Legio XIII Gemina

                                       

Having painted a load of hairy Germanic tribesmen so far I thought I'd change gears for a bit and work on some Romans. For this week's entry I've completed a unit of 15 Legionaries of Legio XIII Gemina.

The models are a mix of monopose metal Foundry and Warlord Games figures, with a couple Warlord Games plastics thrown in. Fortunately the plastic Legionaries mix in really well with the much older Foundry sculpts. 

The command group are all Warlord metals. Sorry about the lion on the vexillum, I really wasn't feeling it this morning and it kind of looks that way. But it's a lion, I swear. What I do really like is the metal mask worn by the standard bearer. Pretty freaky.

The shield decals are water transfers from Warlord Games. I'm really impressed at how well they came out. They make my previous handpainted shields on the veterans look pretty sad. But these are easy to apply, fit well (even on the old metal Foundry shields!) and look the business.  

I picked Legio XIII as it was one of the longest serving Legions (having been levied by Julius Caesar in 57 BC and hanging around till the 5th century CE), it served in Germany after the disaster at the Teutoburger Wald, and 13 is my number on my beer league hockey team, the Kyle Wellwoods. So there.
 

The legion gained their cognomen "Gemina" (twin) after being reinforced with veterans from other legions following Actium and the end of the Civil War against Mark Antony.

You can hardly tell the WG plastic figure (front centre) from the metal Foundry ones!

I think they look pretty good and being individually based, can be used for skirmish games as well as ranked up for WAB. I'll stick 'em up in the cabinet and call these done.

More Hairy Ancient Germanic Tribesmen

                                     

Another Challenge entry - some more hairy dudes! I've painted 17 more ancient Germanic tribesmen with spears for my Warhammer Ancient Battles Germanic Tribesmen army.

This was posted in the "Travel" bonus area of the Challenge... now a bit of a word about "Travel"... the section description is "something that impressed you from your own travels." Well, my late wife Pam and I visited Germany on our second Euro-expedition back in 2012 and it was an amazing trip. We visited the Porsche and Mercedes-Benz museums in Stuttgart, drove a rented car on the Nurburgring Nordschleife, and did all kinds of other cool stuff, including visiting the ancient Roman town of Trier. Now that was such a cool visit, if you haven't been, it's awesome. Nestled in the valley of the Mosel river, Trier is reputedly Germany's oldest city, founded by the Romans in 16 BC as "Augusta Treverorum" (the city of Augustus among the Treverii). There are still heaps of Roman ruins and structures to visit in the city and the Porta Negra (Black Gate) dates back to the 4th century. So it was always gonna be some ancient Germans or Early Imperial Romans in this stack, and I've gone with the Germans. Trier is in modern Germany after all. 

Here is the gang of 17 painted for this post. The three command models in the top photo were painted for a previous Challenge entry.

Models are from Wargames Foundry with shields and decals from Warlord Games.

I particularly like the chap on the right end of the line - he reminds me of a young Conan :-)

Anyway there's 17 more done for my WAB army. I think next I might paint some more Romans. Unless 15mm Space Marines sneak into the queue first ;-)

Dallas

More Ancient Germans and... Ancient Citadel Aragorn and Boromir??

                                     

Back again with another post from the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, starting with some command  (C, S, M as we used to say) for my Germanic tribesmen. These are resin models from Warlord Games.

These dudes actually mix quite well with my Foundry models, after I cut off the integral bases. The models' feet are stuck straight down to the bases.

These guys seem to be quite fond of their severed heads, no??

Not to be outdone, the carynx-blower has a head hanging off his belt too. Nice models. 

To complete a mini-project I've also painted a couple of "equally ancient" Citadel models from their 1980s Lord of the Rings range. 

This is Boromir, from the ME21 "Boromir of Gondor" blister. Nice model in the old chunky Citadel style.

The other one is Aragorn, from the BME1 "Fellowship of the Ring" boxed set. Also a nice model but slightly gangly compared to Boromir.

Here's the whole crew from Citadel, with Aragorn and Boromir done that completes my old-school Citadel LotR collection. Good to have 'em done.

Now that the command is done for a German unit I need to get on to painting the unit... that'll come shortly.

Hairy Horsemen

Hi all, back again with some more Germanic tribesmen for my new project. The models are again from Wargames Foundry. (This post originally appeared as part of Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge 14).

There are twelve of these chaps in the unit and they came with command as well! Above we see the leader (in looted Roman kit), standard bearer, and horn blower.

 

The rest of the bunch are in a variety of poses. I hand-painted the shields using ideas found on the Internet. Unfortunately, as far as I'm aware, there's no real primary sources of shield designs as none have survived in a condition that would indicate how they were painted.

Foundry also supplied a bunch of wicker shields, which are a real cheat because you just paint them... like wicker :-)

Germanic tribesmen apparently wore very little armour and almost none wore helmets. However the cavalry were supposed to be upper-class kind of peasants so may have been a bit better equipped. Their horses were slow and awful though, at least according to Tacitus and Caesar.

A shot just to prove I painted the back ends of the models too.

These were actually a real faff to assemble as the riders really didn't want to stick to the horses' backs. A little JB Weld (two-part epoxy) set that right though.

Gotta keep crankin' out these Germans! Watch this space!

Challenge Entry #2 - Ancient Germans

After a slight delay I'm reposting my second AHPC entry to our own blog. It's more from my new Early Imperial Romans/Ancient Germans project. These particular models have been sitting unpainted in a Plano case for longer than I can remember! Maybe 10 years...? They are Wargames Foundry Germans of course... but there's more to the story...  

When I first moved to Winnipeg in 1999 and began tabletop historical wargaming in earnest, I was an avid user of websites like Bartertown and TMP. Eager to get into the Imperial Roman period, I spotted a deal on two painted armies offered by a seller - Early Imperial Romans and Ancient Germans. Of course, being the Internet of the '90s, pictures of stuff for sale were hard to come by, so I asked the seller who had made the figures. "Foundry" was the answer so I pulled the trigger and bought the lot. What arrived, though, was decidedly not made by Foundry... maybe "a" foundry, but definitely not Wargames Foundry. So I tuned up the paint the best I could with washes and highlights, we had a game or two of WAB with them, and I moved them on. But I always wanted to have nice armies of Romans and ancient Germans in 28mm.  

Fast forward 25 years or so and here we are! As I said these Germans were obtained in a trade I think and have been sitting in a box for 10 years or more. So it was time to get them painted and get another new insane project further down the road to completion (!)

Unfortunately my models didn't have shields, but these were purchased from Warlord Games along with decals, which (amazingly) fit the metal shields quite well!

(The two models at right were painted pre-Challenge as a test of my "flesh method" so aren't counted in the total). I think these Germans turned out OK and are certainly a great improvement over the lumpen proles (Minifigs maybe?) that I'd bought back in the day.

Here's the project progress so far! Unfortunately there will be a slight delay in resumption as I've run out of 20mm square bases but more are on the way. Ave Imperator!

(ps - the bases have now arrived and more Germans are in progress :-)

Byzantines vs. Normans WAB Battle Report

Some time ago Conscript Greg told me he was planning a trip back to Winnipeg, and wanted to set up a game. "What would you like to play?" I asked. The answer was Warhammer Ancient Battles with Greg's Byzantines against my Normans. Wow, what a blast from the past! And a couple weeks ago Greg was here with his beautiful Byzantine army and we played a game of WAB - here is the report!

Greg proposed the battle of Montemaggiore, 1041 as the scenario. Basically this was a pitched battle between the Byzantines (led by their Catapan, Michael Dokeianos) and the Norman/Lombard rebels led by William "Iron Arm" d'Hauteville. The place of the battle was near Cannae, itself the site of not only Hannibal's victory over the Romans in antiquity, but also of a Byzantine victory over the Normans some 20 years earlier. The Normans had been mercenaries in the employ of the Byzantines and served their masters well, but the factions had fallen out over (what else) pay, and William et al decided that seeking their own destiny was preferable to serving under the penny-pinching Byzantines. So Dokeianos seeks to put the Normans in their place and re-establish the authority of his own boss, Emperor Michael IV (the Paphlagonian) over southern Italy, once and for all. 

Greg and I each created army lists of 2,350 points (nice round number eh?) - a sizeable battle by WAB standards, but Normans and Byzantine troops (especially Normans) can be crazy expensive - a Norman mounted knight is something like 35 points! Above you see some of the Byzantine host.

More Byzantines.

Some of their Norman opponents, seen from behind the Norman lines.

Very annoying Turkish horse archers in Byzantine employ. Hope they got paid in advance.

Byzantine heavy cavalry.

One of the Norman mounted milites (knights) units, screened by skirmishing archers. 

Opening moves, view from the Norman table edge... the Normans fielded three units of mounted milites center left, center, and in reserve at center), three of dismounted milites (two in the center and one at far right), a unit of skirmishing archers (at left) and one of skirmishing crossbowmen (barely visible at far right). 

A sturdy unit of mounted milites (containing William Iron Arm and his younger brother Drogo, the army standard bearer) stakes out its position, waiting for the other mounted unit in support to arrive. 

It faces off against the Byzantine heavy cav unit. Typical of the Byzantines, it incorporated a rear rank of archers that continually loosed off arrows. Super annoying.

The kataphractoi advance in support. Even scarier than the heavy cav, these guys rocked a 2+ save on their barded mounts, PLUS had archers in the rear rank!

Action shot here from behind the Byzantine line. Byzantine skirmishing javelinmen are about to get swept by the main unit of Norman mounted milites who crash into the heavy cav (center). After a (brief) moment of consideration, the second milites unit (led by Bishop Hugh of Eu) charges the Varangians to the left.

How wouldja like to see this coming at you! Norman milites are super-scary - good saving throw of 3+, lances give +2 S on the charge, and most terrifyingly of all, "Ferocious Charge" ensures that as long as they win the combat in which they charge, the enemy automatically fails their morale check and runs. And this includes counter-charges against enemy cav who charge the milites!

And that's what happened - main milites unit evaporated the Byzantine heavy cav, swept through and reforms to charge to their right. Second milites unit (led by Bishop Hugh) ran over the spearmen facing them, took two turns to blow up the Varangians (they were Stubborn so Ferocious Charge only works half the time) and swept on into the spear block behind.

Meanwhile over on the Norman right flank the axemen get stuck in.

Propaganda shot for "Byzantium Today" - this was about the only part of the battle that went right for Greg. His kataphractoi absolutely levelled a unit of dismounted milites spearmen but in doing so, took themselves out of the main fight... just as well for them, they could legitimately disavow all knowledge of the disaster unfolding behind them. 

And with that, we called the battle as a Norman victory - even though the axemen on the Norman right would likely be overcome by the large Byzantine spear units it faced, the Byzantine centre and right flank had largely evaporated. While the scary kataphractoi still were hanging around, they were only one unit and there were still three Norman knight units milling about in the Byzantine backfield.

This result certainly wasn't inconsistent with the historical one - although outnumbered by the Byzantines, the battle was a Norman win, attributed largely to the fighting prowess of their heavy cavalry. In WAB, these mounted milites are indeed game-breakers - 3+ save, +2S on the charge with their lances, and most importantly, Ferocious Charge. They are a point-and-shoot weapon though - while they're likely to take out whatever they hit, it'll take them awhile to get themselves oriented for another assault. Of course it's best if you can wipe out the first target and sweep forward into their supporting unit, as happened both at the real Montemaggiore battle, and on our tabletop.

I'm thankful to Greg both for proposing the WAB game and for bringing his beautiful Byzantine army all the way to Winnipeg. The game looked fantastic and was super-fun to play; WAB (and its inspiration, Warhammer Fantasy Battle) were long-time favourites of our group and it was great to get back to some square-based wargaming. Hope we can do it again soon!