Auxiliaries
Eons ago I started a Roman Imperial Army in 28mm. Miniatures were collected in dribble and drabs from different manufacturers and painting was proceeding painfully slowly. Recently (months ago!) I was a able to finish a core of Warlord Legionaries so I have moved a bit forward with the project. Any decent Roman army needs auxiliaries. I had a 16 man unit from 1st corps, bought even before the new management took over (with the improvement in moulds and casting) so I took them to my forward HQ and bought some shield transfers (LBMS masterpieces none the less) for them.
A couple of week ago I jumped on them and now I have my first auxiliary unit.
Now, comparing them with the successors I have my Romans had (ok despite aggressive cleaning some still have) prominent mould lines and I was not in love with the very hard metal used on them. But as I told you earlier these are older castings. For the price they are good value of the money. The details are crisps and I have no problem with the historical accuracy. They are EIR auxiliaries and look the part. All have gladii and some carry also the smaller pugio. The Sword wielding ones have empty scabbards. The unit deal is a quite good deal. 16 men with plenty of different poses, 3 different command (Centurio, standard bearer, Cornicen), 4 different sword poses and 4 different javelin poses. The poses are quite dynamic. My only minor gripe is with the standard bearer. I have no dremel in the forward HQ and the metal seemed to heavy to drill properly and the armos not aligned for a proper fit. In the end I just cut the standard pole in two part and fixed them into position. Still the final result seems quite good.
For some imperscrutable reason I grouped 4 swordsmen in one base and all the javelins on two others. It seemed weird but I think that it is working to present a nice unit.
I have based them on 4x4cm bases. Yes you will tell me it is weird. But I like the look, like the men in two ranks and there are some good reasons. I can use the bases for Crusader rules, Clash of Empires and even WAB 2… with a little fudge with DBA and Armati and as part of an unit for Impetus.
I like impetus, (look at the credits in the rules and in some supplements!) but I realized that the big bases have become impractical for me for several reasons.
Economy… living in London is sucking my family money… plus there is an economic crisis... end results less miniatures…
Storage… yes, you can put less figures, but they take too much space that way…
You cannot do anything else, impetus or impetus, I like Impetus, but I like also a bit of flexibility. In the end I opted for the 4x4 base for infantry. I uses two (usually) or 3 (some bigger armies built before the crisis) to each unit for basic impetus or impetus 300/400 and for big armies with 500 points I can still play in 28mm without breaking my bank account and in my (quite big for normal people), 120x180cm battle table located in the “permanent” HQ in Italy…
I have to take pictures of my legion and cavalry and then finish generals and the auxiliary archers in skirmish order (a bit more than a week and I will be back to base for a week!) and the Army will be declared complete. So stay tuned for more!
