Wednesday 11 September 2019

Imperial Roman Army assembles (part 1)

Afternoon All

Following the arrival of the Ancient British army its about time to start on their conquerors...I am of course talking about the Imperial Roman Army.

This force will consist of one legion with 10 cohorts (each cohort comprising 20 figures on 5cm x 5cm bases), their associated scorpions, and of course the auxiliaries (infantry, archers and cavalry). By the time I am finished I am to have around 24 units in play.

Of course I have to start with the core of the army the heavy infantry. These are all plastic warlord drawn from boses of their standard infantry and veteran. I have sourced these over the last six months on ebay paying around 50p per figure. I know folks are raving about the Victrix models but I just cannot justify the cost.

So this weekend I assembled the lot - about 280 figures including command stands.

These have all been glued using pva to 2p coins and washers to aid painting and priming. Once complete they get moved off their temporary base onto the mdf movement bases. The figures have all been primed gray.




Once primed the figures were sorted in cohorts - I am going for a regimented look for each unit


I should add that the shield were not glued to the vfinal figure. These are being done separately and glued in place at the end. The shields were painted on the sprue (front and reverse. I then used the shield transfers to bring these to life



All the shields are now finished !!



So I better go and slap some paint on their owners....

Part 2 can be found HERE

Monday 2 September 2019

Ancient British Army Complete


Hi Folks

Its been over a month since I have last posted and I think it is safe to say that this blog has very much taken a back seat in my life at the moment. However, it is not going to disappear and I have so many plans and things I want to tell you all about, it’s just real life getting in the way of things.

I should add that there have been plenty of games going on in the last few months (mainly board games) but we have been pushing the plastic around the big table on a few occasions. Its just difficult to put the time together to put out a meaningful report.

Saying that I have been cracking on with my Ancient British Project, started back at Easter I mentioned I was going to build an Ancient British Army to defend the shores of Britannia from the might of imperial Rome. Well guess what….I have finished the army !! - The first post on this project was here. Unlike previous builds there are no other posts...sorry


Yup that is correct the last five months has seen a steady slog at the paint table and I can now field a sizeable army with Boudica in charge.





















With the Hail Caesar rules in mind my total force consists of 18 warbands (infantry), 5 cavalry units, 8 skirmish units (archers & slingers) and four chariot units. There is of course a good number of commanders and generals. The total force consists of about 750 figures.

Total Force Packed Away


These have all been principally sourced from Victrix and Warlord Games. All the units (bar command / chariot stands) are based on 50x50mm bases from warbases. The frontage of all units is going to be 25cm (with a warband comprising of 10 stands). The Chariots are based on 8cm x 10cm bases with three chariots to a unit (frontage 24cm).

The good news is that this project was not done in isolation, my good friend Mark has also been building a Celtic army and he too is almost finished. By the time he is completed we will be able to field almost 1400 figures on the table. His force is much more cavalry/chariot heavy so it will be fun to see how these two tribes match up whilst the Roman Army begins its preparations.

As soon as Mark is finished we will be starting the wars of the British Tribes –

Roman Army Assembles



More soon (hopefully)