Legions Assemble

The motivation to get my Punic Wars Romans up to strength has been given a big boost (more like a jolt from a defibrillator I have to admit) by the announcement of the SOA Battle Day next year being Telamon. I have now finished the second Roman Legion in my army (Legion III) and I will be able to move on to the Allied "wings" forthwith.

Here are the two legions deployed for combat in their distinctive Triplex Acies formation. Light infantry Velites are at the front and then in order: Hastati, Principes and Triari at the back.  The Piquet version of this formation is made up of 7 units of foot and one of cavalry (not shown.) The right hand side of the formation above is the newly completed Legion III.

The bulk of these figures are the excellent Wargame Foundry range. Still some of the nicest figures for this army available and in a huge number of poses and variants. If any faults could be picked upon some of the poses cause the pila and shield to clash when you are trying to glue them in place. These figures are at the small to medium end of the range of Republican Romans now available (see my comparison pictures here) but they are still one of the most accurate, nicely proportioned and have lots of subtle variants in armour and helmets without feeling the need to show every quirky variant from 200 years span and 1000 miles radius of Rome!

I have mixed in command figures from just about every range there is: Newline, Magister Militum, Gripping Beast and Crusader. The Velites are even more of a mixed bag with additional volunteers from Essex Miniatures, Irregular and Victrix. I am trying to strike the balance between a regular citizen army and one where much of the equipment was provided by the individual or arranged on a local basis. Thus the different shades of a basic shield colour within each legion.

With the Allies I will take a more varied approach. Each contingent (Piquet unit) will have their own shield colours and some of them blazons as well (I am going to try out some Greekish transfers for those with a Hellenistic heritage.) Hopefully they will be distinct from the Romans but still clearly belonging to the same army. The figures will be a mix of more Foundry (for the long term Romanised Allies such as the Latins) and Oscan and Samnite figures for some of the more recent Allies. A fair few of these to do for Telamon including a big cavalry contingent. Even scaling the battle so that our usual legion represents 2 in the game, we are looking at over 1000 figures just for the Roman side!