From SanderS: Mars Exulte! Mudry's Mesa (173pts)

Hoi,

Onwards to Snowlords Peak we travel, passing by Mudry's Mesa we need to paint something inspired by another Challengers entry from previous Challenges. Last year Noel has painted a cr*p load of figures much as he's doing this year and amongst them were some awesome Romans. Now I have always had a keen interest in the Roman/ classical era, but just never had the courage to start painting the huge numbers of troops needed to portray the conflicts of Rome in any serious manner. I have a 1:72 army for Hannibal in the cabinet at school but never did finish the Romans needed to fight them.

Anyway, I ended up buying a bunch of Victrix/ Warlord plastic frames with a Roman Civil War idea in mind. In order to get the kids at the Heroquest club interested in Historical Wargaming I am thinking of making cards for a Roman hero and a small group of soldiers to help him fight in the ongoing civil conflicts in Rome during any change of power. The Caesarian period or the Claudius-Nero period, being high amongst my favourites.

I already have some painted gladiators and a few sprues of Gauls are ready for construction as wel.It's fairly well possible that I end up doing something like the Footsore Gangs of Romegame eventually but for now this is as far as I will go. Let's take a closer look at the figures okay? Now usually I like to err on the side of historical authenticity with subjects like these but I felt like going a little crazy and using colour schemes for the scutums (scuta? scutii?) so I painted four units of 5 figures each with a distinctly different scheme. Each unit also has at least one leader model (sometimes 2) and I used Renedra/ Frostgrave bases in order to recreate the pavements of Rome, while it's not really visible in my (really bad) pictures: the bases have several layers of colour including a mossy green that also shows on my pavement mat. Okay so let's look at the figures themselves.

The Black/ Praetorian unit. I painted these to accompany Cato and Macro (I have been reading Simon Scarrow's latest book Blood of Rome while painting these).

 Since I am not capable of painting on the eagle wings or the lightning bolts (believe me I've tried) I did as many non-wing designs as possible.

The Green unit: actually this is my rendition of the Legio X Gallica (or 10th Gaulic Legion) the boar on the shield is a transfer the rest is painted on. Also, Benito has mentioned that we have prove that most Roman soldiers wore off-white tunica's under their Lorica hamata or Lorica segmentata. I think this to be true as well, but I also have learned through an experimental archeologist, Bernard van Daele, that the richer soldiers were allowed to buy and wear their own tunica's and those often were red. so I included a few other coloured tunica's for diversity.

 My favourite bunch of the lot are the Yellow unit, mostly due to the fact I love these yellow and red shields with the horsey on them. The horse and waves are again a transfer.

The last unit is the compulsory Red-shield-unit. I used all at rest poses for them because I am going to use them as the NPC guards in scenarios if and when needed. 

Well that's the plastics done with, mostly...I also have some white metal Foundry figures from two of their character sets painted up for general use. There's a guy on horse (basically he's an emperor, but I've forgotten which one) he's talking to a high ranking officer, tribune or legate.

There's a cornicen and standard bearer from plastic which I have done up in different schemes as the units above so they can be used with any one of them. Then there's 3 more white metal characters. Among them are 2 high ranking officers and a nobleman in toga.

What amount of points does this entry leave me with? Well 26 foot figures and one mounted figure should be good for 140 points and together with the 30 bonus points that is a total of 170 points. These should see me pass the 1000 points mark and on my way to the end goal of 2000.

Cheers Sander



That's a great looking bunch of Romans you've painted here Sander. As there are a couple of hand-painted shields I've added a couple of points.

TamsinP