28mm Milites classiarius

[Richard in Sachsen]

I finally got these guys finished and have a new forum in which to show them... now I just need boats. I also need something more than a pocket digital camera to get better close ups, so please excuse some of the fuzziness.

First, Romano-German scouts


The shield pattern and this forward guy are out of the Osprey Roman Naval Forces and the Roman Army Uniforms which uses the same illustrations as the Osprey books.



Then the command. The vexillum is blue with a gold dolphin with the letters CL GR above and P F below, which stand for Classis Germania Pia Fidelis. If anyone has an image of the actual German Rhine Flotilla vexillum, I'll be happy to change it to a more historically accurate image but lacking that, I took liberties to design what I thought was historically plausible.

The two dracos have parmas which are a little different than the milites: a golden wreath and an archangel riding a dolphin with the imperial award "Pia Fidelis"




And here are the two units (16 models each.) Since there is almost no resources for late roman naval shield patterns and the ND doesn't show Ripenses, I took artistic liberties with what I thought was, not historically accurate but perhaps historically plausible. The trident and dolphins are typical Roman nautical symbols (although my skills are not honed enough to paint a double trident and two intertwined dolphins both above and below the boss - so a regular trident and two intertwined dolphins will have to do.) Originally, I was going to paint the shields with blue fields but I saw a couple of reenactor's shields with black background and they really popped, so I used it here. There was also patterns of swimming dolphins on the backs of their shields and I painted all these figures with dolphins circling the backs of the shields (although the scouts have the usual "heart shapes" on the backs of their shields.) Unfortunately, with the pocket camera I have, I can't quite get a decent picture to show. Here is one with a flash, and you can get a glimpse of the backs of the shields.



The shield rims are actually leather, I used Life Color leather set, starting with a cold leather base color then working up with the two shades. I wanted white to enclose the design and the cold leather colors did the trick with a deep off-white. The colors also washed over the blue primer on the armor (pteruges, etc.) and did a nice job of tinting the leather a very light blue pretty much matching the illustrations the paint schemes were taken from. That color also did a nice job on the leggings. Other than leather, I used mostly Foundry acrylics and some Army Painter acrylics (the only GW paint is mithril silver).





Unit commanders


The figures are mostly Footsore: "Elite Infantry" for the legionnaires and the "Arthurian Command" for the command set as I thought their kit matched the illustrations better than the available "Late Roman Command(s)." The musicians and a draco are from Newline as is, maybe, one of the unit commanders but I can't really remember now.

The shields and most of the spears are plastic, however. They're from Gripping Beast Dark Age warriors. I say "mostly" as a couple of the figures dropped during the painting process and the weight of the metal figure just snapped them... every time! (I've a wee bit of nerve damage in my hand and I can sometimes uncontrollably drop things.) One of them broke while dipping. So those are replaced with various metal spears I hade in my bitz box.

Speaking of dipping. These models were the first I've ever dipped in Army Painter tones. And I did it wrong! Cold day, didn't warm or shake the can, results were to be expected. Although, it didn't turn out that bad in the end, I think I will brush on in the future. And I definitely will use Army Painter as I have three Comentantenses of six ordines, each composed of twenty figures in two ranks. So if I ever want to get these done, it's the army painter system for the rank and file for me.

I apologize again for the fuzziness but all commentary and criticism is certainly welcome. Thanks

[bigredbat]

They look very good!  I mostly use the North Star metal spears; worst that can happen with them is that they pop off and I stick 'em back on.

Boats is tricky- do please let us know if you find something suitable.

[Bone]

now I just need boats.

How about a liburna papermodel ?
http://www.kallboys.de/roemische-flussliburne
it's 1:72 ...but easy to rescale-

[Nevyen]

Looking great !

[Jericho]

They look neat, despite the crumminess of the photos, especially the shields. Freehand I presume?

For ships, how about this one from Grand Manner? There are a couple of other ones there too, but they're all pretty pricey.

http://www.grandmanner.co.uk/Roman_Military_Transport--product--810.html

I myself was thinking of converting a 1/60 Smer Viking ship into a Roman Navis Iusoria.
The idea which I shamelessly nicked from here:

http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=64211.0

[Richard in Sachsen]

Thanks for the comments, everyone. I had to go to the Uni in Jena today and stopped by Weimar and did some shopping at the "craft" store - one of my favorites because they stock all kinds of great stuff for the Bauhaus University students to build their architectural models with. So, even though I mentioned "now I just need boats" kind of tongue-in-cheek, I've been throwing around the idea of building a master model of a navis lusoria (I have a great book on the reconstructed one from the University of Regensburg [http://www.scripta-mercaturae.de/katalog/index.php?art=07-008&reihe=100].) So I picked up a bunch of balsa and pine planking and dowels and such and decided to give it a go.

I've also silicone and resin for casting but have never been able to find a decent plan for a vacuum chamber to degas the silicone for any molds. But maybe I'll give it a go.

Bone, I do have some Roman Seas paper model files, so that is an option as well.

Jericho, I love Grand Manner and I will probably make an order later this year for Dave's Roman pontoon bridge and engineer boats but I have to save and make large orders: I think I ordered a model for 15 GBP once and paid 30 GBP for postage from Grand Manner to Germany. But I really do like those troop transports as well... Oh, and yes, the shields are free hand, thank you.

Bat I mostly use North Star wire spears as well but for these guys I wanted something a bit more detailed and those GB spears look really great, but... they're plastic. The commander with the white crest, however, has a North Star spear in his hand: I snipped it very short and gave him one of those arrow "thing-ma-bobs" that the books aren't really sure what they are but speculate that they some sort of leadership symbol. I'm assuming it functions as a Late Roman version of the vine stick.

[Jericho]

Thanks for the heads up about Grand Manner. I live in Belgium so I guess it would be just as expensive as it was for you.