Hobby WIP: Roman Spear Phalanx

One of the other projects-in-progress that I have going right now is a regiment of Romans. Romans! Golly-gee, it’s about time! A few months ago I picked up two boxes each of the Roman Legionaries and Roman Praetorian Guard made by Warlord Games. I finally opened the boxes about a week ago and set about planning out my future Roman units…

I had read that the designers were pretty crafty in designing these kits and most of the bodies, heads and weapons were easily interchangeable. With that “exchangeability” in mind, my intent when I bought these was to spread the weapons around and make the Legionaries into some Spear Phalanx Regiments (using the Pila bits), and the Praetorian Guards into the more elite Foot Guard (using Gladius swords bits) for the army. Eventually, I’d pick up some more boxes of Legionaries down the road to build up with swords as units of Shield Wall. Eventually, my more defensive infantry regiments would all be Roman-themed. It was a good plan! But it quickly fell apart. 

Henceforth, the official model of the Regnum Aeternum's Foot Guard's will be "Sharing is Caring."

Ouch. A box of Praetorian Guard (20 figs) will net me 4 swords for the rank and file. The Legionaries are a bit better, with 8 swords for their 20-strong unit. I don't know what the Hail Caesar rules are for arming your legions, but I was hoping for a more even split of stabby things. I only have myself to blame though: pics of the spries are all over the website. Live and learn.. and then buy more plastic I guess. There you go. Life lesson right there for your budding hobbyists.

Each kit comes with a ton of pila, however, so while I try to figure out how I'm going to get more swords, I've started on a test unit of pila-armed Legionaries, which will become a unit of Spear Phalanx for the Kingdoms of Men.

As you might be able to see from the first picture, the models have built-in oval bases. What you can't see is that that's all I got: no other bases to glue them to or to help them rank up. Luckily, having converted over all those old Empire guys, I have a use for the 100+ magnetized bases that I already have. Recycling! Anyways, I attached the minis and then applied the Vallejo White Pumice Paste once again. We'll see how it works with feet this time; the horses were galloping and were easy to do; this took a little extra effort, and even still, every 4th one seemed to get nice and gooped from the knee down. Fortunately, the paste is water soluble, and easy to clean off.

I couldn't decide betwen: "The commanders have lost their heads." or "We're not very well armed, are we?" So you get both. Sorry.

The regiment may appear half-built and/or haphazardly constructed, but really, it’s all for the sake of testing, I swear! Most have heads, no shields, no weapons, and are on individual 20mm bases to help with painting, as I think this will be the best way to hobby on them, but just in case…

·         Some models have spear arms glued already, to see if it’s a pain to paint around the spears or not.

·         Some models don’t have heads, to see if that’s better to paint the noggins already on the mini or separately

·         I have included one 40mm square of multi-based units, so see how difficult it will be to paint a unit of these Romans already set up and glued in a multi-base fashion

These should be pretty quick to paint up, I think. I just need find some time to get to work on them….