.

A Festive Bonus - a dozen Gladiators!

 Yes, the interminable ADLG 28mm Republican Roman army project has now hit a Christmas milestone, with one of the novelty items in the army list hitting the interweb in the shape of these dozen Gladiators.

They are all from the Crusader Minis range, which I think do a very good job of staying stylistically in keeping with the mostly-Foundry Legionaries I've posted previously, but at a much lower price point of £7 for 4 instead of £14 for 6! 

They were done surprisingly quickly, with the non-metallics being mostly Contrast paints - however on these figures the non-metallic parts are rather smaller than the metal-clad bits!

I also did almost all of the shield patterns myself, the exception being the chap at the back who uses a spare Crusader Roman Cavalry transfer from LBMS - unsurprisingly the shield was an exact size match for the CRusader cavalry shields ! 

The flesh is my now-standard layering of white base, Darkoath Flesh contrast then Vallejo Dark Flesh real paint, whereas all the matallics are black undeercoat and a drybrush of metallic.

  

I was particularly pleased with how this laurel wreath shield came out - it's a white base coat, GW Contrast Blood Angels Red (which does leave a bit more texture on the shield than a straight normal paint coat woudl do), then the laurel was initially picked out as a series of white blob over which I then painted GW Contrast Mantis Warrior Green. 

 

Very chuffed with the musculature of the guy front left as you look at this base of figures. The casting really helped show where to paint, and the Darkoath Flesh layer then gives you even clearer guidance as well.

The yellow on their loincloths is Yanden Yellow Contrast. 

The blue shield pattern is hand painted too (OK, this is a bit half-hearted compared to transfers, but...), but the notable thing about this is that the yellow bits are painted in a single layer straight onto (wider) black lines, using the new Warlord Games Fanatic paints - Demonic Yellow in this case. 

This is the first yellow paint I think I've ever owned that had enough coverage to give this density of colour on top of black, straight out of the dropper bottle - highly recommended.

The same technique and paint was used on this red shield too. 

Talassar Blue is the loincloth colour here.

And, here are the set, ready to accompany the Roman army into battle, and you to the dinner table for some turkey and stuffing!

And here's an AI-generated video of the guys being animated and aggressive!

 

The Legions are here!

 The almost-final element of my 28mm L'Art de la Guerre Republican/Triumverate Roman project is the biggest and most meaty - 100 Legionaries (or Hastati and Principes in old money I guess?).

The figures are almost all from the classic Foundry ranges, mainly as they are just such great figures that still stand the test of time even when when put up against all of the newer plastic ranges out there. 

They do however also stand the test of being expensive, and even though I do keep reminding myself that there is no point in saving a few quid buying sub-par figures it was still a challenge to click "buy" on the Foundry shopping cart after stacking up more than a dozen or so packs of Foundry infantry!

Luckily though, Mark Fry was selling a huge unpainted set of Foundry Roman figures at the end of last year, so that's how I convinced myself to bite the bullet and pick up enough infantry figures (as well as a set of mounted Great Commanders) to make up the meat (and two veg) of a Roman army. 

Painting up 100 figures is quite a challenge, and even more so once you add in the LBMS shield transfer application process x 100 ... so I've documented it all here with LOTS of photos of the finished and WiP figures along the way. 

There are lots more photos now on the website, along with some details of the painting process, links to the figures used and also to the LBMS shields on their site too. 

Taking Germans to Germany - whatever next?!

 A few weeks back a brave band of CLWC gamers hopped in a car and headed across Europe to take part in the ADLG German Team Tourament in Braubach, on the banks of the mighty Rhine.

On our journey we encountered many strange sights....

..including a trip to the museum in Mons in Belgium...

...some heavyweight tank action at Bastogne barracks...

..a bfrief history of medieval torture in Trier ...

...which was also the capital of the Western Roman Empire for a while...

..before finally engaging in 5 games of ADLG using a Medieval German army ...

..with what admittedly was mixed success... 

..under the expert leadership of the Kaiser Gnome ...

..before heading home via a rain-soaked, beer-soaked 800 year old 4 month long drinking festival!

For a full set of military tourism, gastronomic and liquid intake excess, musical weirdness, the Gome Kaiser trading insults with Hannibal, and the occasional spot of reportage of 15mm scale Medieval wargaming head on over to the Battle & Tourism reports now ! 

Roman Cavalry (not quite a choir!)

 Chris Martin may have sung about Roman Cavalry Choirs singing, but in most sets of wargaming rules the Roman Cavalry are, well, a bit "out of tune" with what it takes to be actually all that good, at least in the Republican period.  They aren't equipped with cool lances, they aren't especially decent quality, and they aren't numerous enough to have "quantity as a quality all of it's own" either

However in ADLG, again as in most rules, there are always a couple of mandatory units of Roman Cavalry in most of the Marian/Republican era lists, so I was obliged to get some for my Roman army. 

These are the finished article:

They are all from the "much cheaper than Foundry" Crusader range from North Star.

The horses are a tad on the skinny side if I'm being picky, but that does at least mean they all fit together well on this 60mm wide base.

The riders are cast with saddles which didn't really fit all that snugly on the backs of the horses, so it was not entirely straighforward to mount them up. 

After a bit of consideration I ended up deciding to snip off some parts of of the horses manes, where the mane joins the back of the horse.

 Doing this creates enough of a long, flat patch along the back of the horse to mount the riders properly - if they had been left to sit "beind" the original mane they would have ended up being pitched forward  quite notably as the saddle would have say partly on the horses buttocks, which are are higher than the middle of their backs. 

These are the inevitable LBMS transfers, sized very well for these specific figures. 

I did do a bit of blending in around the edges, although the one on the right of this photo does still seem to have been left with a visible line showing the edge of the transfer, which is a bit ofa PITA in this photo but will not be seen on-table 

I bought one pack of 3 armoured horsemen / officers and one of unarmoured cavalry, giving me the potential to field them as visibly different, perhaps as Elite & Ordinary, or as a Heavy Cavalry unit and a Medium Cavalry unit - the unarmoured chaps also get the less glamorous brown cloaks so I can tell from the back too! 

They don't come with spears, so these are slightly bendy (break proof!) plastic broom bristles.

 

Once I get the legions (and Gladiators) done these guys will be mooching about ineffectually at the back of the army in no time at all !