I've been wanting to do something set in the 4th Century BC in Italy for a while and with the upcoming Midgard rules for battles and with a home-written variant of Too Fat Lardies' Dux Britanniarum for raiding scenarios, I finally have some rules I think I'll be able to play it with.
So I've started painting Romans. My views on warfare in this era fly in the face of most of the accepted classic information and are firmly welded to the views of current/recent authors/historians such as Jeremy Armstrong (book - Early Roman Warfare), Alistair Lumsden (articles - Ante Bella Punica and Roman Military Development in the 4th Century BC), Nathan Rosenstein (article - Phalanges in Early Rome) and Fernando Quesada Sanz (Article - Not so different: individual fighting techniques and battle tactics of Roman and Iberian armies within the framework of warfare in the Hellenistic Age.) The articles are all available on Academia.edu if you're interested.
That being said then, here are the first two units of Antepilani. In this case, the less wealthy and/or youngest warriors recruited from urban and rural areas of Rome and her immediate neighbouring colonies. They are armed with a range of javelins/proto-pila, dual-purpose throwing/thrusting spears (hastae) and a variety of cut and thrust swords based on Greek and Celtic La Tene models.
Their maniples fight in 'cloud' formations, expanding and contracting, showering the enemy with missiles, with perhaps localised charges to close combat by small groups to relieve the pressure from enemy missiles or to exert pressure on wavering enemy, before withdrawing to rally on the heavy spearmen to the rear. In 150-200 years, these will be the Hastati of the Polybian legion that we all know and love.
The state does not equip its armies at this point, so they provide their own gear and thus are not uniformly armed or equipped and are equipped according to their status, so the cheapest helmets (Montefortino types recently introduced by the Celts - ideally there would have been a load of Negau helmets on these as well but Victrix don't make those) and limited armour of the bronze pectoral variety. Ideally, I'd have a range of different style scuta on them but due to the high cost of metal and the desire for making conversions, decided to go solely with Victrix plastics, minor shortcomings on the historical front not withstanding (Victrx models are designed for the 2nd Punic War which is almost 150 years in the future. They are perfect for that but not quite so on the money for this earlier era in some small details; notably the range of helmets, armour styles - simply that there are no linothorax-equipped models - and shields which are definitely of a later variety. But that's not a massive issue, cos they are lovely models and paint up very easily.)
Anyway, regardless of whether or not you agree with the current theories about the development of the manipular legion as in the texts noted above, I hope you enjoy the pics. Models painted using my now standard 'dip and highlight' methodology with LBM shield transfers. The first three pics are of the models on their Midgard bases with the second set on the Dux bases.
09 March 2014, 02:10:32 PM
