Roman Civil War armies review

I decided tonight for kicks to set up my Roman Civil War armies and see how they look on the new(ish) terrain tiles I've been working on now and again.

Worth a game, I reckon!

Pharsalus

Now that my second Late Republican era Roman army is painted up thoughts have naturally turned to getting them to table, so last night I set up Pharsalus, using the Strategos II scenario for Lost Battles.

Caesarians in foreground. Pompeians have the red shields.

The battle started dramatically as the Pompeian cavalry charged their Caesarian opponents and immediately crushed them. The attack was so swift Caesar's carefully selected 'fourth line' of legionaries could not come to the support of the cavalry in time.

(Pompey took a risk in charging from distance and using almost all the army commands in paying for three combat bonuses. On this occasion it came off splendidly).

Pompey advanced his left centre and centre off the hill to link up with the victorious cavalry while keeping his right in place to see if he could tempt Mark Antony to advance and so break up the solidity of the Caesarian line.

(If Antony advances out of the line Pompey will gain two significant advantages: a) Caesar's veteran legions will not be able to use their ability to slide across the field to relieve one another, and b) Antony will be attacking uphill.)

Situation after Pompey's left sweeps all before it.

Caesar's men were left with no choice but to make the best of the situation. The Caesarian 'fourth line' swung into action and began to drive into the victorious (but now disorganised) cavalry. Who could blame the horsemen for feeling that they had done enough fighting already?

(By using commands judiciously and giving combat bonuses to the key attackers wherever possible, Caesar was able to begin wearing down the Pompeian forces).

The battle of attrition commences.

For the next while the infantry lines engaged each other while Caesar's fourth line veterans slowly forced back the Pompeian cavalry.

The fighting was attritional, with both sides taking casualties and exhaustion beginning to take its toll.

The Pompeian cavalry eventually broke, and with his own position becoming increasingly precarious, Caesar ordered the victorious troops forward at the double to relieve pressure on the main infantry line.

(Caesar used the once-per-game perk of a brilliant general to reverse the turn order and get his fourth line into action again immediately, this time against the light troops harassing Caesar's exposed flank).

Caesar's fourth line breaks the Pompeian cavalry and advances to attack the light infantry.

Gaius Julius has plenty to ponder.

As the infantry units began to break, Pompey's position on the left became increasingly exposed. But with Mark Antony shuffling troops away from his own section of the line to reinforce the centre, the great man sees an opportunity to move to the right and advance his fresh troops down off the hill.

As if the gods approved this move, Caesar was wounded trying to steady the line just after Pompey's departure.

(As a result of this wound Caesar will not able to contribute any further command resources to the battle - note that the way I have done this is not strictly as written in the rules!).

Pompey moves to the right, hoping to destroy a weakened Antony. Shortly afterwards, Caesar is wounded.

Caesar's centre and right wing. Ascendant, just.

Pompey is now outflanked and his left is soon in full retreat. His legionaries in the centre and right have not yet given up, however. The Caesarians in front of them are wavering: Antony desperately tries to muster his strength, but the reinforcements he sent right earlier are nowhere to be seen.

Pompey's left is gone, but the Caesarian left is under severe pressure.

Antony in strife as fresh legionaries pour down off the hill.

The Pompeian centre crumbles under pressure from three sides, but in the time this takes Pompey destroys Antony's command. There is no one left to oppose him, and with a third of his force still intact Pompey marches towards Caesar's camp.

The Caesarians are in disarray; Pompey marches from the field unmolested.

The battle is inconclusive. As for whose cause is most damaged, much will depend on the severity of Caesar's wound...

Pompey catching 40 winks.

Results.

Pompey:

lost shattered, 7 x average legionaries, 1 x average heavy cavalry, 2 x levy heavy cavalry.
lost routed, 4 x average legionaries, 1 x average light infantry.
spent, 3 x average legionaries.

Total: 56 + 22.5 + 9 = 87.5 points for Caesar

Caesar:

lost shattered, 5 x veteran legionaries, 2 x veteran heavy cavalry,
lost withdrawn, 1 x average commander.
spent, 9 x veteran legionaries.

Total: 56 + 6 + 36 + handicap (24) 122 points for Pompey

It is a clear victory (in game terms) for Pompey.

A host of Romans

...and the painting is finally done. 16 units of 18 - with a few other bits and pieces as well - just waiting to have bases flocked. There aren't many better feelings in wargaming then getting an army off the painting trays!

Right, time to sit down with a beer and listen to a spot of cricket...

Roman progress

Well, it's been more than the week originally envisaged, but we're starting to see a bit of progress on the Roman Civil War figures.

It's a bit of a tricky project, because most of the figures were purchased off ebay some time ago, but the paint jobs are of quite wildly varying colours and quality, which means that to standardize the look I'm having to repaint everything on those figures except for flesh and armour. I've also expanded the project by around 200 figures, so these have had to be painted and integrated into the units as well.

On top of this, I settled on a basing scheme which sees each unit comprised of 18 figures (2 or 3 of these being command) arranged in two 40x30 bases (6 figures each) and 2 40x15 bases (3 figures each). This may seem like a pointless exercise, but there is reason behind it: I like my Romans to be in at least two ranks, and this way I can play Lost Battles scenarios with veteran units of 12 figures and non-veterans of 18. Thus it will be easy to see at a glance which units are which, while still having the smaller units look decent. One thing I don't like about the look of Lost Battles when played with my DBx basing is that the 8 man veteran units just don't look like they could stand up against Geoffrey Boycott's old mum, much less a 32 figure block of levy phalangites!

The basing shouldn't be a problem in a larger sense either: these armies will be fairly self-contained, only really fighting each other, or my Gauls, who are based quite similarly.

And what's left to do?  I still need to finish off painting the command figures, and then bring the remained 80 or so painted types into line with my own standards and style. Then it will be get all the shields looking more or less compatible, do some unifying highlights, dip where necessary, give a couple of coats of Klear, spray varnish, and then flock.

There's still a bit to do, but we're getting there - and it's feeling good to see progress.

We're trying to go to this:

From this:

There were some figures that were rather easier to get sorted. These ones were sent over by Simon "To the Strongest!" Miller, and are 'Roman Argyraspides' from the Isaurus line, I believe, with command figures and artillery from Donnington. All I've had to do to these is green their stands.

These likely lads will come into play as eastern recruits.

Getting back on the painting horse

Well, it's that time again. With the amount of painting I need to do matched only by an increasingly epic capacity to procrastinate, I need to pull finger and get started.

First thing to do is finish my Roman Civil War project. The cavalry and the blue army are done, so we're over half way there. All I need to do is paint up about 70 figures and touch up another 170 odd and all will be completed.

There's really no excuse not to do it!

But still, to concentrate on the trees rather than the wood, for the ordinary legionaries we should go something like this:

1) base coat the flesh areas
2) block paint shield backs, pila hafts and footwear brown.
3) give the armour, shield bosses, helmets and pila heads a black wash
4) do belts in a lighter brown and use this shade to also highlight other browns
5) base coat tunics, helmet crests and shields red
6) wash the armour again, this time in a mixture of black and Tamiya smoke
7) drybrush armour with silver
8) touch up and highlight belts
9) paint scabbards red-brown
10) paint sword hilts and shield bosses bronze
11) paint helmets - some bronze, some silver
12) highlight tunics and helmet crests
13) highlight shields
14) highlight flesh
15) paint pila heads silver
16) paint stands green

Then it will be two coats of Future/Klear followed by a matt varnish.

So, 19 steps to glory and a triumphal parade!

I hope to be able to report back with some progress in a week or so...

Prufrock's painting guides: 15mm Republican Romans.

Republican Romans.

Step one - prep figures.  Remove flash using a hobby knife and / or a small round file.  If the figure cannot stand properly, file the bottom of the base flat using a flat file.  If the figures need spears, javelins or pila added, now is the time to drill out the hand using a dremel tool or pin vise.

Step two - wash figures in warm soapy water.  Rinse well and leave to dry.

Step three - now is a good time to attach any shields, javelins, spears or pila to the figures as metal-to-metal bonds are stronger.  If you are painting cavalry, you must decide whether to attach man to horse now or  after the painting is done.  Don't get stressed about this though; both ways work fine.

Step four - affix figures to a temporary painting stand.  I use strips of cardboard and stick them on with double-sided tape.  Make sure that the figures will not come off in normal handling, but don't put them on so well that you can't easily remove them later.  The key word here is temporary!

Step five - spray prime the figures.  I use a light primer, either white or light grey.  Make sure you get decent coverage but there's no need to spray it on too thick.  Be sure to cover your nose and mouth while spraying, as too much in the lungs is not a good thing.  Leave to cure, preferably outside for the first couple of hours.  As a rule of thumb, once the paint has cured, it will be odourless.  If you can still smell the paint, wait another day before beginning to paint.  If priming horses separate from their riders, a good time-saving trick is to prime the horses in their base colours, which will save you a painting step.

Step six - give the figures a brown wash all over.  Use whichever wash you prefer.  I like to go with a paint, water, Future / Klear mix.  This is to cover up the white patches and to provide shadow for flesh areas and tunics.  It is also a good colour from which to build up mail armour.

Step seven - if you think they might be tricky to get to later, it can be a good idea to do the backs of the shields now.  You may have to touch them up later on to get rid of splashes, but it's better than having your splashes come the other way around.

Step eight - block in the flesh areas using a darker shade of the final flesh colour you want.  Don't paint into the shaded areas; you want the earlier brown wash to show through here and give depth to eyes, mouth and sundry other bodily creases.  As an aside, it's a good idea to decide before you begin how many flesh coats you want to give the figures.  Two is probably enough, but I like to give three.  Whatever you decide, you need to factor this in when selecting how dark to have the colour at each stage.  Obviously, if you are only having two coats, you will probably have a slightly lighter first coat.  If you are having three, you will have a darker first coat, a good middle coat, and a light final coat.  There are also flesh washes you can use, so your technique for doing flesh will probably change as you get a better idea of what products are around, what suits your style, and how you can save on time.

Step nine - give metal areas a dark wash.  I use Tamiya Smoke mixed with a little black and watered down with thinner.  Experiment to get the colour and flow you like, because this will make or break the mail on your triarii and principes.  Cover swords, spear / pila tips, helmets (and I do helmet crests, too), greaves and shield bosses as well as the armour.  You will probably want to give another coat to the mail at some stage, but you can wait till later so that you can disguise any paint slips from later steps.  The smoke dries quickly, so you might prefer to break this into two batches - weapons and helmets in batch one, armour and shield bosses in batch two.

Step ten - block in the tunics.  I use two colours: red for Romans and white for allies.  I will also add in the occasional buff or sand tunic for a little variety amongst the whites.  You can use pretty much any colour you like for the things, but do some research beforehand just to be sure some new evidence hasn't come to light.  Again, you can leave deep creases alone if the brown wash is strong, and I find you can sometimes almost drybrush the white on if your original wash was an especially good one.  As with the flesh, you want to keep a lighter colour in reserve for your highlight, so my "white" here is more likely to actually be a buff, a light gray, or an off-white.  Do be careful not to get excess paint on the mail areas.  You can cover spills with another smoke wash, but it's much better to avoid having to do so if you can.  

Step eleven - block in the shield fronts.  Try not to paint over the shield bosses otherwise you'll lose that nice smoke colour.

Step twelve - do your browns.  Block in the shield backs (if you didn't do them before), the spear shafts, the sandals, hair and any belts on the figure.  You can also do the scabbards now, for which I usually employ a slightly different colour, reddish brown.  For things which have a lot of sculpted detail such as sandals or hair, I will sometimes use a very thin coat, even a wash, to bring out the details.

Step thirteen - do your first flesh highlight.  How much you cover will depend on whether you're planning on doing a second highlight or not.  Try to suggest some muscle definition by putting blobs on bicep and tricep, one on elbow and hand, a line on the thumb if you can, two lines on forearm, blob on knee, two on upper leg, one on shin, two on calf, etc.  Faces require a skill of their own, but I tend to hit and hope - sweep across the forehead, dab nose, dab each cheek, slash across the back of the neck; perhaps adding a touch to the ears if they are visible.  I'm not a great painter of faces, so don't take my method as gospel here - check the work of others to see what works for you.

Step fourteen - do the helmet crests.  I usually go for red, blue, white or black and use a base and a highlight (though I don't highlight black).  Helmet crests done well are an easy way to really lend some pop to a figure, so it can be worth going for the highlight, even if you are getting a bit sick of painting by this stage.

Step fifteen - do your metallics.  Slap some bronze on the helmets, the shield bosses, the greaves and the sword hilts.  Leave a little bit of the smoke wash to show through at edges and joins.  Some people like to further highlight their bronze but I prefer to use the smoke wash as a shade and the bronze coat as its own highlight.  Use a silver for sword edges, spear tips and, if you want variety, for the odd helmet or shield boss here and there.

Step sixteen - highlight your tunics.  Hit the high points, suggest folds and try to make the figure pop.  A dry brush can be useful here, depending on you much sculpting detail there is on the figure.

Step seventeen - do your final flesh highlight (if there is one) and do any other highlighting that takes your fancy.  You can add a touch to belts, scabbards, shields or anything, really.  Highlighting really does make a difference if you have good colour matches and some patience.

Step eighteen - do a protective wash.  I like to give my figures two coats of Future / Klear to protect the figure from handling damage.  I don't know if it makes much difference, but I feel better for trying.  The gloss coat also unites the colours and sets things up well for the final step.   The Klear coat here can also have a little black or brown added to it to bring out some extra definition in the figures if you think they could use it.

Step nineteen - give everything a matt spray.  The matt will bring all the colours into line, and while it may dull things down a little, overall I like the effect.  If you don't like the colours to be all flat, you can do a quick highlight of the metallics to get a little shine.

Note that you can swap the order of these steps around and even skip some steps altogether, but this is my standard method of painting Romans.  Note also that my results are not top notch, mainly because I paint in bulk, don't have a good method of highlighting black and can't be bothered highlighting shields or adding transfers.  If you are prepared to take more care and go the extra mile with highlighting you'd be able to use this method to get better results than I got.