Late Roman Army revived from the 1980s

Back in the early 1980s, I began to collect a 15mm Late Roman Army with figures from Minifigs and Asgard / Table Top Games. I painted up a few units and part units, based them for "Shock of Impact" but never completed the army before going to University and leaving them to languish in a box.

I must have had some renewed plan to complete it later because I bought some more Minifigs legionaries and a few Gladiator Miniatures (I previously mis-remembered these as Museum Miniatures) command figures but nothing came of this.

After returning to war gaming, my focus has been on the Italian Wars and WW2 Normandy so the Romans stayed in their box, in the loft.

Last Autumn I was introduced to Mortem et Gloriam with a game of Punic Wars Republican Romans v Macedonian Successors. I really liked the game and this set me to thinking about finishing off my Late Roman army for MeG. I'd only need a few extra figures and could just tidy up and re-base the already painted figures, do a quick paint job on the others and I'd soon have a usable army.

I regret I didn't take a real 'before' photo of the old painted figures and the Roman lead pile (Plumbi moles Romanae). This was taken after I had already started cutting figures off the old bases and, in a fit of enthusiasm, glued some figures onto a command base. 

In reality, I found that the level of "tidying up" needed to bring them anywhere near the standard I now aim for was almost as time consuming as starting from scratch and I can't really do "quick" when it comes to painting. Worse, several of the figures had contracted lead rot in their years in the loft - in some cases this was obvious and they went straight in the bin but others were salvageable. In a few cases, the deterioration only emerged when I had tidied them up and was basing them - one officer just snapped off at the ankles as the rot extended almost completely through.

Today there are fantastic Late Roman ranges available from Legio Heroica and Khurasan. By comparison, my old figures suffered from a lack of variety in the poses and extreme differences, for example: in the interpretation of what an infantry shield should look like. For some reason, Minifigs made their Legionary and Auxilia shields quite curved, Asgard flat but smaller and with rounded edges and Museum Miniatures flat with sharp edges but smaller still!

From L to R: Gladiator Miniatures, Minifigs Legionary, Minifigs Auxilia, Minifigs Legionary Lanciari.

As I researched the 4th and 5th Century Roman Army, a more fundamental problem emerged. The Minifigs and Asgard figures were based very closely on the WRG book, "Armies and Enemies of Imperial Rome" by Phil Barker, illustrated by Ian Heath, 1981. Whilst that is a fantastic resource and still useful today with, for example an extensive illustrated section on shield patterns from the Notitia Dignitatum, Phil Barker chose a couple of very different interpretations of the historic evidence from current thinking. In the WRG book, 4th and 5th Century Auxilia are un-armoured and Legionaries have sculpted rawhide armour whereas the current thinking is that mail armour was usual in battle. As I have more than a hundred of these, this gave me a bit of a dilemma.

Apart from the flash on the Legionary, another problem is that the Auxiliary's spears are prone to breaking off at the edge of the shield so I need to decide whether to replace only the broken ones or do them all - the blend of the spear into the body makes this more of a job than usual but it would give the me chance to vary the angle and pose a bit. 

In the end, I decided to work with what I had: make alterations to give uniformity in shields; mix and match to achieve some variety in pose but accept the un-armoured Auxillia and rawhide clad Legionaries as a little bit of 1980s nostalgia. That gives me enough figures for 3 x 6 base units of Legionaries and 1 x 6 base Auxilia. When those are painted, I'll decide about what to do for the 2 or 3 more infantry units that I'll need.

One last thing I should mention is a new accessory - an illuminated magnifier that I found on
Ebay (actually me wife bought it for me, for my birthday). A Kemot 5 diopter (2.25 x) magnifying lens surrounded by LED lights. The negative points are that flex is a bit short and comes with a continental plug (albeit with an adapter thrown in) but for a bit less than £35 it is brilliant - for me, the perfect balance of magnification and depth of field for figure painting. For some years I have used a small stand magnifier and an external lamp and this is a huge, step up and highly recommended.