Romano-British for Dux Britanniarum

This is the first of my two Nobles, who are the subsidiary leaders of my Warband.  In Dux Britanniarum you have to roll for various background characteristics for you Warlord and Nobles, most of which make little difference on the tabletop, but which can influence the course of the campaign.

So, after rolling on the tables in the rule book and the Romano-British name generator on the Too Fat Lardies blog, we can meet Urien Cadwalladr, who is 24 years of age, with a tall and strong physique. He has the Thrifty characteristic, which means that were he to be the leader of my Warband, he would always have to keep a certain amount of cash in hand and not go splashing it about.  This doesn’t seem to be the best recipe for success in the gift-giving warrior culture of late antiquity, so perhaps it’s fortunate that he isn’t my Warlord. However, that could change if my Warlord were to meet an untimely end on the battlefield and Urien were to rise to take his place…

Urien is also the son of an Honestiore, a local leader of some influence, which might have been more useful had he been the Warlord, as he would have brought some extra cash to the party!

The miniature is the Lancelot figure from Footsore, which comes in a pack with Merlin.  One point to be aware of is that the right hand and sword are cast on a separate piece of metal protruding from the edge of the base near the right foot.  This needs to be carefully removed and cleaned up before being attached to the socket in the right wrist.

I also found that the join between the hilt of the sword and the hand was very weak and it seemed inevitable that it would snap off at some point.  This was addressed by inserting a small piece of green stuff around the join as shown in the picture below.

In terms of painting, I wanted to tie all my characters into the general scheme of my Milites and Comanipulares, but allow them some individuality as well.

This meant that Urien received a white tunic and mail painted in exactly the same way as I described for the Milites in the earlier posts on this Project.  The same applies for the Goldwork, Leather and scabbard.  However, I gave him slightly fancier trousers, which seem to make quite a difference. These are a base coat of 80% Prussian Blue (VMC 90.965) and 20% Black (VMC 90.950), which was then highlighted with pure Prussian Blue, followed by a second highlight of 80% Prussian Blue and 20% White (VMC 70.951). Although the trousers are a very small part of the model, it seems this splash of colour is enough to provide interest to a model that would otherwise be a potentially rather boring mix of metal and brown, so much so, that a friend of mine viewing him over Zoom automatically referred to him as “the blue one”.

I selected another shield transfer from Little Big Man Studios, going for a design that was distinctive, but still in keeping with the Chi-Rho theme that appears on the shields of the Numeri and Comanipulares. Flowers on the base are from MiniNatur.