The Praetorian Guard

Seems like it's taking me longer and longer to paint things...

The Praetorians. I've gone for a purple/black/brass colour scheme which seems to work. The figure itself, if painted as mail rather than segmented armour, should work as Late Republic Legionaries - so I'll try that later.

Seleucid/Roman HC update

I've now painted and based the second unit of shielded javelin cavalry. Because I want to be able to use them for both Seleucid and Roman armies I've just given them plain shields - red shields can act as Roman cavalry, green shields as an Allied Italian contingent. Only reason for green shields is that I painted these at the same time as the Indian chariots - no sense in changing paints all the time. Although these two units are enough for my needs there is still my 'original' unit waiting in the wings of course.

I've added standard bearers to both units. Difficult conversion - crossbar cut from a spear and paper flag. Again, I've left them in plain colours. If I did do a third unit I would probably give them blue shields.

Both units consist of a command element and four three figure bases - the command element being present to act as general or subordinate general, the other four elements make up my 'standard' 12 figure unit (standard non-Garrison I should add - most of my Garrison cavalry units are 24 figures.)

Seleucid/Republican Roman Heavy Cavalry

As I think I've mentioned a few times before my various Macedonian armies were (still are) a mess. This is really, really true of the cavalry... Started with shieldless javelin cavalry, added drawing pin shields, then replaced unit with actual shielded, then went to kontos armed... and that's just my Companion cavalry.

So now I'm doing a resort.

The last version of my Successor cavalry have already made an appearance on this blog. However, the heavies are kontos armed, usually Successor heavies are javelin/shield. They can be seen next to a unit of Lamming cataphracts.

So, time to rebuild the javelin/shield force. The first picture shows the 'original' unit - should be 15 strong, some AWOL - followed by a unit I've just painted. I've enough figures to do another unit but still scraping together the 'right' horses.

The 'new' unit have been given red uniforms and plain red shields so they can double as Romans.

 

These are early PB figures - shorter, thicker spear/javelin, cast on horse furniture (means I should have used 'S' Range horses instead of PB).

The longer, thinner spears on my earlier unit shows that they were a slightly later production figure. Not sure what to do with these - try and find the rest I suppose!

 

So at least one other unit still to come, plus some light cavalry - again, the light cavalry are in a bit of a mess. I'm painting some up now so they should be ready in a few days.

Republican Romans

Although I have armies covering most of the Classical world there has always been one serious omission - the Roman Republic.

So when I saw a mixed Minifigs/Garrison army on Ebay I put in an offer and got it.

The army itself has a few spears and pila missing but will give a useable force once rebased. 

It arrived well packed in thousands of small polystyrene balls. These things were electrostatically charged and were quite a pain to get rid of.  As can be seen, they got everywhere.

 One major fault of this army - it was a reasonable paint job spoilt by the dip. Quite simply, they had been dipped then put aside to dry. Trouble is, being liquid it tended to pool on the lower parts of the figures. The dark brown on these shields is quite mild compared to some figures.

 

So, a useful and useable addition to my armies, though certainly not the best.