From GeoffreyT: The Third Servile War (Swords and Sandals)(85 points)

Hello Challengers,

After some fantasy and sci-fi posts, it is now time for a serious historical gaming post now.   The greatest of the swords and sandals movies was undoubtedly Kirk Douglas in Spartacus'.  Who doesn't know the 'I'm Spartacus' scene?

Now to the history.  In 71 BC the Romans were busy wondering why they were counting down the years, instead of counting up.  Debated raged as to whether 1BC will be followed by year zero or year 1.

Mean whilst the slaves were restless, and revolted under former gladiator Spartacus who escaped and built a formidable army.

This miniature is another home sculpt, representing an escaped slave running down a cobbled roman street.  The slaves soon discarded the gladiator school weapons for captured roman military equipment.  Here he still has a battered training shield and Gladius.

Oops, there is nudity there, so I quickly adjust the angle of the shot so that his equipment is tastefully placed in front of his manly bits, just like in a fireman calendar shoot.  From this angle, it is apparent that I had a lot of trouble with the face and could not get the putty to stay in place.  Perhaps his face took a beating in the arena.

He is nude because I could not decide to attire him in either a tunic, a kilt or trousers and instead I settled for none of those.

So clearly the romans were not going to ignore this blatant nudity.  A war ensued, the slave army roamed undefeated.  After their initial successes they split in half, with Crixus taking his half north towards Gaul in an attempt to join up with Asterix and Obelix.  Spartacus went south in a vain attempt to join up with Elrond at Rivendell in New Zealand.

Crassus roman army cornered Spartacus' force at Rhegium, and did what Romans do best, besieging Spartacus' army.   Here we have the romans building a fort.

Crassus' men were busy, once they defeated the slaves, over 6000 were crucified on the Appian way for all to see.  This ended the third servile war.

Roman tunics is always a quandary.  From what I have read, it seems romans did not have uniform clothes.  A red tunic was common, as was cheap available at the quartermaster, but was not actually a uniform.  I have ignored everything I read and done them all in a uniform of dirty brown shades of white in classic make it up yourself wargamer uniform

To the scoring;

13 x 28mm miniatures = 65 points

1 x Swords and Sandals Bonus = 20 points.

Net = 85 points.

the map so far ...

Signing off,

Geoff.

From TeemuL: Let's say I like what I see, but I like the shield, too. :D The uniformed tunics look nice, may be not historically accurate, but they do look good. Nice set of varied weapons. Special mention to the bases, I like the street base of escaped slave, but I like the others, too.