A Year and 7 Months! A 1/172 ancients project.

Three years ago and 4 days, during a Black Friday Sale, I stumbled upon several lots of Italeri Romans and Celts for sale at a hefty discount.  At the time, I had my eye on Warlord’s Britannia Supplement for Hail Caesar, which was also on sale.

The Roman invasion of Britain is one of my favorite periods for war-gaming, so I took the dive and bought the miniature lots and the supplement.  As the title of the project suggests, I did not start this project straight away, since I was busy painting up my Vikings for Saga and my 10mm elves.

Going through the supplement, I quickly understood that I would need more figures to play out the scenarios as printed, so I calculated how many of each unit I would need and continued to buy accordingly for another few months.

As regards the actual painting, I decided that these two armies were solely for war-gaming purposes, therefore the painting was to be totally practical.  I would focus on base colors painted in neatly, followed by a wash of Agrax Earthshade and a coat of varish – full stop.

I think it worked well enough for a basic tabletop standard, but I will let the readers decide that.

The end results are in the pictures below.

The mistake I made with the Romans was to buy miniatures from different companies, although at times this was inevitable.

If I could go back in time, I would only buy Roman legionaries from just one manufacturer – probably Caesar Miniatures (because I like them the best).

Why is this? Well the problem is dual fold; that is of style and size (within the 1/72 scale).  As you will see in the photos below, the difference in the above qualities can be significant.

Stylistically, Romans differ from company to company!  But are they not all Romans in the same armour type from the same period?, you might ask?  Well, yes, nonetheless they are or can be very different and to an extent ruin the uniformity of the army.

The same can be said with the Roman Auxiliaries, but in this case I had learnt my lesson and after thorough scrutiny of the miniatures on a site called ‘Plastic Soldier Review’ (a site that specializes in 1/72 plastic miniatures), I only bought auxiliaries from one brand – Strelets.

Size can be an even greater hurdle!  For some strange reason, size differs not only from manufacturer to manufacturer, but also within the same range in the manufacturer’s miniature line!

Even more frustrating is that a manufacturer might have their Romans at one size, but their Celts at a slightly different size. It can literally drive one bonkers!

This problem in not such a big deal with the Celts, as they are more individual warriors rather than regimental soldiers.  Therefore you can get away with murder and have different styles and sizes in the same unit without the unit looking weird or out of place.

That is all for this post.  In the next post I will start posting pictures of the individual units.

Regards,

NR

The first picture is of the Legionaries from Caesar Miniatures.  They are by far my favorite, despite being slightly smaller by a millimeter to their Italeri equivalents. This might not seem like much but it does contrast unfavorably in the army. Regarding style, I think the Caesar Miniatures has the most ‘roman’ looking of all the brands.  Also note that the three units were built from just one box!

The second group are from Italeri, and they are the ones I like the least!  They seem to be wearing mini-skirts!, and this kind of puts me off. The problem was that I had bought them and painted them up before I bought the Ceasar Miniature legionaries, so I was stuck with them.  The four units were built from two boxes.

The last set of legionaries were from Zvezda, who are probably the best manufacturer in the scale.  Their Romans are visibly larger and don’t look convincing with the others.

These were a late buy as I wanted to include the Testudos.  In order to make two I had to do a bit of conversion work, but I think they turned out OK in the end.

The extra legionaries, I put on a base on their own and will use them as veterans, as the campaign allows you to upgrade one legionary unit to a veteran as an option.

The Auxiliaries are probably my favorite part of this army.  They are all from Strelets and they are roughly the same size as the Italeri Romans and fit in well with the Zvezda miniatures, but are slightly taller than the Caesar miniatures.  This is not so much of a problem historically , because auxiliaries were mostly of Germanic stock – so possibly bigger.

The campaign allows for medium units and light units.  I went about this buy giving medium units 12 miniatures and light units of auxiliaries 10 miniatures.  I also painted their shields differently to seal the deal.

The auxiliary cavalry come in medium and light as well, within the Britannia campaign book.  So for the medium cavalry I placed 5 miniatures and for the light I placed 4 miniatures.

I also went a step further with the cavalry.  The medium cavalry are all from Italeri, but I had to convert all their heads since they were Republican Romans.  I had a lot of extras, so this was not a problem.

The light infantry are from HaT Industries.  They are of a slightly smaller size and less dynamic and rather flattish – which is a shame.

Like the infantry, I also painted their shields differently to further distinguish them.

The Britannia campaign book allows for two types of artillery – heavy and light.

The only  heavy artillery I could find on the market was an onager by Strelets.  Unfortunately, the model is not very accurate and the figures a bit gooey, but beggars cannot be choosers as my father once told me – so I guess I am stuck with it until something better comes along.  ( As a side note, Strelets are not the best manufacturer out there, but since 2016 they have made great improvements).

I had the same problem with the light Scorpion artillery.  The only viable option at the time was from HaT, so I went with them.  I have to say though, they are not as bad as the Strelets onager.  The Scorpion itself is good, but the figures could better.

This was the part of the project I enjoyed doing most.  In the campaign book, each scenario allows from two to three generals – so I decided to do several; most on foot and one mounted.  These were all out of the box and no modifications were done.

Now to the elephant in the room – yes literally!  There is an actually elephant allowed in the campaign.  This represents the Emperor Claudius who is suggested to have gone over to Britannia to see how the conquest was going!  Whether this is anywhere near accurate, I have sincere doubts – but I liked the idea and went with it.  The model is from Zvezda, and is a Macedonian Successor elephant. I thought the archaic armor would match the impossibility of it being there – so there!

The campaign also allows Praetorian troops if you use Emperor Claudius – was I painted up two small units from Strelets.

The last entry for my Roman army are a few more auxiliaries – namely archers and skirmishers.

The archers are from Zvezda and I was faced with a significant size problem since they seemed like giants!  I got around this by literally cutting them down to size!  I just hope it is not that obvious. There are 3 units on small bases as per campaign rules.

The other miniatures are all from HaT and are nice but not of the same standard as Italeri, Caesar or Zvezda in sculpting.  I based them two to a 25mm base due to how Hail Caesar works as a game, but I can always put them on a sabot try for other systems like Impetus, Sword & Spear, or DBM.