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 ! 

Crusader Minis Triarii

 Finally I'm starting to get to the proper "line of battle" troops of the Roman army I'm collecting and painting - and why not start at the back, with the Triarii?

These are Crusader Miniatures figures from North Star - I picked them as they are very similar in style and stature to the Foundry guys who make up most of the Legions. 

North Star also have arranged for LBMS to make transfers for these guys, which is of course fantastic 

As you may spot, on taking the photos of them I noticed that I'd gotten some basing material on the back of one of the chaps in red - I'll be fixing that before they hit the table ! 

I bought a Unit Deal from North Star, getting me 16 infantry and 4 officers/standards etc for £27. 

Rather cheaper than Foundry prices - although I did also get some officers from Foundry, and I'm not sure if these two in the middle are Foundry or Crusader figures. 

It's a very simple paint scheme, with black undercoat, drybrush gunmetal on the armour, and what is essentially a couple of layers of white slap-chop on the tunics. 

I edged the raised detail on the armour with white as well to give them a bit more definition and interest. 

The faces are white "second undercoat" on the black spray base, then Contrast Darkoath Flesh, and finally highlights with Vallejo Dark Flesh to create the faces and hands/arms etc. 

The second unit ended up with red tunics and these really nice yellow boar design shields. 

Cutting the transfers out wasn't as painful as I feared - maybe I am channelling memories of trying to do this with 15mm transfers, whereas the 28mm ones are much bigger and so easier to slice the shield boss holes out of them. 

Here they are from the side view.

There are 4 different heads on these figures, but only one real pose, so attaching the shields at different heights and angles really is vital to get some motion into the units. 

Dropping one front rank shield onto the ground is especially important I think as thats a very visibly different pose. 

And there they are, ready never to be called upon to fight if things go right with the rest of the Legions !

28mm Numidian Light Cavalry

 Next up in the Numidian allied contingent (after the infantry) are the famed Numidian Light Horsemen.

These have been painted in exactly the same way as the infantrymen, with Speedpaint Holy White on a white base layer, topped off with Vallejo white for the clothing and a couple of layers of Darkoath Flesh Contrast for the skintones 

Again I went for a fairly subdued and simple palette for the Commander, with a plain red cloak and red ribbons on the banner & standard.

 

The horses are just a straight layer of Contrast on white - the "black" horse is Black Templar.

 

LBMS transfers (these are however only sold by Victrix directly) for the win, with some blending and painting-over on the edges of the transfers to get them to wrap around the edges of the shields.

I kept the horses in the main fairly pale for that desert rider look - the rope is just Speedpaint Leather on the white base. 

I did replace most of the spears with plastic broom bristles on these, as the Victrix spears are often rather flimsy so for ones that may get handled a more robust spear is better - even if drilling out the hands is a bit of a PITA sometimes. 

Next up is the Elephant! 

28mm Victrix Numidian Infantry

 With a mostly-Foundry Republican/Camillan Roman army at the head of the painting queue right now I've already done the Velites and next up I have made a start on, erm, not the actual "Romans" but instead a small Numidian allied force made up from Victrix figures.   

This is the Allied contingent's Commander on a 40mm round base. I used two of the crew from the Victrix elephant set (more of that later..), drilling and pinning a leg each to the base (as these crew don't have puddle bases) and adding arms from the infantry sprues. 

All of these figures were done with a white undercoat, Warlord Holy White "Contrast" paints on the clothing then layered with actual Vallejo white on top of that.

These are the actual infantrymen - the skin tone is done with a couple of layers of Contrast Darkoath Flesh, with some having an extra layer of ArmyPainter Dark Tone wash on top.  

The round shields all have LBMS transfers of animal skins, whereas the scutum-type shields are hand painted (as you can no doubt see), partly to save money and partly because I felt the LBMS scutum ones were actually a bit too intense in design and colour.

  

One thing to check with the Victrix / LBMS shields and transfers is that the round shields seemingly come in 3 different (OK, slightly different) sizes, and so it probably makes sense to keep the smaller shields for the cavalrymen and any Light Foot javelin skirmishers. 

The three types of round shield are very, very similar in size so if you don't realise they are different sizes it's easy to only discover this when they are glued and basecoat painted ready to take the transfers!

I kept a fairly dull dusty pallete for these, mixing up some tan and beige colour for the shields in particular on my wet pallette and doing blending and shadows on the edges of the shields with a think coat of Contrast  Aggaros Dunes or other brownish colours.

As usual, a bit of drybrushing really picks out the hair 

I did start to wonder if the Holy White "new formula" Speedpaint was still bleeding a little into the white paint I layered on top (as this wasa big issue with the initial batch) but if it is, it's actually just about perfect for creating more subtle layering than a flat grey would have been. 

The aforementioned Light Foot skirmishers, with possibly overly large shields. 

Again using the wet pallette to do some mixing of various browns and tans I think managed to do a fairly credible job of blending in the edges of the LBMS transfers up to to, and in some cases just around the actual edges of the shields.   

This is a bit of a faff, but is really worth the effort IMO as you are paying good money for a great product from LBMS, but if you leave it so you can see the edges of the design and the plastic film on the shield it's sort of all wasted IMO

And, from "ground level", here are the guys ready to hurl javelins or attack with swords! 

More to come soon!

2024 Kegworth Codgers Midweek Challenge: Runners & Riders

 We now have a near-full list of Runers & Riders for the upcoming Kegworth Codgers Midweek Challenge ADLG competition, with a rather astounding 32 players finding time from their busy retirement and part-time work schedules to attend plus - I believe - one chap who was so desparate not to miss out on a couple of days in an unbranded Premier Inn-equivalent motel just off the M1 that he's booked 2 days holiday to play too.

The event is themed for Kegworth's great transport links and proximity to the Fosse Way, inspiring a Roman Roads theme of "armies valid in the period when the Romans were building roads across the Britain, 43-407AD" and that has resulted in a pretty decent spread of options, with 21 different lists represented including 7 Roman armies and a further 7 hailing from outside the Roman sphere of influence.

In a week and a bit therefore the mighty halls of the Kegworth Hotel & Conference Centre will echo to the sounds of warfare, as the battle is joined to see who is the Codger of the Year 2024.  

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28mm Imitation Legionaries (aka Aventine Thorakitai)

 A key part of many of the Later Successor armies are the "imitation" Legionaries, where Alexander's marshalls decided to copy Rome's successful pilum+sword+shield formula, and have a tentative go at moving beyond the Greek-originated spear+shield approach. This is pretty neat, and adds variety to a wall of pikes or spears, so adding a couple of units of Imitation Legionaries to my Successor collection has always been a bit of a must. 

Other than knowing that these guys were copying Roman tactics however, there's not a massive amount of evidence for where they sit on the "Look like Romans <-> Look like Greeks" spectrum, giving a reasonable amount of leeway for choosing figures for them. 

And, in the end, I actually didn't even "choose" which figures, instead finding a couple of packs of Aventine guys in the collection of a late clubmate which seemed to fit the bill. 

It turns out on closer examination of the Aventine website that they are techically Thorakitai, but I felt that the spears that they come with were short enough (and chunky enough) to pass for pilum-style heavy throwing spears.

The other consideration (apart from "I had these already") was that having a "Greek" flavour to the figures might actually be better than having "Roman" style armour and helmets - after all, it would surely have been the style of fighting that the Successor generals would have wanted these guys to emulate, not their fashions and haberdashery?   

Adding in some head swaps from the same pack of Aventine heads that I'd used earlier on some of the Phalanx greatly increased their variety.

When combined with gluing the shields on at a variety of heights, and posing them at different angles I ended up creating a couple of units where you really have to look twice to notice that there is only one figure pose for the non-officer infantry.

The shield patterns are simple Roman-style black transfers from Veni Vidi Vici - both sets of shields are done with Contrast paints over a white base, which I have found gives a great gradient of texture on a flat surface like a shield, as the paint pools at one side of the flat surface as it dries. 

For the "Blue" unit I also did a pale blue (normal paint) background patch where the transfer would go before applying the transfer. This was because the Contrast paint was too dark to really work well with a black transfer. I had considered white transfers, but thought they might look a bit bland compared to black.

I also added in a plastic flag - I'm not entirely sure which set it was from, but it's big, and it has an LBMS transfer in the middle of it that I had to blend in by mixing paint to match the small postage-stamp bit of the transfer. 

So, that's pretty much all of the Heavy Infantry for my Successors completed - other than another couple of Phalanxes, which I'm putting off for the time being, as the thought of all that hand-drilling is rather intimidating. 

And, of course, being rather lovely Aventine metal figures, these are the "heaviest" of the Heavy Infantry in the army by quite some margin!

Hopefully these guys will make their debut at Beachhead in the ADLG competition this coming weekend (unless I end up playing in the 15mm pool to help even up numbers!)