2mm Strength and Honour: Romans !

 

I’ve made good progress with the 2mm Strength and Honour project, having more or less completed the opposing forces with eight Roman Legionary bases and supports, mostly using 2mm Irregular Miniatures.

I decided to use these rather than Antonine’s as I preferred the flexibility in depicting the deployed formations in three distinct ranks with Velites out front, although I fell in to having marching Maniples on the majority of bases - they just seem right when creating the Roman military ‘machine’. !

Handling the individual strips/blocks (made up of twenty distinct figures from their ABG1) was a bit fiddly, particularly as it dawned on me that I hadn’t got the surface of the basing sand perfectly flat - so a few wayward ranks (cue much bellowing from the Centurions….), but not looking too bad given they’re supposed to be marching over the terrain anyway….

For the Velites, I used Irregular’s ABG24 Bowmen with regular spacing - the weapons themselves are all but invisible at this size, and I liked the look of them - I think even Rome’s irregular troops are best when shown in good order !

Next came a line of Hastati with white shields that had a blob of colour added, then Principes with scarlet shields, and finally a huddle of Triarii with darker red shields denoting their veteran status. I followed the more simplistic style of painting throughout, with a dab of white at the rear of each strip for the tunic, and the helmet with a blob of copper.

For the marching Maniples, I made things simpler still by sticking with just one shield colour throughout - a compromise, but there were a lot of strips to get through - there is some variation in the bases, with all yellow, all blue, all scarlet, all red, etc - not sure how historical this might be, but it works for me ! :-)

I had originally intended to use Irregular’s Ancient cavalry to do the Romans, but having seen the disparity in heft with the Carthaginian bases, I went with those of Antonine - using the three rank blocks for the Equites, and the two rankers for Allies, with some skirmishing Numidians thrown in - these were backed by a single base of allied skirmishers/light infantry.

Having put off working on magnetic labelling strips for the rear of each base for another day (too keen to get these ready to fight) I again went for some easy print ones, this time in a lurid red ! - the surface is ultra shiny and therefore hard to photograph, but they will do the job for now - certainly easy to see, anyway….

Finally, I had a bash at adding in some trees/bushes - at this scale, quite tricky to get right, as they can easily dwarf the miniatures - I know, I know, trees in real life are huge - but they tend to look weird when ‘life’ sized - so made use here of the excellent ready-made tufts available from Serious Play in the UK - they do a massive range of colours and types, with selection packs that give you a range of sizes - a quick pluck of the tweezers, plop onto the base, and they stick straight away - an excellent product, can’t recommend highly enough:

https://www.serious-play.co.uk/

The Legionary bases had to stay tree-less, with not much space to add in any greenery, but of course I am working with my choice of smaller 90x60mm bases for infantry….. I figure all those marching sandals would have trodden everything flat anyway !

Strength and Honour uses a separate command base for the general of your army, as they can be attached to an appropriate unit, so again, in line with the quick and easy theme of this project, I put a couple of Irregular’s blocks on a UK tuppence - definitely need to do something more visually pleasing eventually - maybe even using larger scale figures for more impact, but they will do for now.

I’ve had a blast so far with this whole project, working though it much quicker than I used to back in the day, and not worrying too much about creating mini-masterpieces, rather getting those troops to table with the minimum of fuss. It’s been a nice way to re-introduce myself to the Hobby, after quite the sabbatical….

Spread out together, they don’t look half bad - I’m hoping that Antonine will bring out some Greek-style Sarissas ago-go Phalanx blocks soon, so I can have a bash at yet another ancient era…..