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.

Classical ruins

One of my biggest impressions from holidays in Italy is that physical reminders of the past, especially Ancient Rome, are everywhere so I thought my Italian Wars scenery should include some classical ruins. My idea was to do these, like most of my other scenery, as marker pieces to be placed on an area, in this case to be classed as broken ground.

I looked out for a suitable model - ideally not very big or expensive - for quite a while. There seemed to be a lot in 28mm, and some brilliant but large and expensive complete models but nothing small and cheap for 15mm. By chance, I then stumbled across some resin cast pillars at a Wargames show. I think they were on the Magnetic Displays stand, though I can't now find them on their website. With 2 x 55mm high fluted columns for a pound, they were perfect for my purposes and I bought a couple of packs. 

The pillars were sculpted as though made from three pieces and without plinths and capitals. To avoid having all four identical heights and appearances and make them go further, I cut up two of them - the top tier off one and the top and middle of the other then cut two of these pieces lengthways at an angle so I could place them to give the appearance of half-buried pieces. I made the plinths and capitals from card, foam-board and 2mm mdf. After sanding the sawn ends flat, I distressed them and the exposed mdf of the plinths and capitals to give a worn and weathered effect - probably more than is realistic but sometimes wrong looks right.

The foam-board for the plinths was a bad idea as it is a weak point that I can easily imagine breaking at the slightest rough handling. I'm not sure whether to reinforce them now with a screw from the base (and risk damaging them) or see if they do actually break.

The base boards are 2mm mdf and I marked it out in 10mm squares to get the thin card paving slabs (9.5mm squares) and column plinths spaced evenly.

The next step was to cover the bare mdf parts of the boards with filler to represent the build up of debris over and around the ruins in the thousand years or so between the end of the Roman Empire and the Italian Wars. At this stage, I also attached a few small rectangles of foam-board to represent fallen blocks of masonry.

I left a couple of areas of bare mdf on top of the high points to give a good surface to attach the cypress trees.

I then covered around the roots and textured the filler with sharp sand and small stones. The whole thing (apart from the trees!) was given a coat of brown emulsion, decanted from a big pot I bought as and end of line item some years ago.

For the temple stonework, I used a wash of Humbrol black enamel paint in white spirit. When that was completely dry, I gave it a heavy dry brush of Vallejo 987 Medium Stone. Dulux Bleached Lichen 1, which I have in my scenery paints box and use for roads,  looks virtually the same and would have been cheaper.

When that was fully dry - overnight - I applied a thin wash of a medium green in the cracks, recesses and around the base before dry brushing again with Dulux Bleached Lichen 2 and a final light dry brush of Dulux Bleached Lichen 2 mixed with about white. 

The 'earth' areas are my usual basing / scenery ground recipe: dry brush yellow ochre then yellow ochre + white with static grass and tufts applied with PVA. I also added some dark green clump foliage and a bit of foliage net to represent a climbing plant growing up one of the columns. 

More Italian Wars French Crossbowmen - Aventuriers

Although I started my French Crossbowmen / Aventuriers in early 2016 and finished the first group of 12 in June 2016, for some reason the second group of 12 stuck. I got distracted into other areas and every time I looked at them languishing in the incomplete painting tray of shame, there seemed to be something more urgent or at least more interesting to do.

With the extra leisure time at home enforced by the Covid-19 restrictions, after spending a lot of time on a 1/1250 model of HMS Queen Elizabeth, I finally got round to completing them. This gives me an early and late option of either 12 bases of crossbowmen in skirmish order or 12 bases of arquebus is loose order.

The new group is at the front. 

I still have plans for some more units for my French Italian Wars army: at least one unit of archers (the heavy cavalry type), a full 6 of Landsknetch skirmishing arquebus and some more clearly French artillery now the new range from Khurasan is available. 

I have the figures for two more pike keils - one Swiss, one Landsketch and more Gendarmes (with Venexia figures) but these will have to wait until I've completed my Romans and a load of WW2 figures. Even then, I'm not sure I can face another two 14 base pike keils!

Equites Promoti Seniori

This unit of Illyrian  cavalry was (again) supposed to be a quick rebase and paint a couple of extra figures and be done but it soon grew into something much more time consuming.

I already had 6 of the old Asgard/TTG figures painted from before so I thought: 'light cavalry and 4 bases, 2 more figures to paint and I'm done. No. Under Mortem et Gloriam they are classed as flexible so I would need 2 bases of 3 and 2 bases of 2 in order to represent their ability to change formation between loose and skirmish order. Next, I found that two figures had lead rot, one of them quite bad so they were a complete strip, cut out the corrosion and clean so 2 figures to paint became 6.

Oddly the Promoti light cavalry figure has disappeared from the range and isn't shown on the Alternative Armies website. Luckily, I already had 7 figures - as long as I could salvage the two with lead rot - so with an officer, vexillum bearer modified as a draconarius and a Minifigs trumpter, I would have the necessary 10.

Just as I finished painting those, I was reliably advised that units of 4 bases are too fragile in MeG and 6 was much better so I would need another 6 cavalrymen. I'd actually ordered some more figures from Alternative Armies, including some LRC7 armoured cavalry with spear. Although these have a larger, oval shield rather than the small round shield of the Promoti, I thought I could file them down to about the same size as the light cavalrymen and I thought the different figure would bring some much needed variety and the mail armour would fit well with the idea that these were flexibles that could be equally at home closing up for a charge as they were skirmishing. 

When the figures actually arrived, I was surprised to find the armoured cavalry with spear that I'd ordered actually included one un-armoured Promoti - so the mould has survived after all, even if it isn't listed.

As usual I was replacing the moulded on lead spears with (Ø 0.7 mm) brass rod so having the same weapons tied these different figures together. I wanted to reflect that they were classed as armed with short spear and javelins so I also made some javelins from Ø 0.5mm brass to be held behind their shields - I'll make javelin quivers for the next units. 

Asgard (Alternative Armies) Late Roman Promoti light cavalryman mounted on  a Minifigs horse from my spares box - i should probably have modified the harness to better match the others.

Asgard (Alternative Armies) LRC7 Late Roman heavy cavalryman with spear modified with the shield filed down to a circle and mounted on an Asgard light cavalry horse. 

Asgard (Alternative Armies) standard bearer modified to carry a draco and mounted on a Minifigs horse. The biggest compromise is this unit was accepting a mix of galloping and walking horses in order to get some variety. I hate to see units with every horse marching in perfect step and, whilst the walking - galloping mix is just as unlikely, it least it isn't so obvious at normal viewing distances.

Minifigs Roman trumpeter mounted on an Asgard horse.

Secunda Britannica, Legio Comitatenses

Here is my second unit completed: the Secunda Britannica, Legio Comitatenses. Again this unit was chosen back in the 1980s when I started my Late Roman Army, partly for the British connection and partly for the attractive shield colours. It seems a popular choice: I have seen quite a few pictures of this unit in miniature online and Little Big Men studios offer transfers for the shields.

I intended this to be the first unit I would complete so re-used most of the already painted legionaries with spear and shield. Unfortunately, just as I thought I had it finished, I hit a few problems: lead rot had attacked the officer and aquilifer - the former snapped off at the ankles just as I was doing the basing and, at that eleventh hour, I noticed a deep pit of crumbling metal on the aquilifer. As I was going to have to replace these, I also decided to save the un-armoured trumpeter figure for an auxilia and to add an extra legionary to the command base, just to make a better, more balanced arrangement. As this took a bit of time, I actually finished painting the Lanciarii Gallicani Honoriani first.

The officer was easily replaced with one from Gladiator Miniatures - again I made a new shield from brass sheet and Milliput. The aquilifer was more of a problem - I had a couple of spare Asgard / TTG figures but the moulding was so poor that the faces were gaping hollows, making them look unsettlingly like a Roman Nazgul. Instead I used a Gladiator Miniatures figure but with an Asgard eagle as the descriptions I have read suggest that these were normally made side on, rather than facing with wings spread. The aquilifer's sword scabbard was ridiculously narrow, looking more like a holder for a conductor's baton, so I filed it down and glued in a wider piece of metal to match the other figures.

At some point I had acquired some Minifigs Byzantine figures, including trumpeters with large shields - very similar to their Late Roman legionaries - but armoured with large scales, what look like braces with a chest strap and a very different helmet. I took one of these, filed down the armour, added a diagonal strap (like the legionaries) from foil, did a head swap for a ridged helmet and made a new trumpet from brass rod and Milliput to replace the mis-moulded one of the figure. The picture shows the result next to an original figure on the right.

For ease of painting, I simplified the shield pattern, making the "spokes" straight rather than bulged out in the middle. Now I have seen the excellent transfers from Little Big Men, I regret this but not enough to go back and repaint them! The small black dots at the outside ends of the spokes were done with the end of a cocktail stick dipped in thinned black paint. It took a bit of trial and error to cut (with a very sharp knife) the end to the correct diameter and then find the right paint consistency and depth but once I got that sorted out, it was quick and easy - certainly much easier than using a brush. You just need to clean the paint off the stick every so often and check the paint hasn't thickened too much from evaporation.

Once the aquilifer was painted, I noticed a problem. As far as I can see, his headdress is a wolf rather than a lion so, although modelled carrying an eagle, I think that makes him a signifier? I'll live with it for this one but I'm not sure what to do for my third legion when I do that - is it easier to add a human face to the Asgard / TTG figure or a lion's face to the Gladiator Miniatures one?

The legionary on the left is completely newly painted whilst that on the right is one of my original 1980's paint jobs tidied up. The difference shows particularly in the face and the paint thickness on features like the crest.

That's two 1980s nostalgia legions done and I have a cavalry unit almost finished too. After that I'm not sure what to do next - an auxilia, another cavalry unit or maybe some of my backlog of WW2 or Italian Wars figures.