I can't stop thinking about ancient Rome - De Bellis Antiquitatis edition

I started hobby work on the Romans tonight. I started with getting supplies ready and picking out the paints I’m going to use. I decided I wasn’t going to strip the old paint since it was just some flesh color put down. I don’t have any speed paints so working with what I have. I did pick up some new tools in anticipation for this. I got a mini vortex mixer for about $30 and it was money well spent getting my old paints remixed!

I mixed up all of the bottles I was using and a few others that had separated badly and they looked like new. Highly recommend. The paints I use are from Army Painter and Vallejo. Since I’m painting Romans the colors are pretty basic so Dragon Red for tunics, Plate Mail Metal for chainmail, Flat Flesh for the skin, Leather Brown for the leathers and maybe the wood on the pilums, and Fur Brown for the horses. I have some Weapon Bronze for the gold areas but I might go up lighter if I don’t like the shade. Lastly going to use some Strong Tone for shading. I’m painting from inside out so that is why the skin is sloppy at the moment those areas will get painted over with the other colors.

The archers and the auxilary didn’t have the flesh painted so I started there and realize quickly that past me made a mistake putting the shields on first. I was used to Flames of War at that point so everything was put together back then. Since they were getting in the way I ripped them off. Didn’t need much help as the old super glue was really brittle. Everyone then had to shed their shields. I will touch up the skin on the rest tomorrow as it is getting late tonight. Lastly I was looking at some models for a camp and found Baueda Wargames and they had a Roman marching camp that is perfectly scaled for the base size you need for a camp in DBA.

For DBA if you aren’t defending a city or other structure you are required to have a camp that is four base widths total so in this case 3 base widths on the front for 120mm and 40mm on the side. Their models are modular so you can make a bigger fort or camp to defend. I put in an order for the Roman camp and their Hellenistic one for the Gauls as that seemed like the best look. I was looking for plain palisades but nothing was in stock for what I needed and the Hellenistic is close enough. Next payday the order for the Gauls and some more Litko bases are going to be placed.

I was nervous diving back into painting but I told myself along the way that it doesn’t have to be perfect it just has to look good on the table. Practice made the shaky hands less and layers made blotchy paint look better. If you are on the fence about your painting just start you will get better and you can always repaint or touch it up later when you get more comfortable. Yes you can paint too. Until next post everyone!