3rd century AD - Roman Lanciarii

It has been unusually quiet on this blog, even considering my standards. But this doesn't mean I haven't been idle hobby wise. In fact I've been rather productive but honestly I didn't feel like taking pictures. I'm still not really comfortable with my new camera, thus I've let it slip.

Anyway, I couldn't withstand the temptation to start a new project and am about to embark onto a journey which will lead me into the turbulent 3rd century A.D., also known as the time of crisis for the Roman Empire. So yes, once more it's all about mighty Rome and her enemies.

I've always been intrigued by the way some people use the large bases for games like Impetus to create little dioramas. Thus while trawling the interweb for ideas I came across the splendid painting by Angus McBride you see above and suddenly inspiration struck. I knew what to do for my first base.

There's not much in the way of choice when it comes to 3rd century Roman miniatures, so I was stuck with A&A miniatures line of miniatures for this project. Not much of a problem though as the figures are rather nice, if maybe a bit on the crude side as far as the sculpting is concerned. At least when compared to my all time favourite Paul Hicks, or the more recent Aventine Miniatures (incidentally by the same sculptor who also did the A&A ranges). 

As an aside, I can't praise A&A enough for their excellent customer service. Excellent and prompt communication as well as very forthcoming with replacements if required.

The miniatures required some clean up as well as some slight modifications in order to capture the flavour, if not the exact detail of the original artwork.

Shields were painted by hand, but honestly I don't know yet if I'll see this through for the whole project. It's quite a time sink and compared to LBM and other manufacturers of high quality decals I don't really feel it's worth the effort. In case you wonder about the die on the base, well I intend to use it as a way to keep track of the units VBU (a kind of combined morale/ unit quality value) in games of Impetus. One less marker to clutter up the table.

That's it for the moment. Stay tuned!