Starting a New Army: Ancient Germans

Strangely enough, I don't think I've ever painted the early Germans before. However, since they are making a suitably grand appearance in our slowly ongoing campaign, I thought it was about time:

For the infantry, I'm using Old Glory (28mm, of course). The idea is to use a limited number of colours for the clothing, mostly browns, off-whites and greens, except in the case of the wealthy ones who can afford things like cloaks and swords. Some of those even have colourful trousers.

Shield designs will be a mixture of plain, Veni Vidi Vici transfers, and Little Big Men Studios decals. LBMS does make a series of transfers to fit the Old Glory shields, but they are more Celtic than Germanic. I won't be using those because I want to keep them for the Gauls and Scordisci in the dim and distant future.

That limits my choices of LBMS somewhat, because the Germanic ones they make for other manufacturers all have a central hole for the boss, while most of the shields that come with the Old Glory figures have central spines. So I've been sourcing shields from other manufacturers that I can use with the LBMS transfers for Foundry and War-games Factory. This will give me something like four basic shapes: round (which do come with Old Glory); oval (Essex Miniatures. amongst others); large hexagonal (Irregular Miniatures); and oblong (Magister Militum).

Basing is a lot of Faller grass stuck in various places, along with flock of different kinds. I want these to have something of an overgrown look to them.

Here is how they look next to Companion Miniatures Romans. The Germans are a bit taller, although the Romans have an unsporting habit of wearing helmets to make themselves look bigger.

Another comparison shot. I like the idea of Germans charging Romans from behind...

And here's how they look in mortal combat. The Romans are definitely chunkier, but when you look at them from tabletop distance they are fine.

If I'm going to do this army properly, I'll need shedloads of them. I'd love to be able to play games with the likes of the Cimbri, Ambrones and Teutones, and of course Ariovistus and Arminius. I have to say that I am really enjoying them so far, and my limited painting time is being used to the full, especially over the spring holiday weekend. When I get to them, the cavalry will probably be by Crusader Miniatures, but I'll stick with Old Glory for the masses of infantry. There will be many of them - I feel a proper horde coming in the distance...

On the painting tray: April 2017

Germans. Thousands of them! Well, the start of a large ancient German army to squish Romans. I'll be using Old Glory (25mm) with various shields and designs to get that wild and woolly look. The plan is to produce eight warbands of 48 figures, an elite warband of 40 figures, and two units of loose formation warbands/light infantry with 36 figures each. I'll then need 36 heavy cavalry, and maybe another 16 light horse. Plus command bases, of course. That should make a nice tribe. I'm thinking of making this my standard barbarian horde compostion for the period, which means I'd like to do the same numbers of Gauls and my old favourites, the Scordisci. And if I feel the need, I shall of course double the numbers to make some decent-sized armies...

Some Numidian Standard Bearers

Six bases of Numidian light horse with standards of various kinds. Figures by Navigator:

These will see action soon as Gaetulians fighting for Jugurtha. I'm planning to run our next campaign battle as a rather large affair over the spring break at work. Quite a few people have expressed some interest, and since I have the figures, why not?