Early Imperial Roman Veteran Legionaries!

OK! Here's the start of a new project well underway, it's 28mm Early Imperial Romans!

Here's the first unit in the army done. The project will be early Imperial Romans and (one of) their traditional opponents, ancient Germans (coming soon). This is kind of a full-circle project for me as nearly 25 years ago, after I'd first moved to Winnipeg from the distant countryside, I acquired painted Early Imperial Roman and ancient German armies. They came from either the TMP classifieds or Bartertown (remember those sites?) and I bought 'em sight unseen - not even pictures.

Of course I asked questions before hand, like "who's the manufacturer of these figures?" and the answer came back "Wargames Foundry I think." Well as we say nowadays, the words "I think" did a lot of work in that answer. The models were decidedly NOT Foundry models, more like Minifigs or something - they were not good. I put a wash on them to make 'em presentable, we played one big Thursday game with them, and they were moved on. But I always really liked the period and those two armies.

Fast forward nearly 25 years and I'm back to the project! These Romans are (mostly) the plastic EIR Veteran Legionaries box from Warlord Games. I didn't buy the box, but just have accumulated sprues from various Warlord sprue sales. I likely spent less than half the retail price on the unit. 

Anyway these Veteran Legionary plastics are really super. They're easy to assemble (just right arm, head and shield to stick on), nicely detailed, have good variety, and are easy to paint - just what you want from plastics. And on sale I think I paid about 70 cents each for them. This is the Centurion, leader of the unit, carrying the traditional vine stick.

At the right above is the Cornicen with his horn, but at left is the sole metal model in the unit - the Aquilifer, also from Warlord. This one puzzled me a bit - he came with the Aquila (eagle) standard of the Legion, but is wearing a lion headdress. What's weird about that? Well, from everything I've read (ranging from Phil Barker's classic Armies and Enemies of Imperial Rome to Ospreys), the Aquilifer, in the early Imperial era at least, was always bare-headed. So rather than offend sensibilities (my own mainly) I gave the Aquilifer model the plastic standard from the plastic Veteran sprue. I had to convert that a bit too since it had a spike on it and not the "hand" that the Manipular standard traditionally bore. But no worries, I cut one out of plasticard and stuck it on. I think it looks OK. 

Some really nice detail on the standard bearer. The lion skin looks great.

I gave the Aquila to the plastic model from the Veteran sprue. He has a head from the bits box onto which I sculpted a Romanesque hairstyle. He's pictured here with metal Foundry models.

The Veterans, like I said earlier, are great. Some of the heads are bearded, unhelmeted, or otherwise battle-weathered. Likewise their scuta (shields) are hammered and worn, some with holes or with the wood showing through. They look great. Of course the designs were hand-painted :-)

Honestly the idea with this project was to paint enough models to just do a skirmish game - SPQR or something similar - maybe 30-40-ish models a side. But as I started accumulating, the goalposts shifted somewhat (as they do), and now I'm thinking Warhammer Ancient Battles. That would REALLY bring things full circle as that's the game we played with my original armies all those years ago!