Late Roman Cataphracts

 

This unit started with three packs of Minifigs figures from the 1980s. Whilst the scale-armoured horses were quite well proportioned, the riders looked thin and decidedly un-menacing - certainly not the look one wants for a unit of cataphracts! 

The Asgard range that came along soon after had the opposite problem with much more imposing riders but perched on overgrown Shetland ponies with stubby little legs, 2 or 3mm shorter than those from Minifigs. I decided to mix and match but got no further than painting the first half dozen before the project stalled.

At some later point I bought a pack of Gladiator Games command figures with a couple of nice mail-armoured horses but riders that matched neither Minifigs nor Asgard figures.

When I picked up this army again I bought another pack of Minifigs for the horses - with a different rider to the original 80s version - and some more Asgard riders, now from Alternative Armies, who were kind enough to sell me only the riders I needed, rather than insisting on the rider and horse together - a standard option from them now I see, and very welcome. 

Sadly time seems not to have been kind to the Asgard moulds or masters and the castings I received were very poor, with lots of flash, thick areas of excess metal in the undercuts (visible under the right side of the cloak), miscast mace handles and feet, and a generally blobby and rounded appearance compared to the 80s originals. Lots of fettling work before assembly and painting.

My ideas for this unit was inspired by one of the pictures in the Osprey book: 'Late Roman Cavalryman AD236-565' which showed cataphracts with thin streamers hanging from their kontos. I was going to replace the cast lances with brass rod anyway and decided to make some streamers using thick aluminium foil from some old tube of paint or toothpaste that had been in my box of useful bits for years. 

One of the unsatisfactory things about these old figures is that there is typically only one variant. The Asgard riders had an officer and standard bearer with different crests and cloaks (I had 3 of these) and I got more variety by changing the angle of their lances, removing the crests completely from a couple of figures and carving the cloaks around on some figures. For the single variant Minifigs horse, I bent some necks to left or right and remodelled some of the tails into a plain un-knotted version or bent them to either side. In a few cases, this proved too much and the tails broke off altogether so I had to make replacements with Miliput on a wire armature. I also sharpened up the definition between the armour scales using the point of a knife.

My intention was to paint six bases of three figures per base - four packs of 4 Minifigs horses plus the two from Gladiator. However I belatedly realised that Mortem et Gloriam recommend four per base for close order cavalry, such as Cataphracts so changed my plans to four bases of four and duly painted sixteen figures. There was a problem though: the figures are too wide to fit four to a base without staggering them front to back so they could overlap and even then they would be almost touching. On the other hand, three to a base is just the same as the other loose order cavalry and looked sparse.

I asked for advise on the MeG forum to see what other players did but, though nobody thought there was any problem caused by basing three to a base, there was a split between those who preferred four for the added heft imposing appearance and those that preferred a bit of space between the figures and getting more bases for their money and painting time. 

The issue was decided for me because I couldn't find one of the two spare riders I would have needed for six bases of three. I suspect the cat is to blame - he takes much too close an interest and thinks small models or components belong on the floor. 

Now the basing is complete, I'm pleased I went for four figures to a base - those that said it gives a satisfying heft to the unit were right. In any case, all the troop types in this army are so expensive that I'll never have the points for a unit of six cataphract bases.

Because having the figures so closely packed would leave little space for access, I textured the top of each figures base with sand and painted it before sticking them down so I'd only have to fill the gaps and add the static grass and tufts afterwards. 

A couple of notes on painting. The cloaks started off with Vallejo 3/4 gold brown 1/4 olive brown. The mid tone is straight gold brown then with some white added as the high light. The bronze armour is an initial base of Vallejo bronze, a wash of Army Painter Quickshade Strong Tone then high-lighted with bronze lightened with a touch of gold.

Late Roman Heavy Cavalry: Equites Honoriani Taifali Iuniores

My last unit with hand painted elaborate shields. I have the figures for two more bases so I will have the option of a 4 or 6 base unit but first I'm concentrating on getting all the Cavalry units with 4 bases and all the infantry with 6. I will bother about the extras and alternatives once I have a usable army.

Again this unit is mix of Minifigs and Asgard figures originally bought in the 80s with a few more recent extras to make the numbers up. By mixing up the two Asgard and one Minifigs cavalryman figures (plus command figures, with a bit of head swapping and modification) and alternating Asgard and Minifigs horses, I wanted to break up the 1980s monotony of mono-posed figures. Of course the down side of that is having to accept figures with very different kit: Minifigs with spangenhelm helmets, scale armour and no cloak with Asgard figures with an Attic-style eastern or spangnhelm helmet, mail and cloaks. The Asgard officer and cavalryman with spangenhelm helmet had rather large shield bosses so I filed those off and replaced them with Milliput to match the size of the others. As usual, I drilled out the figures hands and replaced the cast spears and javelins (and in the case of the office, his mace) with brass wire spears so these were all the same.

I've rationalised the remaining lack of uniformity with a story. This unit has a mix of veterans from the Danube frontier (hence the spangenhelm) and more recent recruits from the wars against Persia and now serving back in the North. Those soft Southerners are feeling the cold a bit and wearing their cloaks whilst the veterans are already too warm, so have stowed their cloaks behind them (from packs of Skytrex WW2 vehicle stowage) and are wishing they could take off their armour and head down to the quayside where a short-sleeved tunic is more than enough insulation against the refreshing Northern breeze. I'm choosing to ignore that scale armour is supposedly more characteristic of Eastern troops.

Another thing that has bothered me about those old figures is that, whilst all the army lists gave them javelins and spears, they are cast with one or the other. For my Illyrian unit, I got round this by having them hold spears in their right hand and a few javelins in their left, behind their shields but that seemed unsatisfactory so, for this unit, I made javelin quivers with two or three javelins from 0.5 mm brass rod (my spears are an over-scale 0.8mm) glued to a paper back with aluminium foil flaps and Milliput to represent the "bag". I held then in a pin vice to apply the Milliput, as in the photo, then again after the Milliput had cured to clean it all up. The rather short conical points are meant to represent the counterweight / non-sharp end of the javelin as shown in Osprey's 'Late Roman Cavalryman AD 236-565'.

I chose the shield pattern partly based on colour and partly because I felt I should have some shields with animals (albeit mythical ones). I only realised later that this is one of the handful of Late Roman shield patterns offered in the excellent Little Big Men range and so my hand painting efforts to get something unique are, yet again, going to be upstaged by every Late Roman army with Legio Heroica or Khurasan figures having a much superior representation of the same unit.

I made a new vexillum from brass rod with the cross-piece soldered and aluminium foil to replace the thick cast one on a bendy and fragile pole. Its bearer also got a new head from a spare infantry figure to replace the classical looking helmet of the original figure. I wish now that I had done a few more head swaps for ridged helmets to tie their appearance in  better with the infantry.

I have a unit of cataphracts in the painting tray now then another general and figures for the camp.

Romans on parade

With all four of the heavy infantry units (plus a unit of skirmishing archers) using my old 1980s Minifigs figures complete, as well as an Illyrian cavalry unit and general complete, I thought it was a good time to take stock of what I have completed so far and look forward to what remainins to be done.

So far I have painted 104 infantry and 19 cavalry. 

I have a unit of heavy cavalry on the painting tray at the moment. I'm going to do 12 figures (4 bases) initially then add another 2 bases later. Like the Illyrian cavalry, these will be a mix of Minifigs and Asgard.

After that is a unit of cataphracts with mostly Asgard riders on Minifigs horses. I have enough of these for 4 bases of 4 figures each. I also have some clibanarii - again a Minifigs / Asgard mix plus a couple of Gladiator Miniatures figures. At the moment I'm thinking of doing these as two bases of 4 to give the option of fielding a combined cataphract / clibanarii or I could do a full 4 base unit if I accepted only 3 figures per base (MeG recommends 4 for these).

The last cavalry unit to consider is a unit of horse archers. I have a few old Asgard figures for these but I'm not sure whether to use these or buy some of the much nicer and more varied ones from Legio Heroica. Either way, at least 8 and maybe 12 more cavalry to paint.

I also have some old figures for a sub-general and make some alternate bases for the legionaries to depict integral archers and expand a couple of legionary units and the archers to 8 bases but those are really at the back of the painting queue. 

The rest of the army will be modern Legio Heroica figures: two units of Auxillia Palatina, two more sub-generals and three Ballista. I'm scratch building a watch tower for the camp, with a Baueda hog roast on the side - I do like roast pork!

That adds up to atleast (ignoring the extras to expand units or give options) 55 infantry and 59 cavalry

Looking back it has taken 18 months to get to this half-way stage, albeit with some 1/1250 diversions, so unless I can pick up the pace, I can look forward to completion around the end of 2021!

Late Roman skirmishing bowmen - Sagittarii Venatores, Auxilium Palatinum

This is definitely my last unit of old 1980s figures: a dozen auxiliary archers, based as skirmishers.

The archers are Minifigs, a mix of Z22 and Z23 and the draconarius is from Gladiator. It would have been nice to have more variety of pose in the archers but the Asgard archers don't match in very well so I went with just mixing the two Minifigs variants and filing the crests off some of the helmets.

Given that the figures only have tiny round shields, I wasn't going to bother with a historic shield pattern or assign a name to them but whilst browsing through Luke Ueda-Sarson's excellent website of Notitia Dignitatum shield designs, I saw that there were a number of Auxilia Palatina titled as Sagittarii, suggesting that they were archers or at least had some special association or excellence in that field. Unfortunately, the shield designs all looked a nightmare to paint, especially on such a small canvas. 

Happily all was not lost. Luke had identified a discrepancy in the document, suggesting some shields were mis-attributed. In particular, the rather complicated design for the Sagittarii Venatores was wrong and perhaps the shield attributed to the Sequani was the correct one. Whilst he makes a good case for this conclusion, the point that convinced me most was that the shield attributed to the Sequani was a lot simpler and would look OK on these tiny round shields: Sagittarii Venatores it must be!

As mentioned above, this is my last full unit of old Minifigs, Asgard and Gladiator Miniatures infantry figures. On to the cavalry now.

As mentioned in my first post on this Roman army, I originally misattributed the Gladiator Miniatures command figures as Museum Miniatures - I've gone through all the posts and corrected that now, I hope catching all such instances. My apologies for any confusion caused by this.

Secundani Italiciani, Legio Comitatensis

Light at the end of the tunnel: my fourth and last large infantry unit of old 1980s Minifigs figures and the last one for which I have to hand paint the shields. My remaining two Auxillia Palatina units will be Legio Heroica figures and use Little Big Men transfers for the shields: oh happy day!

One thing I questioned before completing this unit was what standard bearer to choose. The old Asgard and Gladiator ranges have an aquila for legionaries whilst the Minifigs command group has a trumpeter and draconarius, unarmoured and dressed as their auxiliaries. Modern figure ranges seem to just have dracos for all infantry, with no distinction in dress or equipment for legions or auxilia. After reading around a bit, asking for advice and buying the relatively new Osprey "Roman Standards and Standard Bearers (2) AD 192 - 500" my understanding is that dracos were increasingly used for legionary sub-units but the emblem for the whole legion remained the Aquila. The book includes an illustration of a mid 4th C legion aquilifer from one of Julian's legions with a black bear pelt headdress, square base (perch?) for the eagle and gold coloured staff. Interestingly (or surprisingly) he wear leather armour. I based my Aquilifer on that illustration.

As previously, the trumpeter is a modified Minifigs Byzantine figure with a headswap. The Aquilifer and officer are Gladiator Miniatures - the latter with a new, larger shield made from brass and Milliput to match the Minifigs legionaries. As with the earlier units, I removed the helmet crests from some figures to get more variety, filed down some of the details of the legionaries sandals and disguised the rest with thick paint to depict them all in trousers.

The key thing with Late Roman armies is, of course, the glorious choice of shield designs. With the Lanciarii Gallienci Honoriani, Secunda Britannica and Petulantes Seniores already complete, the primary consideration was finding a shield design that would be significantly different but easy to paint. I settled on the Secundani Italiciani because it appeared to meet both of these criteria and I liked the idea of trying to make an interesting design from a white cross on a white background. I must admit though that I prefer the shields on the three earlier units

If you are tempted to hand paint the shields for this unit, my advice is to think again. I hadn't taken account of how hard it would be to reconcile making the inner circle (and hence the width of the crosses) big enough to paint with distinct colour graduations but leave enough length on the horizontal crosses for the three red dots - especially as the Minifigs shields aren't quite symetrical and there is less space on the figures left than the right. It took me several goes on some figures to get an acceptable result and even then I’m not really happy with most of them. If despite that, you do want to give it a go, here is the sequence I followed to get the basic features - the ‘white’ areas of the shields are my standard Vallejo triad of Khaki Grey, Iraqi Sand and Ivory. To give a different white, the helmet crests are London Grey, Light Grey and Foundation White.

I posted some photos and some of the text from my last unit on TMP and one of the comments was that these old 1980s Minifigs figures were a bit of a blank canvas. I hadn't really thought about it before myself but I think that hits the nail on the head and is a lot of what I like about these models. The overall proportions are quite good but the smooth surfaces give some space for the painter to create interest without being over constrained by exaggerated sculpted detail. This is especially so on the unarmoured figures with relatively large areas on the tunics where you can add or ignore shadows more or less as you like.

Late Roman Command Group - started 1980s, finished 2020

 

I had painted the Asgard (Table Top Games, by the time I got them and Alternative Armies today) Late Roman Army Command group of a general and standard bearer some time in the early 1980s but then they languished in a box with the rest of this incomplete army. On digging them out again, on close inspection, the general figure was far below the standard I try to achieve today so it went into the paint stripper jar but I really wanted to use the standard (the Labarum of Constantine I from page 82 of WRG Armies and Enemies if Imperial Rome0 that I had so painstakingly painted all those years ago, even if such a massive standard seems an unlikely candidate to be carried by a cavalryman and now belongs in the same WRG rejects pile as all my leather cuirassed Legionaries. For the standard bearer, I limited myself to a bit fo tidying up and repainting his cloak. With a repainted general and Minifigs heavy cavalryman as bodyguard, I'm quite pleased with this little group. The cavalryman's shield is the WRG interpretation of the Notitia Dignitatum for the Scola Scutariorum Secunda. I might use this design for all the general's bodyguards; as though this unit of guard cavalry had been split up to protect all of the senior leaders.

I've always struggled a bit with painting grey horses - and horses in general to be honest - but I was quite pleased with this one in the end, acknowledging the limitations of scale and that I was aiming for a nice effect and popping colours rather than real equine accuracy. I think I might do a few more for other officers.

I'm building this army for Mortem et Gloriam rules which categorises generals as Legendary, Talented, Competent or Mediocre and suggests identifying them with red, yellow, green or white (respectively) base edges or declining numbers of figures from 5 to 2 per 40 x 40 mm base. Neither of these options seem satisfactory to me, either aesthetically or for practical flexibility - what if I want to play around with army composition and need a different mix of generals? 

I wanted something that would be obvious, unambiguous but subtle and flexible. I considered different coloured standards or dracos but, apart from not having enough spare dracos, I'd painted my army standard almost 40 years ago and wasn't about to recolour it and make a spare. In the end, I decided to try adding an interchangeable shield in the appropriate colour, held in place by a magnet.

After digging around in the garage, I found a couple of steel washers, of 9 and 10 mm diameter and turned them into shields with the aid of some Miliput. I wanted to create some visual interest and make them look like the sort of thing that might be carried by barbarian enemies or Rome whilst sticking to the colour theme - for these test cases red and yellow. The overall effect worked well but the 3 mm rare earth magnet that I used is far too strong. For the other generals, I'll use offcuts of magnetic basing tape so I can swap the shields round without damaging them.

Petulantes Seniores, Auxilium Palatinum

The the use of armour in battle - or lack of it - for auxilia is another area where WRG Armies and Enemies of Imperial Rome book, the reference for my 1980s nostalgia figures, differs from current thinking. The book has them un-armoured apart from helmets and shields.

An obstacle to making a unit of these was that I didn't actually have enough infantryman figures - only two packs of 8 when I needed 20 (plus the 3 command.) I did however have a pack of what the book (and therefore Minifigs) labelled as Lanciarius 4th C with a smaller shield than the legionaries and auxiliaries and slightly more dynamic pose than the auxiliaries - on the right in the photo below.

I made larger shields for these and re-purposed them as auxiliaries. Several figures had lost their rather fragile spears so I replaced them all with brass rod at slightly different angles adding more variation. I also trimmed the crests off some figures and reshaped them with a small file to leave an unadorned ridge helmet.

The trumpeter's trumpet was mis-cast so I replaced it with brass rod and miliput. My understanding is that infantry in this period used the almost circular cornu or buccina whilst the cavalry used the straight tuba. However Minifigs went for the straight tuba for everybody and, in the spirit of 80s nostalgia, as well as the spirit of re-modelling some figures to cary a cornu being beyond my abilities, I've stuck with that. The officer (also with a new, larger, shield) and draconarius are from Gladiator Miniatures.

Some fantastic late Roman shield transfers are available now from Little Big Men but unfortunately these are specifically sized and shaped for Khurasan or Legio Heroica and considerably bigger than the Minifigs shields so I would have to hand paint the shields again. I chose the Petulantes Seniores on the basis of being a simple design, using blue - so clearly different to my earlier two units and having a lot of yellow. 1980s 'rules' for late Roman crests were very simple - red for legionaries and yellow for auxiliaries. More recently I've read it wasn't so clear and, if there was any logic at all, maybe it was that crests matched or picked out a colour from the shield design. Choosing the Petulantes Seniories keeps both theories happy.

I wanted to get some variety of appearance despite using 1980s mono-posed figures (OK, 16 identical plus 4 in a marginally different pose). In addition to the previously mentioned crest / no crest mix and variation in spear angle, I used three slightly  different triads for the off-white tunics as well as varying the blue pattern shapes on the tunics and the colour of the leggings.

That's three infantry units complete now - so half way through the legions and auxilia. I have another unit's worth of old Minifigs Legionaries, which I have already started, then the other two will be modern Legio Heroica armoured infantry. Also loads of cavalry, generals, ballista and some infantry archers. Lots still to go but I feel I'm making progress.