From SimonG: Roman Statues and Auxiliary Archers (85 points)

With another Monday I'm very excited to offer today two contrasting offerings from my ongoing Jewish Wars project -- a pair of statues for table decoration plus the first full Impetus based unit -- a group of Eastern Auxiliary archers.

Avete Victoria !

I intend for these two statues to be used as set dressing within and around the Roman temple in my Antonia fortress model (as seen in last year's AHPC). The figures are 3D prints purchased from Goose Minis on Etsy. I had them printed in 30mm thinking they would be larger than my 28mm figures but as they are quite slight/not heroic builds I should have gotten them in at least a size or two up! They have been installed on plinths from Sarissa. 

Ideally I would have ordered the statues printed bigger!

Now while most of us are familiar with ancient statues in their present day "naked" form they were most likely originally brightly painted. It was quite a challenge to try and switch painting styles to make it look like a statue and not like a real human being -- choosing brighter colours, less realistic skin tones and so on.

The first statue is of Victoria who will take pride of place inside the temple.

Sarissa plinth and marble effect paint

Shown in the temple with candle light

The second statue was intended to be a general purpose scholar. However I failed to notice the huge anachronism -- what would a first century Roman be doing with a bound book!  A quick spot of research however quickly allowed me to propose that this is a statue of Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis). Now known for his epigrams, Martial was one of the first to popularise codices, an early form of bound book. So for a library themed challenge this seemed the ideal famous person!

Very pleased with this plinth marble effect!

I added a couple of braziers from my odds & sods bag

As a special nod to the character and to the challenge, the book in Martial's hand is actually open to a quote from Epigram 6.60 (translation by David Macey, strictly it is a paraphrase, so apologies if I've messed up the translation in doing this) 

Laudat, amat, cantat nostros mea Roma libellos,

meque sinus omnes, me manus omnis habet.

Ecce rubet quidam, pallet, stupet, oscitat, odit.

Hoc volo: nunc nobis carmina nostra placent.

Rome lauds, loves, and sings my little books.

I am in every pocket, every hand.

Behold: she blushes, pales, dazes, yawns, looks

sick. That’s what I want! Now I’m my own fan. 

 

(For the technically minded this is a 3point font size laser print onto sticky label paper (the book is 4mm by 6mm in size) -- the use of sticky paper is the secret as trying to place and glue something this size is a) next to impossible and b) always leads to the glue spoiling the paper!)

So with these two oddball characters out of the way we can turn to some real wargaming stuff -- a unit of skirmisher archers for Impetus -- Eastern Roman auxiliary archers from Victrix. The colour scheme is from Osprey "Roman Army Units in the Eastern Provinces I -- plate A).  I had great fun painting these in what has to be the closest I've had to a fantasy colour scheme, they would fit right in a LoTR army!

As is my habit I strung the bows with button thread. It's this sort of thing that limits my productivity 😝 !

So while the theme this week was first century Roman where have we been in the AHPC library? Last week we were in Overdues and Returns so we will call on Sarah's Library Cart in the form of Victoria to take us to The Statue of a Famous Person, Martial. Together this is two 30mm figures at 5 points each plus the 20 point bonus for the library cart and another 20 for the Famous Person statue. With finally 1 point for 1/20 of a terrain cube in the bases this gives me 51 points for the two statues.

I make no bonus point claim for the 6 28mm archers so that's another 30 points for 81 in total this week -- hard work for the points but I really enjoyed it!  With a house move next week I may have to miss the regular Monday free for all but I'm looking forward to bringing a load of 15mm ruffians in a couple of weeks time.

Sylvain: Great description of what were ancient statues and your paint job on these is perfect, they really look like painted statues. I'll give a few more points (4) for your bases, for the realistic marble effect which look so cool. And great band of archers too. Good luck with moving to a new place, I wish you unbroken miniatures.