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Author Topic: Roman army of Freddy (28mm) update: Roman Artillery  (Read 3807 times)

Offline Freddy

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Roman army of Freddy (28mm) update: Roman Artillery
« on: September 17, 2022, 11:45:43 AM »
 Hi,

I just start a thread for my Roman army too. It is a mixed one for now, as figures I will try to bring them into the Early Imperial direction, but I'd like to play all the famous Roman battles with them from the early wars of the Republic to the Soldier Emperors. The plan is to make the collection big enough for being able to select suitable figures for given periods, for now they go together. The basing is WHF standard, and I have movement trays for the units.



The backbone of the army are three boxes of Warlord Romans, Caesarean, the Early Imperial and the Veterans. Note: on some of these old pictures they are still without shield transfers, later I added those.




I also have a set (2*20) of the Agema pre-Marian legionaries. They will serve as auxilia in later ages.


Agema Velites- again, in later ages they will be auxilia.


The Scorpion was in one of the warlord boxes.


Roman cavalry is a mixture of various metal sets bought second hand, most of them are Foundry I guess, partially Successor cavalry, but with some head swaps they became proper Romans.


There is a smaller unit composed of leftovers:


It contains some leftover figures from the above units, and 3 Andrea Miniatures Romans (these were my first Roman figures):


The squad leaders are Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus from Warlord:


Speaking of characters. I have this generic foot commander mostly sculpted by myself:



A generic horse commander, conversion from a Successor rider:


And some characters from warlord. Marcus Aurelius:


Pompeius:


Crassus. I do not like this one, Crassus was a big, fat man, the Romans made a lots of jokes about both his temper and both his body is like of an oxen while the name Crassus means also oxen.


...and the great Caesar.


This one is without name, I use him as a Roman politician.


They also got some girls to help (Warlord metals).


For now, I use them with KoW historical rules, with some minor modifications (I added the command chain and support units rules from Hail Caesar). I do not have an opposing army, in solo/opponent without army games the enemy is my fantasy army, basically a big coalition of smaller fantasy armies (Skaven, undead, Chaos).  The KoW system supports this, having compatible lists for both historical and fantasy, but basically being a simple rectangle-based system, even the fantasy units are not about crazy combos and earth shattering magic- skeletons are just a though phalanx, skaven a cowardly middleweight infantry, etc. With the careful selection of the enemy units I can basically emulate all kinds of enemies, its a fantasy game, but not a counts-as at least.

This game for example was inspired by the Gaul campaign, the bigger Gaul skavenundeadchaos enemy army was divided into five divisions scattered around the table, but some of them were "camping" and the Romans had to destroy them piece-by-piece before the camping units hear the news about the battle and run onto the scene helping their comrades. (It became a pyrrhic Roman victory.)



I started this thread to track the progress in this project. The next one will be a unit of Warlord Praetorians, and I have 2*20 Warlord auxilia waiting to be painted. Then I need some more artillery, waiting to be assembled. Then- we will see. I am also building a unit of gladiators, two of them is done for now. This one is from Warlord:


This one from some unknown 3d print kickstarter, I bought it from a guy on a bitz flea market in the local club.

While female gladiators (gladiatrix) actually existed, this one is more on the fetish titty girl side, on the other hand she is more realistic regarding how gladiators might have been looking like on the battlefield. We know that they were pressed into service in times of extreme need. My problem is that their arena gear does not fit the needs of a battlefield at all. They shloud have been equipped with some kind of a spear, also with proper shields, helmets and probably some kind of chest armour. Sculpting battlefield gladiators with a mixture of arena and battle equipment will be an interesting project.

On the conversions side, I made some shields for the auxilia, I do not like their metal shields (hard to glue). The challenge in this is that I have to make it the exact same size to remain compatible with the decals. This one was cast to resin.


Also I sculpted a legionary, this one is optimized for faster painting. The spear tip was cast like that but I will cut it and replace with spear tips I hammered from wire to be less brittle.


I will see how fast I can continue, I will post  the updates here.
« Last Edit: May 12, 2023, 04:43:28 PM by Freddy »

Offline dadlamassu

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Re: Roman army of Freddy- 28mm
« Reply #1 on: September 17, 2022, 11:59:17 AM »
Really good start to a collection.  I suspect that the Roman Army was as uniform as wargamers or Hollywood make out.  The ones you have in the older armour could well be the forces of locally raised militia. 

My Legio VI Victrix also fights my fantasy and mythical forces as well as its traditional tribal opponents from Gallia, Germania and Britannia.
https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=132966.msg1720445#msg1720445
« Last Edit: September 17, 2022, 12:26:32 PM by dadlamassu »
'He could have lived a risk-free, moneyed life, but he preferred to whittle away his fortune on warfare.'
-- Xenophon, The Anabasis

Offline Freddy

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Re: Roman army of Freddy- 28mm
« Reply #2 on: September 17, 2022, 06:50:38 PM »
Really good start to a collection.  I suspect that the Roman Army was as uniform as wargamers or Hollywood make out.  The ones you have in the older armour could well be the forces of locally raised militia. 

My Legio VI Victrix also fights my fantasy and mythical forces as well as its traditional tribal opponents from Gallia, Germania and Britannia.
https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=132966.msg1720445#msg1720445
Thank you! What a great project you have!

Yes, Roman army might have had standards for their equipment, but they also took care of it, and helmets and armour could survive decades, even centuries with proper handling. Most legion cohortes might have had a mixture of bronze and iron helmets, also mail and plate armour.

Their clothes colour is also questionable, the classical approach (on several pictures and written material) is red for Mars, but on a lot of pictures soldiers appear in white tunic, only their cape being red. Some say that they might have had a white/natural wool tunic for everyday use and a red one for battle. Red ofc has a lot of shades, the brighter the more expensive, so a lot of soldiers most likely had brownish brick red even if red itself was standardized. Praetorians often used green tunics (the favourite chariot team of the Emperor), marines blue (so far that they sometimes painte the smaller patrol ships entirely blue), and in general, Romans knew a lot about textil painting and in the civilian life all colours were in use, so I think any colour could apper in smaller numbers in the army too. One notable exception being the colour yellow, that was considered as the "girly" colour (same as pink today), it was the colour of the bridal dress and legionnaries were only forced to wear it as a humiliation for cowardice.
Anyways, I stick with red :)

Offline Tim Haslam

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Re: Roman army of Freddy- 28mm
« Reply #3 on: September 17, 2022, 07:05:35 PM »
Very cool looking force!
Plus your basing will also allow you to play Warhammer Ancient Battles, as it’s based around Warhammer Fantasy V5!
A millionaire trapped in a peasants body!

Offline Pattus Magnus

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Re: Roman army of Freddy- 28mm
« Reply #4 on: September 17, 2022, 07:30:30 PM »
Very nice job on your Romans. I like the conversions and sculpts you have done, too, the add a personal touch!

Offline Freddy

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Re: Roman army of Freddy- 28mm
« Reply #5 on: September 17, 2022, 08:10:31 PM »
Thank you!
Quote
Plus your basing will also allow you to play Warhammer Ancient Battles, as it’s based around Warhammer Fantasy V5!
Yes, I try to make them as universal in terms of rules as I can. This is also why I base them individually.
Quote
I like the conversions and sculpts you have done, too, the add a personal touch!
Thanks! Thing is, if anywhere then in the ancient Roman topic you really can buy every imaginable and unimaginable figure and accessory out from the shop, but I really like sculpting and converting :)

Offline cadbren

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Re: Roman army of Freddy- 28mm
« Reply #6 on: September 21, 2022, 08:56:56 AM »
Nice sculpting there. I think the genestealers might be a bit too op though.

Offline Freddy

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Re: Roman army of Freddy- 28mm
« Reply #7 on: September 21, 2022, 07:31:06 PM »
Nice sculpting there.
Thank you!

Quote
I think the genestealers might be a bit too op though.
Nah, fielding explicitly 40k figures in an ancient battle is a bit too deep in the fantasy rabbit hole even for me :) If you refer those pink, multi-limbed gentlemen, they are my Pink Horrors
https://makettekeswg.blogspot.com/2021/04/157-pink-horrorok.html

, here (with the KoW rules) used as Abyssal Flamebearers, basically a stronger skirmish infantry unit. Here you can find all pics of that battle.
https://makettekeswg.blogspot.com/2021/07/248-masodik-kow-csata-romaiakkal.html

Offline FreakyFenton

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Re: Roman army of Freddy- 28mm
« Reply #8 on: September 21, 2022, 10:16:58 PM »
Impressive! Really like the figures you painted, but also like the sculpting you did. Quite a broad horizon of skills.
"No human being would stack books like -that-!" -Dr. Peter Venkman

Offline Freddy

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Re: Roman army of Freddy- 28mm
« Reply #9 on: September 22, 2022, 08:17:20 PM »
Impressive! Really like the figures you painted, but also like the sculpting you did. Quite a broad horizon of skills.
Thank you! Every day I get more and more ideas what to sculpt to the Roman project :)

Offline Freddy

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Re: Roman army of Freddy- 28mm
« Reply #10 on: September 28, 2022, 07:40:57 PM »
Quote
The next one will be a unit of Warlord Praetorians
Here they are, finally finished- 20 plastic soldiers on the usual wooden movement tray. Most of the painting was done during the summer while sunbathing, now I already look at them with some nostalgia for the sunshine in this rainy autumn weather :P





Offline Freddy

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Re: Roman army of Freddy (28mm) update: Praetorians
« Reply #11 on: October 02, 2022, 07:08:21 PM »
Managed to find some more pics of the individual troopers. I used a brighter red () than before, and I made the capes (of the 3 command figures) with artist oil.




Offline Freddy

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Re: Roman army of Freddy (28mm) update: Praetorians
« Reply #12 on: October 17, 2022, 07:29:03 PM »
As you saw above, I have some historical characters in the collection, and I plan to make more. I already have a more-or-less suitable Cleopatra (needs some conversion), but her handmaiden goes before.

This model is from Brother Vinni, I bought it as part of a sale. She is towards this fantasy-fetish line, but Egyptian handmaidens really dressed like this in the ancient times:
https://historylink101.com/n/egypt_1/pic_wall_paintings_9.htm
 so I said ok- on the other hand lets not forget that Cleopatra was a Macedonian queen in a Macedonian court in a Macedonian city, so who knows whether or not they kept the fine Egyptian tradition of running around with the tits out- but I am a benevolent one :)

The model was painted with oils, the biggest challenge was the wine bottle, I experimented a bit, but I think it turned out fine. (I first wanted it to paint as a simple jug/amphora, but no, Egyptians were masters of glass working.)




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv6tuzHUuuk
« Last Edit: October 17, 2022, 07:31:00 PM by Freddy »

Offline Freddy

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Re: Roman army of Freddy (28mm) update: Walk Like an Egyptian
« Reply #13 on: November 04, 2022, 07:37:41 PM »
As the Roman theme is densely covered with factory-made kits, I turned my sculpting enthusiasm towards the characters of the era. The first being the Emperor Augustus. I did not have to look far for inspirations, no matter how many protraits Augustus had, the statue of Prima Porta is the one we imagine him after. This was the base of the concept, i only introduced two little modifications: he got a pair of caligas (being barefoot was the typical portrayal of gods and demigods) and I made his cape attached to his neck.
The figure was made of FIMO (yeah, it is a bit hard to take pictures of it, now I am using the light brown version), the rod is stirol string, the eagle and the left hand green stuff.


Offline Freddy

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Re: Roman army of Freddy (28mm) update: Rome wasn't built in day
« Reply #14 on: January 09, 2023, 06:20:01 PM »
Rome maybe wasn't built in a day, but these terrain pieces did not take much longer- being souvenir pieces from Greece with a plastic base.

 

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