Roman Legionary Cohort

The three week break taken this summer to tour Spain and the Peninsular War battle sites, currently featuring in a series of posts, meant taking a break from the painting process, which is not a bad thing, but I was curious to see that the enforced leave of absence from the paint brush only left me feeling keen to feel a brush between the fingertips again, on arriving back in 'blighty'.

Cohort One
Cohort Two
Cohort Three

As followers of this blog will know I, like many others, like to plan out a painting schedule and then set too, working the plan. That process seems to give me a great deal of satisfaction and that sense of progress and achievement each time I take the pen and put a line through a completed unit on the planning list that is pinned to my painting desk.

Legionary cohort number four. Victrix loveliness of course and a break from the painting break

That said, variety is the spice of life, and although a regular diet of similar or the same type of unit seems to speed up the production process, as familiarity has enabled me to practically paint a Victrix legionary in my sleep, I prefer to come at each project with a sense of excitement that I get when painting a set of figures for the first time; and the sheer fun of finding the detail that a sculptor/designer has built into the figure that perhaps escaped the first examination, only to be revealed later, just screaming out for a paint job to bring it to the fore.

So on return from Spain I was keen to complete Roman Legionary Cohort number four to have the enjoyment of painting again after a long break, but the recent start of my AWI collection indicates the other aspect of recapturing the excitement of the new, and a Perry sculpt is a good way of getting that buzz going.

However as the Romans would tell you, nothing can be achieved without discipline and that includes writing a plan and seeing the plan through to completion, so the AWI excursion will be a relatively temporary excursion, before returning to the Romano Dacians to complete the outstanding third of the collection.

So my fourth cohort is using the charging legionary from Victrix complimented with LBM shield decals and I really love the dynamism in these figures which add greatly to the look of a game when seen pressed up to an equally expressive warband of Dacians.

Talking of Dacians, Victrix seem to be pressing on with their development of their new range and my short excursion also adds further method to my madness in that the slight delay might enable me to acquire some of the new Victrix range to mix in with my Warlord collection in time for when I come back to the project, adding yet more to the variety and look of the collection.

It may surprise some of my readers but I actually have friends, Mr Steve you know who you are, who sometimes express doubt that this collection is really growing with scurrilous suggestions that I am taking pictures of the same group of figures and needlessly filling the ether with 'fake news'.

I suppose this is representative of the times we are living in, so to refer back to a famous quote from the Falklands War, "I counted them all out and I counted them all back", to allay any fears of so called fake news, I present the first four cohorts of my Trajanic Legion destined to bring Pax Romana to Decebalus and his Dacian bandits.

The plan will see another three such cohorts added to these with the option to convert one into a double-strength first cohort and attached aquilla and primus pilus with all the added combat bonuses that would imply; thus my collection will represent a fighting legion of just under 3,500 soldiers, probably closer to average fighting strength.

Once the Romano Dacians are done I will produce a similar number of cohorts with red shields that will facilitate some civil war actions I have in mind as well as larger Roman versus the others encounters, with Germans and Sarmatians added to the Dacian collection to counter a larger Roman force.

If you are interested in reviewing the collection as a whole, that I have completed so far, together with other associated posts, you can check them out by following the tab, JJ's Dacian Wars on the top bar of collected links or in the link below.

JJ's Dacian Wars

So onwards and upwards with, next up, a look at my AWI Light Infantry, the Peninsular War history of Badajoz and the parts of the city we looked at this summer and I am in the process of basing some Iroquois Indians to add to the AWI collection, so will aim to put a post together on them as soon as I get my photography room back.

Oh and I have not forgotten the request I have had to put together a painting tutorial on how I do my horses, so I will do something about that once all the building works are finished here at Chez JJ with a PDF and YouTube look at the process.

More Anon
JJ

Roman Legionary Cohort

Roman Legionary cohort number three finishes the first six months of planned work on the Romano-Dacian collection.

Cohort One
Cohort Two

As with my previous two cohorts, these chaps are sporting black shields and will be part of a planned group of seven such cohorts to complete this legion, allowing for my plan to have my legions with seven full strength cohorts at around 3,000 men that allows for the fact that many legions would have struggled to turn out ten full strength cohorts and 5,000 men.

In addition my three base cohorts allow the flexibility to combine another three bases of legionaries with them to represent a double strength first cohort with which I plan to attach the eagle bearer and primus pilus, with all the added punch and raised morale that such an option would imply.

Alongside my seven legionary cohorts will be five auxiliary cohorts to complete my eventual legion, with the plan to build two such legions for civil war match ups.

The Victrix legionaries come with loads of options to create a really dynamic looking cohort and with a change of shield and additional helmet plumes can be transitioned into a Praetorian cohort, one of which I will be adding to my forces in the second half of this year.

The final touch when putting these units together is the addition of LBM shield decals which have revolutionised the way we model ancient and medieval collections and like adding colours to horse and musket units really helps to bring the whole look together.

The theme now moves distinctly Peninsular War Napoleonic, with the first part of our tour underway with the Corunna Retreat, Salamanca and Ciudad Rodrigo visited, so I will be aiming to get some posts up in between the driving.

Roman Auxiliary Infantry

When working through units needed for a project I like to build to play as I go and I like to try and mix things up a bit to add some fun to the whole process.

So although four more units of Dacian Warbands are on the to-do list, I also have my Roman collection to work up as well and I have been really looking forward to working with the Victrix range of figures and in particular the Auxiliary Infantry which I have not built before.

My four units of Auxiliaries that have featured in the games run so far are the Warlord units that I converted over to my Augustus to Aurelian basing system.

The Victrix range compliments them quite well but in my opinion are very much superior in their look and I intend to replace the Warlord figures with these in time.

Auxiliary Infantry formed a significant component of Early Imperial Roman armies and with the plan to build two Roman armies for my collection will see a lot of these cohort type units being put together.

 
The design and look of these figures perfectly compliments the Victrix legionaries and together will really capture the look of a Principate army with serried ranks of both types.

The nice thing is that Victrix builds in plenty of options to allow you to vary the look of individual units with the inclusion of bearskins for the ordinary ranks to recreate the look of some of the auxiliary units pictured on Trajan's Column.

As you will see here I have stuck with a more traditional appearance, but plan to include the other look going forward.

One thing that really characterises the Auxiliaries on Trajan's Column is the depiction of these soldiers taking Dacian heads and in some scenes presenting their trophies to the Emperor himself.

Thus I have included a few of my soldiers with heads carried or impaled on sloped spear-point to emphasise their 'barbarian' heritage as any Roman commentator would note.

As well as a selection of trophies to adorn the unit with I was really taken with the character built into the faces of these soldiers which just seen to cry out for a bit of attention with the brush.

The shield decals are as usual from LBM and I have acquired a good mix of the many patterns they have available to allow easy identification when we get around to a bit of Roman vs Roman action.

Finally the painting of this unit saw me trying out one of a few new techniques that I have been planning to use, which in this case was working with a wet palette.

I have usually mixed my paint, which in the main is Vallejo, with water in a standard dry palette covered in foil to allow the occasional clean up and replacement with a new mixing surface.

For this project I decided to put together a wet palette, for which their are numerous suggestions on how to, all over the net, simply to say mine cost me £2.75 to put together.

I have to say, this has added another level of flexibility to my painting in terms of colour mixing, not to mention the cost saving in paint in finding colours still able to be used hours after they were mixed and still giving good coverage.

Having now got familiar with this way of painting I am surprised at myself for not doing this earlier, but I do know not all painters get on with this way of working, and perhaps I saw no real need to change.

Al I can say is that I am now a convert to this way of working with my colours and I am planning to use this method in conjuction with some added 'flow enhancers' to see what additional effects can be gained.

Finally, a big congratulations to my son Will and his friends who completed the Three Peaks Challenge this weekend which, with a traffic hold up on the Sunday travelling to Mount Snowden, meant that they had to run up stretches of the last peak to complete the twenty-four hour target with just over a minute to spare.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to his charity pot for Parkinson's UK and the Just Giving site remains open for those who might feel compelled to make a contribution to a very worthwhile appeal, by using the link under the banner at the top of the blog page.

Dacian Warband

So following a slight detour into WWII and my collection of British bombers and German nightfighters brought to completion with the few purchases made at Salute, it was back to my main project, the Romano-Dacian collection which sees Warband number eight added to my Dacian host and about two-thirds of the force completed.

If you are interested in looking back on the others in the collection since work started back in September 2017 with Warband number one I have put links below to the other posts, together with a link to all the work on the collection completed too date with terrain and games played.

Dacian Warband One
Dacian Warband Two
Dacian Warband Three
Dacian Warband Four
Dacian Warband Five
Dacian Warbands Six and Seven

JJ's Dacian Wars

As with previous builds, my Dacians are primarily composed of the Warlord plastics with a few strategically placed additions from Wargames Foundry, which work well with Warlord, to help add further variety to the look of the unit as a whole.

With an eye to the army as a whole I have given this warband a blue and white themed draco standard to compliment that carried by number seven, thus pairing my warbands into regimental groupings of about two-thousand men.

Each thirty-six figure warband is accompanied by a two figure 'brave warrior' marker that is used to indicate when the unit has used it brave warriors to gain an advantage in combat, rather similar to Romans throwing pila and I try to have these markers looking that little bit more aggressive with multiple weapons in hand or carrying the odd head, careless of their own preservation as they launch themselves into the hated invader's ranks.

The plan will see at least twelve, possibly fourteen of these warbands available to the Dacian player to line up alongside the Sarmatians and really create a big battle look to the table opposite a Roman line.

I was really excited to see the plans for the Victrix Dacians and will no doubt add a few units of their offerings to add further variation to my host as well as all the loveliness that Victrix brings to any collection.

Talking of Victrix loveliness, next up will be my first cohort of Victix Roman Auxiliaries complete with heads held aloft on spear points, which I am really looking forward to taking a brush to.

As mentioned my warband is composed of figures from Warlord and Wargames Foundry and the shield decals are from Little Big Men

King Decebalus, Warband Five and Roman Archer Cohort

Another update on progress with the Romano-Dacian collection with additions to both the Roman and Dacian forces.

First up we have King Decebalus which is a conversion job using the Wargames Foundry mounted Dacian commanders but with my lead figure getting a head swap with a Warlord Games helmeted head to create the look of the great king.

The king is accompanied by his standard bearer, again using the Veni Vidi Vici decal set BB3 from Magister Militum which offers some Greco-Thracian designs that may well have influenced Dacian designs given that there was a lot of sharing between the neighbouring cultures.

I was really pleased with how the head conversion turned out in the end and the horse is a particularly nice model which benefited from a suitably stand-out dapple-grey paint job.

The picture in Radu Oltean's 'Dacia The Roman Wars Volume One' was the inspiration for this group.

Next up, my Dacian host continues to grow, as does my knowledge on what works with these figures and possible conversions and range mixes.

This is the fifth thirty-six figure warband created and leaves another eight to go which should make an impressive show when on the table en-mass.

I mention conversions and range mixes as this is my first group to mix Warlord and Wargames Foundry figures, plus I have been doing a bit of cutting and swapping out of hands and weapon arrangements to help create a more varied look between my different bands.

I mentioned in my post covering the first game using the collection at the DWG meeting a month ago that I was using tokens to indicate each time the warband used a brave warrior to add to their combat score in a hand to hand battle and that I intended to replace them in time with suitable figures.

All my warbands now have two figures attached to indicate their allotment of brave warriors and they can be removed one by one as they are used.

The individual figures will also come in handy to do some skirmish games with the collection as well.

I was really pleased with how nicely the Foundry figures broke up the Warlord look and I intend to add more to each unit as I go.

I am also thinking about mixing in some casualties to add yet more interest for the eye to catch.

The Romans also got some new units added with another two groups of skirmishing archers and slingers together with a Cohortal command group for my archers.

The inclusion of a centurion, optio, standard and musician enables two skirmish groups of auxiliary archers to be combined into a cohort to fight on table as another formed unit.

Roman Archer Cohort with four figure command group added in the centre

Of course even those these guys are armoured and carry short swords they don't have shields and were not designed to mix it with warbands or equivalent heavy infantry.

That said, it seems the Romans found a use for these combined archer cohorts to be able to deliver a significant amount of arrows onto a particular target when the fighting tactics required.

Specific examples might include Germanicus' battle at Idavisto vs the German tribes under Arminius where the archers were used in strength to break up the charge of the Germans before being met by the Auxiliary spearmen.

Likewise Arrian's tactics against the Alans positioning archers behind in-depth cohorts of legionaries to receive the charges of the cataphracts whilst firing volleys of arrows into them overhead.

Augustus to Aurelian facilitates the use of these combined formations and the cohortal acies that allow units such as formed archers to fire and retire behind their supports.

An archer-spearmen combined cohort ready to deal with Vince's Parthian horde

So there we are onwards and upwards towards getting a largish game up and running for Xmas

If you would like to see my thoughts about the collection, some of the books and materials I am reading to inspire and develop my thoughts about the games I want to play using them then I have put together a short video clip looking at these and some other units from the collection so far.

Lots to come on JJ's this month with a report on Clotted Lard, the Lardy Day this weekend at the Devon Wargames Group meeting, then I am off next week on another two day walk with Mr Steve along the border with South Wales taking in Offas Dyke and the Three Castles, then next weekend we are off to Colours which is always fun to do and report back on

In between I have another book review planned plus more on Chester and Roman London and maybe a few more figures painted up to talk about.