Tubantes, Auxilium Palatinum (or Leones Iuniores?)

With this unit, (and a sister unit still to be completed) my 4th C Romans enter the modern Wargames world with figures from Legio Heroica and the ubiquitous Little Big Men shield transfers.

Unlike my old Minifigs / Asgard / Gladiator legionaries and auxiliaries, these are actually dressed and equipped according to the current accepted view of the late Roman 'pedes'. The figures are cleanly cast with little flash and good definition and there are a variety of (similar) poses and equipment. The print quality of the transfers is excellent and they are easily applied - the only small niggles are that the centre hole isn't quite big enough for the cast boss on the shields and the outside shape doesn't always match the shields very well but the latter, I think, is down to casting variation of the shields.

These Legio Heroica figures are significantly bigger than the older models and the shields are much bigger. The wire spears are the same length (about 22mm) as those I gave to my Minifigs auxiliaries but quite a lot longer than the cast spears of the Minifigs legionaries, a difference that is increased by being held some way off the ground whereas the legionaries have theirs grounded. 

The figures come with separate steel spears with a needle-like conical point but I replaced these with my usual 0.7mm brass rod flattened and shaped to give a leaf-shaped point. Because the figures are cast open-handed there was none of the tedious drilling out hands and cutting away cast-spears but I still had to do quite a lot of shaping to deepen the grip and even moulding the epoxy glue to get a secure attachment and so it looked like the fingers were wrapped around the shaft rather than it just resting against the open palm of  a hand with unnaturally short fingers. A lot of figures also seem to be a bit lacking in thumbs and a few had badly moulded right hands that needed more reconstruction with Milliput.

Shields are cast separately and in two slightly different sized variants. They are rather thick at 1.1 mm - about 100 mm at full size. I expected this to look really bad but once painted the excessive thickness doesn't look too abvious. I wasn't sure whether to glue them on before or after painting. In the end I decided after to improve access for painting and make applying the transfers easier but that inevitably means I wasted time painting features that will be hidden and have a glue-bond that is only as strong as the weakest layer of paint. 

In theory it is only necessary to paint the centre of the shield boss and the outer rim to match the transfer colours - I found Vallejo Dark Vermillion a close match - but I chose to paint over all the red on the shields to get a similar look to my other hand painted shields. I also gave a few of the shields steel coloured bosses for a bit of variety.

Objectively these are much better figures than the old 1980s ranges based on now-discredited WRG interpretations of equipment but somehow I have slightly mixed feelings about the completed unit. The original point of this army was to make constructive use of figures I'd originally bought with my pocket money in the 80s and never completed. But it also became an exercise in nostalgia and seeing what I could do with old-style basic figures. I was always going to have to buy extra figures for two complete infantry units (as well as a few extras to fill out others) and I thought it would be daft to deliberately buy old, inaccurate figures lacking in detail and with increasing quality problems from tired moulds and masters. Now I feel a bit like I've cheated with these modern figures and they look too different to the rest of the army.

Added on 3 April

After posting some pictures from this post on TMP, one of the comments hi-lighted that there are actually some interesting doubts about which unit this shield pattern should be attributed to. To explain this, I can't do better than quote Colonel Chabert's post:

Concerning the attribution of this particular shield pattern to the Tubantes, Luke Ueda-Sarson has done a lot of analysis of the shield patterns in the Notitia Dignitatum and his conclusion is that there are blocks of shields where the labels (i.e. the unit names) are now out of sync with the patterns. Considering that the copies of the ND we have today are at least 4th generation (Original – Carolingian copy – Codex Spirensis – Current copies) it is entirely possible that such errors may have crept in. One of the blocks concerned is the section of the western infantry units where the Tubantes are found. If L U-S is right, and I think he is, then this shield pattern belongs not to the Tubantes but to the Leones Iuniores. The actual shield pattern of the Tubantes would then be the one ascribed to the following unit, the Salii. These two units were brigaded together as was the common practice for all Palatine regiments. They are both named after tribes of the Frankish confederation. There is also a Tubantes-Salii pair in the Eastern army listing. Interestingly, neither pair has the Seniores/iuniores suffix which was used to differentiate regiments with the same name where, probably, the elder one had given up a cadre to form a second new regiment.
As far as the Leones Iuniores are concerned, they are listed immediately after the Leones Seniores, suggesting that they were both formed at the same time and brigaded together (an unusual but not unique occurrence for Seniores/Iuniores pairs). However Hoffmann proposed that the original Leones (the Seniores) had been brigaded with the Excultatores so where that leaves the Leones Iuniores is anyone's guess.
L U-S's full analysis can be found here: link
Warning: his site has so much fascinating stuff that once you enter you may never leave again so beware!

Cordialement

Le Colonel

I'd seen the same issue picked up by Luke with the shield pattern for my skirmishing archers, the Sagittarii Venatores, so it is doubly embarrassing to have missed this one.