With all the 6mm Moderns going on lately, I hadn't gamed with with many people other than the few of us playing Moderns lately. So, to remedy that, I emailed Jamie and asked for a game. After a bit of fussing about what to play, it occurred to me that I had an Impetvs Roman army that I had never used, and was mostly finished! So with that, we decided, 400 points of Impetvs was the go. Naturally, I had to rush paint a few more things, 2 more bases of Auxiliaries and 1 base of Praetorian Cavalry.

My Roman force was two commands,

Veteran Legion with General Martellus
2 Legion
2 Auxiliary
1 Scorpion
1 Praetorian Cavalry
1 Skirmishing Saggitarii

and

Veteran Legion with General Tercino
2 Legion
2 Auxiliary
1 Saggitarii
1 Skirmishing Saggitarii
1 Gladiator

Jamie's force was split into three Commands

2 Elite Legion, one with General Traitor
1 Auxiliary

2 Equites, one with General Scumy-Traitor
1 Praetorian Cav
2 Slingers

3 Legion, one with General Smelly-Traitor
3 Raw Legion
1 Skirmishing Saggitarii
1 Saggitarii


General Traitor with his Traitors

My plan was simple, one command on the left, one on the right. I planned to advance with a big block of Legions, flanks covered by Auxiliaries, and win the shoving match in the middle. Jamie placed his Cavalry on his right flank, legions in the centre, with his Praetorians flanking to the left. The plan was to hold in the middle, and crush me from the side (or so it seemed).


Look at all those brave Roman boys!

Through some good rolling, I activated my commands first. Both double moved, advancing as a block in an attempt to really get to grips with the enemy fast (is there any other way?)


Here we see the Roman Auxiliary in it's natural habitat...

Jamie moved forward, pushing his Cavalry out wide to avoid a patch of rough ground.


Equites rearing to go!

After another turn of maneuver, both forces were ready to engage. The only highlight of the next turn was me rolling a 6 for my General's unit for cohesion, and losing a wound...

But it was not long before the brave (loyal) Legionaries hit the brave (disloyal) Legionaries.


Veteran Legion vs Raw Legion? Should be easy right? This combat lasted the whole game....

Legion crashed into legion. Usually one, if not both units were disordered to begin with, so no Pilum or any such useful rules were had. Casualties were immense as the shoving match in the centre began.

On the loyalists left flank, the two units of Auxiliaries were tasked with stopping a Cavalry flanking attack. The first unit charged one base of Equites which had some skirmisher support...


This combat lasted a long time too....

While the other, through some clever doubling through difficult terrain was able to catch the Cavalry general in the flank!


Which destroyed him!

On the right flank, the Auxiliaries and Equites worked in combination over a couple of turns to destroy the enemy Praetorian command.

The shoving match in the centre was starting to turn towards the Loyalists. Jamie was down to the point where he needed to lose ANY one unit, and he would lose the game. However, my left flank was in the same predicament, and if that was to fall, so would the game!

It was only when the Auxiliaries which were holding up one unit of Equites and two units of slingers finally succumbed (after about 4 turns of rolling a 1 for cohesion- auto success!) did my left flank fall.

Which tragically lost me the game!

And it prevented my Cavalry killing Auxiliaries from claiming the scalp of the Equites Contariorum!


It's not fair, you have more legs than us!

So, an honourable defeat. But, a very fun game of Impetvs. I have a few more Romans left to paint, which I should really do at some point. Although my painting table is a total mess at the moment, so I will need to get that into some semblance of order before I try to mass anything more on it!

Next up? Not sure. Wait and see!

CP

So, we return back to our scheduled programming with another collection of Imperial Romans!



Three more bases of Legionaries done, again all miniatures from Warlord Games.



Here is another command base, the Primus Pilus (First Centurion) is at the front, a metal miniature, the Vexillarius (banner bearer) is another metal figure. These legionaries all have the plastic Veteran arms (armoured right arms), just to make them look a bit cooler! Game wise, these will probably in all likelyhood be just another normal base of Legionary.





Two more bases of stock standard Legionaries.

Apologies for the super grainy pictures, I took them before the sun came up and had to be done before I went to work this morning. So, sorry about that! Once I have done the whole lot, I will endeavor to do some better pictures of the whole army.

Well, the next lot of Romans are on the painting table, the main issue is that my army is not legal yet! So more painting for me...

Number of Figures: 74 Infantry, 1 Artillery
Points Total: 291 Points
Maximus Level: 1 Maximus

The problem of having no bases will rear it's ugly head when I finish Part Four, hopefully I will have sorted that before then!

More Romans to paint, so back to it!

CP

In addition to playing big games of SAGA, I have been busy beavering away at painting more Romans.

Finished now are two bases of Auxiliary Infantry





These bases will represent my FL Auxiliary units in Impetvs, and are looking pretty nice I think! Miniatures are Warlord Games plastics, with the shield decals from the same kit. The shield decals are... fiddly to say the least. I am happy with how they turned out, but they do seem excessively fiddly for a pretty alright result.

Next up, we have a unit of FP Gladiators!





The miniatures come from Crusader, and represent some of the heavily equipped Gladiators, the Murmillo. Known for their massive helmets, these guys were a sort of gladiatorial representation of Legionaries. Armed with a gladius and shield, they would often be pitted against lightly equipped gladiators such as the Retiarius, to provide the greatest sport.

And of course, what unit of Gladiators is complete without this guy?



When I saw that Crusader had a miniature of him, I just had to get him, too cool not to! So my army now has 1 Maximus!

Another 66 points painted for Impetvs.

Number of Figures: 51 Infantry, 1 Artillery
Points Total: 207 Points
Maximus Level: 1 Maximus!

Next up, talk of Southcon and more Romans.

CP

Well, over the weekend I managed to finish off my first few stands of my forthcoming Imperial Roman Army for Impetvs. All miniatures at this stage are from Warlord Games, from their range of plastics. I accept that I could find prettier Romans in metals no doubt, but I actually don't mind the Warlord Games ones. I have been very vocal about their WW2 Germans, but I am quite happy with their Romans! Which is good, because I have a lot of them....

For starters, here are 3 bases of Legion, all Warlord Games plastics.





All pretty stock standard paintjobs, these are more or less my benchmark now for how my Romans will look. I decided that I wanted to have a different colour of grass for a change, the last few armies have all been green! So, out came the basing I used for my Flames of War Germans, with some Army Painter grassy tufts. The shields are the decals from the Warlord Games pack and are... fiddly. They have a nasty wee habit of curling away from the shield, which means much to my suprise some of them had lifted half off! But, after some decal softener, a matt varnish, brown ink and another matt varnish, they are there to stay, and I am happy with the effect.

Next up, 8 Warlord Games Western Archers, split into bases for Impetvs.





Nice, simple paint jobs, nothing too extraordinary there.

Last up, a Scorpion artillery piece.



And that is all I have painted as yet for my Roman Army.

Number of Figures: 34 Infantry, 1 Artillery
Points Total: 141 Points
Maximus Level: 0 Maximus

Like I seem to usually do, I have bought lots and lots of stuff, which really means I need to get myself into gear with my painting. So, my plan then is to BUY NO MORE MINIATURES UNTIL I PAINT OTHER ONES! So, that means that I have to finish an army, before I can start something else. Which I hope will make me actually finish some projects which I am half way through working on. And I expect this plan to fall apart shortly when I see something bright and shiny. Shiiiiney......

Back to painting, these Romans don't paint themselves (sadly)

CP

So, with almost all of my Hoplites painted, it became time to get them based from SAGA to Impetvs. Here in the South, we use 8cm frontages with varying depths for our armies (head here for a breakdown for units).

So for my Hoplites, this meant that they needed to be on 8x5 bases, but for SAGA, they needed to be on 25mm rounds... which is a problem.

The solution? Well, it was very simple in fact, using a Sabot base. Those of you with military minds (which is probably all of my readers, lets be fair) will know of the term Sabot, which is a casing used to allow a smaller projectile to be fired from a larger calibre. In short, more bang for your buck!



An Armour Piercing Fin Stabilised Discarding Sabot round (APFSDS) on it's way to the target

Obviously, the solution was not a cannon, but rather a base that could accommodate the 25mm round bases, to make them into an 8cm frontage. The simplest solution is always throwing money at things, so I went to a top quality laser cutter up in Auckland called Dopey Dog, to get him to whip me up some bases.

And they arrived yesterday, and look phenomenal.



A base all ready for some FL Peltsats to use!

I mocked up my bases on the computer, and sent through the designs with measurements. Because I needed units for various purposes, there are different ones for different units. There are some like the FL base above...



Or a base for 6 FP Hoplites....



Or even one which is specially prepared to be my General's base, so my armies can be led by any of my Greek Heroes!

If getting some wargames bases done interests you, I highly recommend Dopey Dog. The quality is superb, all of the bases are exactly what I asked for- right down to the last millimeter! Plus, costs were reasonable, which is great when quality is so high. His website is here Dopey Dog, I will be sure to use his services again!

In case you were wondering how it all looks ranked up, here is my whole haul of Hoplites to date...



Now one of the locals recently returned from a trip to the Crimea, bringing home many stories and wargaming dreams, but also brought home what will now be known as the "SAGA Amphora" to be claimed as a right for winners of SAGA Trojan War games!



Glorious!

More painting on the block at the moment, more historical stuff for Impetvs!

CP

Over the past week or so, I have been chipping away at getting some more Immortal Games Greek Hoplites painted up. The reason? Well, I have previously mentioned that I like SAGA, so having more warriors for that is all good, but the real reason is to use them in Impetvs. And the first step for that is that I needed more hoplites!


This is another unit of 12 Hoplites. They are the "blue" unit (contrasting to the previous red and green units). They are painted the same as the other hoplites that I have already done, they are only missing the Army Painter tufts of grass, which I ran out of! More are on the way shortly, which will solve that problem. For SAGA, this unit represents another 1.5 points of Warriors, and for Impetvs it will break into two bases of FP Hoplites.


This is another 6 hoplites, or one base of FP in Impetvs. I actually have run out of Hoplites again, I would like another 6 for this unit, so that I can run a full 48 Warriors in SAGA! At any rate, this is the "yellow" unit. The plan is with the 5 different colours (yellow, red, blue, green, black) is to mix them all together for Impetvs so that the Hoplites look nice and colourful, which is what they would have historically been. I quite like the Yellow unit, the mustard-ish yellow makes for a nice subtle contrast with the off-white armour.

Just a quick little update today, come back tomorrow for another "On Heroic Greek Characters"!

CP