Hobby Update: KoM Foot Guard w/ Two-Handers

The Regnum is sitting comfortably at 3000+ points. This year, I’ve added a second Beast of War to the ranks, which should be a powerful addition in any games I manage to find.

I still have about two boxes worth of Warlords Roman Praetorian Guard though, and have been looking for ways to incorporate them into the army, more or less as a way to “finish” the army for now.

My infantry right now is entirely defensive. Holding the line are numerous regiments of Spearmen, Shield Wall and Foot Guard all sporting shields, in the hopes that they can hold out while the cavalry and Beast(s) of War can deal the damage.

I wanted to do something a little different with these last units in hand, and decided to do some light conversion work to get some infantry options with more of a punch. While my early days I advocated for chaffy Pole-Arm troops, here I went with Foot Guard, as I have a ton of their crested heads around. As a bonus, they hit on a 3+, and start with a 5+ Defense. Swapping for the two handers only drops the Defense to 4+, which is even with my Spears and Shield Wall units. These elite troops should hold the line as well as my typical lowly infantry, and provide a bit of an offensive threat too. When you pay for an elite unit, they can fill multiple roles I guess!

Chopping off the pila heads, I tried to swap in GW State Troops halberd heads, which worked ok. The GW bits need some trimming, and they are a bit wider than the pile tops. A few turns of a hand drill against the bottom of the halberd heads seemed to anchor it a bit better. The crested helms are in line with the rest of my army, showing these guys as the elite Foot Guard.

The only rub with the minis was that the Roman minis all have a static arm for the shield. I’m not a good enough hobbiest to alter that, so I needed to incorporate that feature somehow. Fortunately, the kits come with a bonus buckler shield of sorts, and I had purchased enough kits to accumulate a fair number of these bucklers…

The basing work needs some cleaning up, but the unit looks pretty good.

The head-cannon is the unit is “on the march”, with the buckler around and the side-sword in the scabbard. They have their two-handed weapons though, so when battle in joined, the bucklers would be ditched and they’ll start hacking away.

The result is a bit of an odd model, with regards to the rules and wysiwyg, but it works well enough. I don’t think anyone would begrudge me the use of some bucklers. November is almost here, so I’m hoping to get the rest of the Guard minis primed before it gets too cold out to do so. Hopefully more of these guys will be ready soon!