Principes for Zama

I Legio Principes to go with the Hastati I've already painted. These 1st Corps figures have some touches that I really like. The standard bearer has a lion skin; the Hastati standard bearer wears a bearskin. There are two different standards, one of which has a small eagle part-way down the shaft as opposed to the discs the guy in the picture above has on his. There are also two kinds of throwing spears, one of which is meant to be the slightly lighter one for the initial volley, to be followed by the heavier one with the square weight behind the shaft. For the Principes, I've chosen to place the heavier one in the left hands behind the shields. The good thing is that all these slight variations plus the several different poses make the Romans a little bit less uniform; it certainly makes them less of a chore to paint. This is going to matter, because I'm planning to do four legions of them, and one can quite easily become bored if that number of figures are too similar. I have a large Seleucid army, and after a while all those pikemen became rather tiresome to finish, even when varying the paint schemes as much as possible. I've scheduled myself to paint a couple of dozen legionary figures every two weeks, which is within my budget. It will also allow me to finish the legions for the first time we put on the game in April next year - I'm in for the long term grind...