Last night I played Camillan Romans against Simon's Gauls. The Roman army was a standard consular array. I set up with a left wing of mediocre Roman cavalry; the legions in the centre, offset towards the left; a centre right group of mediocre Italians; and some light horse on the right. Both cavalry wings were screened by missile skirmishers. The Gauls had cavalry and chariots on both wings and a horde of deep warbands across the centre, covered by skirmish javelinmen. They also had a large unit of skirmish slingers facing my heavy cavalry wing to my left. As with the most recent battle against Simon, our luck was better than average and his was worse than average. The skirmishers cancelled each other out right across the board, apart from our right flank slingers, who severely mauled the Gallic cavalry. When it came down to combat, we did well right across the field. Our militia heavy cavalry destroyed two smaller Gallic cavalry units plus a large chariot contingent. The legions ground their way through the centre, as is their wont. And we managed to hold on our weaker right. The crisis came when our rightmost legion felt the pressure of too many Gallic warbands, being forced right back onto the Triarii. At the same time, our militia cavalry heroes routed the last of the Gallic chariots on our left, disordering their general's warband at the same time. The Gauls fled en masse. Simon's set up was pretty much symmetrical, while mine was not. It was a good game, and gave us an opportunity to try out some variations on
Tactica II for Republican Roman armies. Unfortunately for the Gauls, they did not manage to emulate Brennus this time.
This is an attempt to render the deployment. Each legion was comprised of 8 Velites; 12 Hastati with pila in a single rank; 24 Principes with spear in two ranks; and 12 Elite Triarii in a single rank. The two Citizen Cavalry each had 18 figures and were classed as Militia Grade; they deployed in two ranks. The two Italian Infantry units had 24 figures in two ranks, and were also Militia. The extreme right had two units of 8 Light Cavalry in two ranks. The two skirmish infantry units each had ten figures, one unit to each flank. I won't go into the details of
Tactica II too much, but suffice it to say that the Hastati, the Citizen Cavalry and the Italians counted as medium troops; the Principes and Hastati were heavies. Army Breakpoint comes when half the massed figures in an army are destroyed. The Republican Romans, however, don't count any legionaries as destroyed until an entire legion routs, which gives them serious staying power. Billy played the Citizen Cavalry and the two leftmost legions; I played the right of the army.
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A few of the figures are individually mounted with quite a lot of sculpting of terrain on their bases.
As well as using three dimensions effectively, it gives more of a skirmishing cavalry feel.
I use the single figures as officers.
These guys have seen service as Parthians, Skythians, Armenians and Sassanians.
I'll post some photos of the same figures, but painted by me, another time.
The relatively "clean" Warrior figures gives a great deal of scope for clothing designs, such as the trousers on the figure to the right in the photograph above.
From this first shot, you can see how he has remodelled some of the helmets. The Warrior Miniatures figures are "true" 25s. They are quite slender in comparison to more recently produced figures, and they are also less well detailed, but that gives the modeller a good basis from which to work:
The overall effect is subtly different from the original figures, adding in enough variation to make the unit interesting:
After I bought these from Derek, I managed to buy some unpainted ones from Eric at the club, to increase the numbers. Here are some, by way of comparison:
This is one of my older paint jobs and it is perfectly adequate, but it's not up to Derek's standard. The relatively static pose is very visible:
And again: