Ancients - A place for my pre-gunpowder historical games.

It’s a start, my basic Celtic war band, in various stages of painting, I have put some basic texturing on the base with ready mix filler, mixed with PVA glue to stop it cracking when it dries and help bond it to the base, although there may be little of this left to see once I finish the base, thinking of a woodland theme for them, been collecting little bits of twig from the garden over the winter, plenty of choice with all the storms we have had! But the basing will be done last so those details will follow in a future update.

I have just over 200 figures for my Celts so far, most still need assembling, but there is enough here for my basic force. They will be used first with SPQR and Clash of Spears (missed the Kick-starter for this! But my order is in with a Kick-starter store so hope to have this soon). As my force grows in size we can then try Hail Caesar for some larger games, and a few other systems on the “to try” list too.

I have decided to just go with a basic simple colour scheme for this lot; I want to get them on the table and told myself no paint, no play! Have stuck to it so far, but my friends are eager to start playing so need to get them finished. Once the basic war band is painted and being played, I can start adding to them, hopefully with a little more time to put in to trying different painting methods, I want to try stripes and then tartan!

There is plenty here for the first skirmish games though, the main war band will be Dumnonii Celts from South West England, my ancestral home so I claimed that option first at my gaming group. The Hero will be called Kernovix and the Druid will be called Toutorix, there does not seem to be any records of actual names from this region in this time period, it seems they had an oral tradition and the Romans left them to get on with their own affairs generally so did not make any records! Not helpful for me trying to find actual names from the area, luckily I have a reasonable imagination with a generous helping of humour. 😉 The good thing with these figures is they are multi use, meaning they are Gauls too! In SPQR, the main difference between Celts and Gauls is warriors have spear and shield and tribesmen use slings, while Gaul uses sword and shields and tribesmen use bows, the starter set comes with a mix of both spears and swords, and I bought a set of slingers to mix with my archers, so one war band works for both! My Gauls will come from what is now part of the Normandy area, (been playing D-Day with Flames of War so lots of games in that zone at the moment!) They are the Venelli and the Hero is called Viridovix while the Druid is named Illiomarus. I might use them for a Germanic war band too, but that is a possible future option, I think Celts and Gauls is enough to start with.

Better pictures will follow in the future when they are painted.