Anyone seen my Pachyderm

In my inimitable style I decided to start of the Republican Roman forces even though I have not finished off the Carthaginian forces.

Starting with the infantry I had to consider how I was going to differentiate between the various subunits on the table. It was around this time that the Roman army was undergoing reform and rather than troop type being defined by class (and having the money to pay for equipment) they were organised by experience with the government providing the arms and armour. At this time the Roman infantry was broken into four key groups these were:

• Hastati – newest and least experienced troops armed with pila;
• Principes – experienced troops armed with pila;
• Triarii – veteran troops armed with spear;
• Velites – light infantry skirmishers.

The Triarii (armed with big sticks) and the Velites (armed with light throwing sticks) were easy. It was the Hastati and Principes that provide the problems as they could appear the same.

Luckily I had both the Victrix’s “Rome Legions of the Republic 1 and 2” as a starting points so started building the figures with the intention that the Principes would be wearing chainmail from the 1^st box and the Hastati would be wearing the armoured discs out of the 2^nd. While this may not have been 100% historical it would allow for easy identification on the table.

So worked commenced on building 120 figures.

Now we had the second bone of contention were the troops uniformed or not and did they have the same shield designs (if any).  On the uniform the balance of probability was they were not uniformed and that they were wearing civilian clothes. On the shield design there is no hard evidence either way as far as I could find.

This is where the wargamer stepped in. These were regular units so of course they would be uniformed (and easier to paint) and they would have shared shield designs to ease identification of units on the table.

As with the Carthaginians these troops will be used for both skirmish (Infamy when released and Clash) and “rank and file” rules mainly “To the Strongest”.

For skirmish level rules troop ratios do not really come into consideration but for “TtS” I needed one each of the Hastati, Principes and Triarii to form “Quincunx” (no giggling at the back). If I ever expand the army to play “Hail Caesar” I would need to add an additional Hastati and Principes unit as they really should be 2 for each Triarii but that is in the distant future.

So now on to the next 6 units before I start on the cavalry.