Friday 26 August 2016

The First of the Newly-Raised Legions

A long time ago, even before I went to Poland at the start of the nineties, I painted an army for the original Tactica supplement's list for the Pontics. I used Essex figures, because those were pretty much the best available at the time, and I still have a soft spot for them. One of the options was the imitation legionary, so I painted three units of 24 figures, each with a different colour of plain shield, using the Essex 'Roman' Argyraspid figure.
I had always intended to pick up from where I left off with these, and use them as the basis for a newly-formed legion. Fast-forward another few years (!) and I finally got around to doing this with one of them. I took the guys with the red shields, 'distressed' them a little bit, and added another forty legionaries and assorted command stands to bring them up to strength. The original guys are lurking at the rear in these photos.
This is something of a test, and I think they have come out fine. I can do the same with the other two batches at one point, but I thought I'd give this a shot now so that I could use them as part of my cast of many for the upcoming Philippi game at the Society of Ancients conference in October.
They will probably be needed in the coming years of our campaign, because there is going to be a lot of Roman in-fighting. At one point I will paint up some Greek-type commands to turn them back into Imitation Legions again. I hope the uniform look and the plain shields make them look like raw recruits.

Next up: a mounted legate and some casualties for this legion, then it's some cavalry for Philippi: Roman Equites and Celtiberian auxiliaries.

8 comments:

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    1. Nope, 25s. Most of my gaming-related time goes on painting at the moment, and I like painting in 25mm. I really should return to my 15mm Napoleonics sometime, though. Good luck with your Sudan project!

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  2. Superb! Great details on the paint job and nice bases!

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    1. Cheers Phil, those model railroad tufts were a great find.

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  3. I quite like these *and have a soft spot for Essex as well).

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  4. Cheers; I can't quite bring myself to think of them as 'old school'. I mean, I still think of Games Workshop as a new company...

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  5. While Essex may seem old school, there are still some very nice figures in their catalogue which are worth a look. Most people don't look past their 15's

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    1. Agreed! I really like their 25mm Seleucids, especially the Agema cavalry. Sorry I couldn't make it Carronade or Claymore to say hello this year - moving to England made it kind of difficult...

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