MadDocStu’s Romans

Just need to add the command group and then my first four Legions are raised!

I enjoyed doing these guys! They were basically the same as the Infantry but with the following:

• Camo Green for trousers
• Brass Scorpion followed by Nazdreg Yellow for the trumpet 
• Nazdreg Yellow for cloth edging on both the banner and the cloak
• Leviadon Blue for the main part of the cloak
• Retributor Armour and then Nazdreg Yellow for the eagle
• Gore-grunta Fur for the fur.

I put a little nod to the Cult of Games and OTT in here too – more on that in the next entry.

A spray of matt varnish (I had a citadel can to hand) and done!

Having tested out the paint scheme I turned my attention to the shields.

After looking at other examples on the web and a bit of searching on forums I was sure that Little Big man Studios was the place to turn to. I read that their designs for Khurrasan minis works with Lurkio minis form which my Plastic Soldier Company minis are copied from, so i tried that. 

 https://www.littlebigmenstudios.com/product-category/15mm-transfers/khurrasan-miniatures/late-roman-khurrasan-miniatures/

It turned out well! 

After the testing this is the plan: 

• Wraithbone base coat. 
• Apothocary White for tunics 
• Terradon Turquoise or Fleshers Tearers Red  for trousers (to add a bit of variety)
• Terradon Turquoise for any cloth caps
• Blood Angels Red for the  archers cloak
• Flesh Tearers Red for other cloth or head crests on Infantry
• Snakebite Leather for leather
• Wyldwood for the wood parts of weapons
• Darkoath Flesh for the skin
• Leadbelcher with Basilicanum Grey over the top for any metal on weapons and armour
• Iyanden Yellow for the fletching on the arrows

Batch painting with contrasts is fine, just remember to use light coloured contrasts first as the darker ones will go over them fine if you mess up a bit. And give everything 30 mins to dry (not a problem when you have a lot of minis to get through – by the time I got back to the first mini it was dry). 

Next on the to do list is basing.

The materials:

• A bunch of 40 x 20mm mdf bases from 3D fluid workshop (https://www.fluid3dworkshop.co.uk)
• Base ready mixes from Geek Gaming (to match my Plains gaming mat from Deepcut studios) (https://www.geekgaming.co.uk/collections/base-ready)
• Tuffs from Gamers Grass (Dry Tuffs 6mm) (https://www.gamersgrass.com/5-6mm-grass-tufts)

I painted all the bases with Zandri Dust before just planning out which men would go on which bases (to make sure each base had a mix of poses) with in the confines of my army plan (see the first project entry). 

Having superglued the men to the bases I then painted the integral bases on the minis Zandri Dust too. 

Next steps are easy – cover  base in PVA glue and submerge in the ready base mix and then add a few tuffs (I found the adhesive on the tuffs wasn’t strong enough – they needed a dab of PVA to keep them stuck down). 

Having never painted 15mm minis before I set about using the @Warzan method of using contrast, but before we get to that I had to clean up the Plastic Soldier Company ‘Ultra-Cast’ minis.

Cleaned up some infantry with a craft knife with a fresh blade. The plastic is soft and it is easy enough to cut off the mould lines but I found it quite fiddly and time consuming… I did try to file them, but I found the plastic didn’t like that idea very much…

I then undercoated a couple with some citadel Wraithbone spray and choose two to do a bit of test on.

I had no idea what colour Roman Infantry would have been back in the late imperial time (lets say 350AD), so googled and asked around and came across various ideas.

I have since stuck a few things in here: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/stuartpgriffiths/late-imperial-romans/

I decided to go with white tunics,  some sort of grey/green coloured trousers and cloth caps and a red cloak and using browns for any leather or wood.

I used some contrasts from citadel:
Apothocary White
Gryph-charger Grey for trousers
Blood Angels Red for the cloak
Snakebite Leather for leather
Wyldwood for the bow
Darkoath Flesh for the skin

I used Lead Belcher for the mail (the plan being to put Basilicanum contrast over that).

I did quite like the white – I thought that worked well, but I wasn’t happy with how light the trousers/cap on the archer were, and didn’t like the leather on the infantry men’s trousers. .

I have no idea why I put red on the dart the infantryman is holding – that would need to be brown next time!

I looked for a stronger colour for the trousers and settled on Terradon Turquoise for the trousers/ cloth caps – I liked this much more than the Gryph-charger Grey.

I wanted some red for trousers or other bits of cloth on the infantry but thought the Blood Angels Red  I had used for the cloaks would be too bright so decided to Flesh Tearers Red (which is a wonderful colour – I had not used it before.)

So went again on some infantry finishing the armour with some Basilicanum Grey.

I noticed a few small areas of Wraithbone showing (contrast can be hard to get in the exact right place sometimes…). I had seen that fellow CoG Torros used a 1:1 mix of Agrax Earthshade and Lahmian Medium to wash his minis that arrived at the same time as mine. So I copied that and washed the whole mini – I was rather happy with the outcome.

Next – some batch painting and ordering of shield transfers.

What’s in the box?

Well a lot of plastic.

In the box you get:
2 x mounted Consuls (single pose)
2 x mounted Generals (single pose)
8 x Cataphracts (assorted mix of 2 poses)
12 x Equites Alares (assorted mix of poses on armoured and unarmoured horses)
8 x Equites Sagitarri (assorted mix of poses)
24 x Armoured infantry (assorted mix of poses; includes 3 command miniatures)
24 x Unarmoured infantry (assorted mix of poses; includes 3 command miniatures)
16 x Archers (single pose)

https://www.theplasticsoldiercompany.co.uk/product/mortem-et-gloriam-late-imperial-roman-meg-pacto-starter-army/

I got a couple extra infantry (2 armoured and 2 un- armoured) more so that’s nice.

About 10 % of the box was miscast, some worse than others, but the company replaced them with in 2 days of me contacting them – I was impressed with their response.

The Army Lists for MeG are all free online along with a lot of pre built lists.

https://mortem-et-gloriam.co.uk/meg/army-lists/

The author of the game put out some army lists to use with the Pacto box, but I thought I’d have a go at my own based on the pre-exisiting list, but aiming to get the maximum amount of use out of all the minis  in the Pacto box.

I’ve added the number of men I need for each base of the Tactical Unit Group (TuGs). TuGs are one of two types of unit for the game, there are also Skirmish Unit Groups (SuGs), you can only win by defeating your enemies TuGs.

Each of the TuGs and SuGs in my list have 2 bases each as this is a Pacto list. (Pacto is the same as the larger maximus game, which I’ll work up to, but uses fewer minis and bases).

The Legionnaire TuGs have two bases each. One base of the TuG has three  infantry on it and one base has 4 men on it. In game this represents the fact the Legionnaires can be in close or loose formation (if they are in close formation you put the base with 4 men at the front, it they are in loose formation you put the base with 3 men at the front). Both bases have one archer to represent ‘integral shooters’,  hopefully they’ll put the bow away and grab a sword before they get into melee!

I plan to use armoured infantry as much as possible for the legionaries,  but using some unarmoured ones to keep some armoured men aside to accompany the generals and consuls.

The Auxilia are basically the same as the Legionnaires but without the archers, and I plan  to use the unarmoured infantry for these TuGs.

We have some Equites Catafractarii  (Fully armoured calvary) with 1 base per TuG and 4 calvary per base (these maybe a bit brittle in game so will need to choose their moment carefully!). We also have normal Equites (calvary) with 2 bases per TuG and 3 calvary per base.

The skirmishers start with 2 SuGs or Equites Sagittarii (mounted archers) with 2 bases per SuG and 2 mounted archers per base. Finally we have a couple of SuGs of Archers with 2 bases per SuG and 2 archers per base (just to use the last few minis in the box really).

Now to get started  on the infantry !