Roman Cavalry

 Benefit of being in red zone... you can paint a lot...

and bring yourself to finish things too...

anyway here is my first unit (or two...) of republican Roman cavalry in 28mm. They are Victrix miniatures plastic. First some photos...

Being plastic it means you must build them (some people do not like it... I like), but also that you can customize them to a certain extent. Victrix gives you 8 sprues in total, four of horses with four horses in each, and four of men, again 4 to the sprue. You have 16 cavalrymen in total, but 4 of them are officers, this is not a perfect choice in my opinion, but one that I can live on. The figures themselves have crisp detail and minimal mold lines, and are easy to assemble. As Ihave realized with Victrix you have to be careful with the assembly, it is not open as Warlord or Perry, but basically each figure + horse is an entity. Certainly you have less variation of poses than with Perry (were you can basically mix and match horses), but Victrix has a decent number of variation per figure. You can equip the line horsemen with standard spears as I did, javelins, or swords. You have also option for standard and trumpet (not used in this first half of the bag).  For once heads are plentiful (I was not overly happy with only 8 heads per sprue of 8 men in my Athenian hoplites) and you have choices between Beotian/Hellenistic helmets, or Italian Montefortino/Gallic Style (useful to extend the use of the set, my next unit, that I am painting now, will be equipped with later helmets to be used as far as the triumvirates). There are also some older heads that you can use to make them Etruscan (or early Roman/Latin) cavalry. All in all a good idea. 

Shields have received LBMS transfers, I really like them.

If the set has a negative point, is the officers. There are 4 and their variations are quite limited, but again, it is a an acceptable compromise. Now some words on size. Some people criticize Victrix cavalry as being too big. Well... I have already painted two boxes of Agema Romans and plan to use my Victrix together with them, so I took some pictures with a Victrix cavalryman, two Agema velites, and one Agema Hastatus. 

I do not see them out of place, actually they fit quite well. So happy with them and I hope some of the sterile polemics about Victrix size will be put to rest.