Grand Manner Roman Galley 4: oars under way

Finishing the Roman Galley was put on hold last year for a number of reasons, not least of which was my panic at working out how to do the the oars.  The Grand Manner model comes with a rather curious strip of textured sea into which 39 holes have been made to take oars.  This means the oars are inserted into the sea not the ship.  Initially I thought that this was a very odd idea but now I have started to do them it means I can keep them as a separate unit and just place them in position next to the ship's hull.  

The aim now is to get the galley ready for Salute in two weeks time for Big Red Bat's invasion of Britain game.  Today he kindly sent me some pictures a friend of his had taken of his work on the same model.  Even better, the person concerned, Mark, sent me a couple of emails with useful information on oar length etc.  As a result I have managed to glue in two out of the six banks of oars this afternoon and I have cut the next two banks worth of oars to length.  My wife said that Waitrose bamboo food skewers should be about the right diameter for the holes and she was spot on; they fit exactly.

I also base coated the two resin sea pieces today using the same paint Big Red Bat used for his Thapsus game.  I don't know if he is using the same scenery.  The colour is rather too blue for the English Channel compared with the Mediterranean!

So, tomorrow my aim is to finish the oars and the sea base.  During the week I want to tidy up the painting on the galley, including working on the two eyes for the bow.  Next weekend it is masts and thinking about some rigging.  This will be very minimalist as I want to be able to carry the galley to Salute in pieces as I am going on public transport (that should limit my purchases this year!)

Romans everywhere!

Workbench today

I meant to sit down and have a good go at my Romans this weekend but for some reason I didn't feel like painting, despite the nice, bright weather.  Mostly, this is because when I have new figures it seems such a long journey before they are anything like ready that I give up before I start.  I knew that however much I did this weekend they would be nowhere close to being finished so, oddly I didn't start them until late this afternoon.

The other problem is, of course, that I had meant to start a unit of 2nd Century AD Romans but then with the arrival of my Legio II Augusta shield transfers for my Warlord plastic EIR figures I wanted to get them done and then this week I bought a box of Warlord's Caesarian plastics too.  So instead of twenty four figures to start work on I had over seventy.  Most off putting! 

In the end I did base the whole Praetorian Aventine Cohort and the rest of them should be ready for undercoating tomorrow.  I even started to paint four of them.  I only have four EIR's under way but am now working on a dozen of the Caesarian plastics.  Well, they are not all plastics as I ordered the metal command set direct from Warlord which arrived the next day, along with some LBMS shield transfers.  Taking a little longer to arrive was my second Aventine order of shield transfers for the Praetorians plus a command set and 16 auxiliary archers.  So I have no excuse to delay now.

One thing I did agonise over for a while was what colour to undercoat them. I usually use white undercoat but the Romans, of course, have quite a lot of metal on them which would suggest a black undercoat.  However, I don't really like black undercoat as I find it difficult to see what I am painting and given that I use enamels and not acrylics they don't cover so well over black.  As I am painting my Romans with white tunics I decided to stick to white undercoat.  This does mean that I will have to paint the metal parts with black which adds extra work.  Still, it's better than the three or four coats of white it takes to cover a black undercoat though.

Finally, I found a Copplestone sculpted Foundry Casarian centurion which I had painted a long time ago.  He needs tidying up (he was never properly finished -I had to rush him for the Fishbourne game) so will get him done in order to give me a nice acheivable target for this week.

Marcomannic War project 1: Marcus Aurelius

I've just finished my first Aventine figures of Marcus  Aurelius and a Praetorian centurion.  Aventine give the centurion a choice of heads, including one with the more usual transverse crest but I want all my Praetorians  with these crested helmets.  Aventine do a really good range of command figures for this period and I have just ordered the Praetorian command set and some more Praetorians for my first unit. I've also ordered some of the new archers which should keep me busy for a while.  These are really nice figures to paint but they are so big and heavy that I keep dropping them as they weigh more than I expect when I pick them up!  

Marcus Aurelius is, inconveniently, one of the few Roman emperors from the first 200 years AD about whom we know nothing of his hair colour.  Most of the other emperors have their hair colour mentioned somewhere.  I have given him black hair on the basis that his family originally came from Spain.  He was notably ascetic so I doubt whether he would have worn such an ostentatious purple cloak but he is the Emperor and probably needed to stand out on the battle field at least.  

A philosopher more than a warrior he was, nevertheless, fated to spend much of his reign campaigning against the Germans and is, of course, the emperor played by Richard Harris in Gladiator and by Alec Guinness in The Fall of the Roman Empire; both of which I need to re-watch to keep my interest going!

I originally had the centurion in a white tunic for which there is a fair bit of evidence for Praetorians but went for red in the end because he needed a bit more colour.  Red cloaks were quite likely for officers in the Roman army.

I'm not a great one for those mini diorama type command stands as I like my figures individually based but I will try to build a retinue for the Emperor.  Aventine make some nice Praetorians in cloaks so I may give him a few of those.  

Aventine's Lucius Verus

The set that includes Marcus Aurelius also includes his co-emperor and adoptive brother Lucius Verus.  Verus was a very different character from Marcus Aurelius.  He led the campaign against the Parthians shortly before the Marcomannic War but seemed to spend a lot of time partying with his "low born" mistress Panthea before marrying a teenage bride less than half his age.  He sounds much more my sort of chap.  More on him when he's painted.  The Aventine figure is quite a good likeness of him.

Ave Aventine! A new Roman army!

Marcus Aurelius prepares to lead his army into Germania!  Little does he know that he will be murdered by Johnny Cash!

Just over a year ago when I was playing favourites I opined that if I had to paint only one wargames army it would be Early Imperial Roman.  And yet, not long ago, I sold nearly all the figures I had to BigRedBat, whose Greek and Roman armies are simply awesome.

How could Romans be my favorite wargames army if I didn't have any of the classic EIR figures any more?  I looked at the plastic Warlord Games figures again but they are not very inspiring, I have decided, despite lots of supporting figures (all in different scales and styles).  I loved my Steve Saleh figures but there just wasn't enough variety for me to happily build an army: no command, no cavalry or artillery and only a few poses.

But the problem was that for the period I wanted to do (invasion of Britain in 43 AD) there were no other EIR figures I liked.  I looked at the Warlord plastics again but still didn't feel inspired, partly because there were no Little Big Men decals for the Legio II Augusta who I really wanted to paint.

My 3rd Century infantry unit

I really want to paint some Romans, though. I haven't painted any since October 2007!  Recently I have had an epiphany, however.  I was looking at the wrong period!  Now, I already have a Republican army which I finished in 2007, although recently I picked up some figures on eBay so I could push it from 12 man to 24 man units.  I have quite a few Foundry Caesarian Romans of which I have only painted one centurion.  I am wondering about the new Warlord plastics as they are supposedly bigger than their EIR figures.  I have painted two units of A&A's lovely 3rd Century Romans which I intend to pit (eventually) against Palmyrans.  I even have some late Romans from Black Tree Designs (they are much nicer than their EIR figures which have very short legs) which I am now thinking of matching up against some of Musketeer's excellent Goths.

A couple of years ago when I was bemoaning the lack of good, modern 28mm EIR figures an anonymous person commented on one of my posts as follows:  "You would be suprised. Wait some months ;-) There would be saleh style legionaries in Dacian war armour, new gladius poses, legion command, artillery etc, all in 28mm scale."   I had no idea who left this comment but now wonder whether it could be someone from Aventine Miniatures.  I knew that they were doing Etruscans but had missed the fact that they had started an EIC range or, strictly, a late EIC range because these figures are supposed to cover the period from 100AD to 190AD.  Too late for my invasion of Britain but they would work for wars against the Dacians, Sarmartians and Germans.  I looked at their website and was surprised to see how many packs they had already.  This is when I had my epiphany!  What had started me buying (initially) Peter Pig 15mm EIR figures was seeing the film Gladiator.  I also bought some Germans.  I even painted a lot of them.  Then I started to buy and paint some of Foundry's Mark Copplestone Ancient Germans.  I actually have about 70 figures painted which is a huge amount for me.  Why not go back to my original Gladiator inspiration and have an Aurelian army to take on the Germans?  The Aventine figures are just the right period (although I wish some of the figures had beards which, it seems, was common during the reign of Marcus Aurelius).

Then BigRedBat announced he was looking for unpainted Foundry Germans and we realised that maybe we were planning a similar (identical?) project at the same time.  Normally this would put me off because he is so focussed and will no doubt churn out huge numbers of (lovely) figures in a very short time.  In the meantime I had ordered some sample packs from Aventine and when they arrived they were just beautiful. Large, like the Foundry Saleh figures, and very similar in look but this time there was enough variation.  No cavalry yet but this does still seem to be an ongoing project.  

Today I have based Marcus Aurelius and a supporting primus pilus and have sixteen Praetorians to get started on.  This time I am going to do what one of the WAB books suggested; start with your commanding officer and what better way to start a  new Roman army than with the Emperor!

A new home for some of my Romans...

Skulking in the vineyard 

I've never sold any of my painted figures before but when I saw BigRedBat asking if anyone had any of the big Steve Saleh sculpted Foundry Romans for a game he was planning at Partizan I volunteered to sell him mine.  I was delighted to see a picture of my auxiliaries on his blog post of the superb looking battle of Ad Castores at last weekend's event in Newark (where on earth is Newark anyway?).  Even better he had hidden them in a vineyard and named the cohort after me.  I really do feel that the figures have gone to a good home!  He has just put up a post about them here and they now look fantastic.  Many of these figures had to be painted very quickly overnight as the game they were painted for at Fishbourne Roman Place was not going well for the Romans and we needed reinforcements.

Here they are in action at the epic Fishbourne Game in 2005

Now given that I said once that if I had to give up all other wargaming periods except one it would be Early Imperial Romans it may seem odd that I sold all my EIR figures. The thing is that while I liked Saleh's Roman there were hardly any different poses as he never finished the range; the consequence of the implosion at Wargames Foundry a few years ago.  In the meantime, we have seen the launch of Warlord Games and their extensive Roman range.  I made the decision to move over to their figures as soon as I saw their "tortoise".  I own about four boxes of their plastics and have constructed and based up a unit but haven't' started painting them.  They have been sat precariously perched on an old tray on top of a pile of file boxes of old Penthouse magazines from the sixties and seventies in the corner of my study for well over a year.

Legio Secunda's interpretation

I find Romans quite quick to paint so why haven't I started them?  The answer is lack of shield transfers.  I want to do the Roman invasion of Britain in AD 43 which means the II, IV, XIV and XX Legions. However, there is reasonable evidence to suggest that Legio II Augusta, commanded by Vespasian, featured a Capricorn design on its shield (the Arch at Orange being a source for this as it was partly built in honour of the successes of Legio II Augusta in the Gallic Wars).  Yet nowhere can I find a shield transfer for this famous unit. I really don't want to have to paint every shield but it looks as If I might have to!  The Legio Secunda Augusta re-enactment group have come up with their own version of the shield design and it wouldn't be that hard to paint; just time consuming!

While scanning some older posts on my Punic Wars blog I saw all the posts I did while preparing a force for the Society of Ancients Cynoscephalae game a few (five!) years ago.  In fact it was attending that event where I met BigRedBat for the first (and only) time.  Given I have just finished painting a unit of figures (a rare occurrence) I was wondering about digging out the next unit of Carthaginian veterans that I have somewhere.  I think they might even be undercoated!  Maybe then I might expand my Roman legions from the current 1:100 figure ratio to 1:50.  I used 12 figure units as that was what the WAB Hannibal supplement suggested but 24 man units would look better and would be better for Hail Caesar and some of the other new ancients rules I have bought recently.

So maybe it's time to return to Rome!

Article on Battle of Medway Game 2005

The Legatus on the left in the top and bottom. More importantly that's my Roman general on the right!

Someone on TMP was explaining that they had had a bad experience with a newspaper reporter writing about wargaming.

Prior to me setting up my blogs we did a demonstration game at Fishbourne Roman Palace and the Chichester Observer sent a rather cute lady reporter along who wrote, I have to admit, a nice little article. Of course the fact that she wanted me to be in all the photographs helped! I can't believe it was nearly five years ago!

Warlord Games Early Imperial Romans

After much humming and hawing I bought a box of the Warlord Games plastic 28mm Romans. Like many people I got a free one with miniature Wargames and was subsequently disappointed by the small size of the figure. This was especially so as my current EIR army is made up of the big Steve Saleh sculpted Foundry figures. Warlord have won me over by just turning out a huge number of figures in their first year which include all sorts of interesting figures such as marching figures, carts, mules etc. This means that I can really build the sort of force I want, which the lack of variety in the Foundry figures didn't allow me to do. Warlord are also promising interesting opponents like Dacians and Samartians too. Finally, the Warlord figures match the older Perry Foundry ones quite well so characters and such can come from the Foundry line.

I have now made a few of the figures from my first box and so I will start to do some over the next few months.

Because of this project I have decided to expand the coverage of this blog to all Romans from 1st Century AD until 4th Century AD. Several armies, I know. but it means I will update it a bit more often hopefully.