Romano-British for Dux Britanniarum

So the watchtower is finally complete after what turned out to be a far more significant undertaking than I had anticipated. I’m glad I stuck with it though, if only to show that completely enveloping an MDF model in green stuff is possible, if not particularly practical.

The final painting steps were the wooden platform and stairs. I adapted the sound advice on the Gerry Can on New Wood, using a base coat of Khaki Grey (VMC 70.880) washed with a mix of water and Army Painter Dark stone. Once dry, this was drybrushed with Iraqi Sans (VMC 70.819). The door was Burnt Umber washed with the same Dark Tone and water mix. The stairs were painted first and then glued into place in the contact points I’d left free if basing texture and green stuff.

Finally, I painted the basing texture with my usual mix of Beige Brown and Yellow Ochre, followed by a wash of Chocolate Brown with 10% Black. This was the. Drybrushed with the Beige Brown and Yellow Ochre mix followed by a second drybrush of Buff.  Finally, tufts, flowers, flock and some small rocks made of leftover green stuff were glued on to complete the model.

I’ve been a bit lax in keeping this project updated over the last month, so apologies for the lack of new posts. However, I have been working away at it, so you should see some more over the next few days.

First up is how I did the brickwork on the watchtower. I did a base coat of VMC Orange Brown (70.981) which was then washed with Army Painter Strong Tone. This gives a very dark look which didn’t match the quite bright orange that can be seen in the photos from Dover. So I took a risk and highlighted with Light Orange (VMC 70.956 my bottle is old so I think this is called Clear Orange today) mixed with Ivory (VMC 70.918). I created a 75:25 mix first and then did a second highlight of 50:50. I was a bit nervous about this as the Light Orange is very bright, but the Ivory tones it down.  The ratios are very approximate and I suggest experimenting until you get a mix that works for you.

I was still concerned once I’d finished this step that the brickwork was still too bright. However, I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler alert if I say that I’ve now completed the model and am quite happy with how it’s turned out. I’ll cover that in a future post shortly.

The kids had a day trip to Dover Castle earlier this week as a last hurrah before the end of the Easter holidays.

They very kindly took some research photographs of the tower of the church of St Mary in Castro. Which are shown here.

For those who might not be aware, St Mary in Castro is a church located within the curtain wall of Dover Castle, hence the name “in Castro”. The church itself is very old, being built around AD 1000 in the late Saxon period, possibly on the site of an even older Saxon church dating from around AD 600.

However, for our purposes, the point to note is that the church adopted as its bell tower the remains of a Roman lighthouse or Pharos built around AD 130. This structure is still four stories tall and may even have reached as high as eight stories when first constructed. It was one of two built by the Romans to guide ships into Dover harbour which was then known as Dubris. If you look at the pictures, the characteristically thin orange bricks of the Romans are clearly visible. This is the colour I need to try and replicate on my watchtower.

I managed to paint the stonework this week.  A very easy process starting with an undercoat of black primer.

It was then a case of putting on a base coat of London Grey and then progressively dry brushing with lighter grey tones.

I also added a wash of Army Painter Dark Tone after the first drybrush of Neutral Grey.

These are the paints I used. In hindsight, I wouldn’t bother with the Neutral Grey dry brush as it didn’t add much and would be mainly covered up by the Sky Grey and Silvergrey anyway.

Next up is the brickwork where I need to do some experimenting with different colour combinations.

So the green stuffing of my watchtower is finally complete. The last cornerstones and lines of brick were smoothed into place on the top platform and it still fits snugly. You can see the line where the two levels meet, but I think that once the model is under coated in black and painted, this should be less obvious.

I also found that my fears about the green stuff hardening in lumps and spoiling the fit of the platform were unfounded. I remembered watching a Gerry Can where it was pointed out that you can cut green stuff very easily with a modelling knife and lo and behold this is true (I should not have doubted the great man). It trims very easily and so I was able to slice it off bits where they were interfering with the fit. I also went around and trimmed off areas where I thought the stonework looked a bit off to give it a more angular look.

I’ve glued to tower onto a 15cm x 15cm terrain base from Warbases so it occupies a similar footprint to my other buildings. A lot of people tend to elevate this sort of building, but it is taller than the other buildings I have and I think keeping it this way gives flexibility. If I want it on a hill I shall just have to make sure it is a large one so the model can sit comfortably.

Vallejo ground texture has been added to obscure the step down between the base and the terrain base. I should note that I’ve not glued the wooden stairs in place yet. This has enabled me to build up the green stuff around where they will be placed (note where I have left bare MDF showing around the contact points) and will also allow me to get in to paint this area.

Hmmm, what exciting paint schemes will I try out over the long weekend? Oh, hang on, I can’t do any painting because I still have to keep green stuffing this wretched Watchtower!

I left the row of bricks and corner stones where the top platform meets the body of the tower till last. This is because I want to ensure a smooth join between the two pieces. I want to avoid any bits of green stuff hardening into lumps that then lift off the top platform and prevent it fitting properly, whilst at the same time I don’t want to have too obvious a gap between the connecting rows of bricks and stones.

I also made sure to add green stuff to the interior walls of the ramparts so that all external stone surfaces were covered.

Once I’ve done the last rows of bricks and corner stones, this should be ready for basing and painting.

My brother kindly gave me this Roman watchtower from Sarissa Precision for Christmas. It was easy to build, but I felt it was too Mediterranean in style with its clean lines. I felt that a watchtower in Britain would be more obviously made of stone, rather than have a plastered facade.

So I added some green stuff to the bottom layer, without stopping to wonder why I’d never seen this done before.

I soon had my answer. Once you start, there is no obvious place to stop. I realised I would have to green stuff the entire thing!

The whole process has taken ages but I am now three quarters of the way through. Think of this post as a warning rather than a recommendation!

If you choose to do this, I suggest keeping the brick layers level and flat to distinguish them from the stone layers.  Also, you’ll need a lot of green stuff. This is a 90cm roll!

Having completed the Romano-British force I decided that I would continue this project and build the opposing Saxons. The Saxon starting force in Dux Britanniarum consists of:

I’ve finally got round to completing my farmhouse. The actual building was painted some time ago, but I couldn’t work out how to do a convincing vegetable garden. Eventually I decided that it was more important to get the thing done than agonise over the theory of it. I therefore rolled out some flat leaves of green stuff and then curved them back in on themselves to make an approximation of cabbages. These were then painted blue and  a deep purple, because I wanted at least one row of red cabbages as they are one of my favourite vegetables.  I also pushed some trimmed down tufts into blobs of green stuff to make turnips and laid out a MiniNatur purple blossom strip to make a bed of lavender. With that, I called it done.

For those wondering (which may well be no one) I checked and cabbages, turnips and lavender were well known in Ancient times. I also seem to recall the Emperor Diocletian saying after he retired that he got more pleasure from tending his cabbages than he did from ruling the empire, so that seems pretty good authority to me. This may seem a little obsessive, but somehow I always notice when someone slips something like a pumpkin into a piece of terrain from the Ancient and Medieval world, which at that time should only be seen in North America. This is perhaps button counting and rivet counting at its worst!

I recently added a storehouse to the collection of buildings making up my Romano-British farm. The image above shows the completed build. I spread PVA over the walls and then sprinkled sand on them before sealing it with a mix of PVA and water. The building was from Warbases as was the mounted MDF terrain base in which it is mounted.

This shows the painted building. The roof tiles were painted VMC Hull Red and washed with Army Painter Strong Tone ink. I then picked out individual tiles with VMC Cavalry Brown to show areas of recent repair. I then drybrushed the lot with Cavalry Brown.

The walls were painted Light Grey, then Light Grey mixed with Off White, then finally highlighted with Off White.

The stone window was painted in the same way as the drystone walls described in the entry below, whilst the door was painted Khaki Grey, washed with AP Strong Tone and drybrushed with Iraqi Sand. I then picked out the details in AP Dark Tone ink.

The storehouse is actually intended to be part of a larger Roman villa set and be glued in place alongside an adjoining building. As such, one end of the roof is flush with the wall while the other extends out to form eaves. As I wanted this to be a free standing building I needed to extend the end of the roof that was flush with the wall in order to make it look even.

the sequence above shows how I did that. When laying down the tile strips on the roof  I took care to extend each row out to the distance I needed. Because the tile pattern alternates with each row, every other row needs to extend out a little further than the distance required. I then glued strips of card under the tiles and adjoining the roof. This extended it out sufficiently to balance the building and ensure that it wouldn’t be lopsided. PVA glue ensures this a rock hard. Once the glue holding the card strips in place was dry I trimmed off any excess tiles that were protruding beyond the now extended roof.  The final step was to extend the piece of dowling that forms the apex of the roof. This was done by rolling a small piece of green stuff to the approximate shape and pushing it into place. If you look at the image at the top of this entry you can see it at the left end of the roof.

I’ve not had much opportunity to update this Project lately, but progress is being made.  Over Christmas I decided that I would keep the Project live whilst I embarked on a starter force for the Saxon invaders.  I’ll detail the planning process and a short miniature review in a later post, but in the meantime I got on with the far more prosaic task of painting some drystone walls.

This might be the most tedious set of images ever posted on the OTT Project System, however, you never know when you might need some ideas about how to paint a rock, so here goes.

The walls were resin casts from Red Dragon Scenics.  They arrived in good time after ordering and are pure white when taken out of the bag.  After a wash in soapy lukewarm water, they were given time to dry and then primed black.  However, there are a lot of deep crevices as you might expect with scenery of this nature and the spray primer didn’t reach every nook and cranny.  To remedy this I applied Vallejo Black Polyurethane Surface Primer.  This is meant to be applied with an airbrush, but works just as well with a normal brush.

Once the primer was on, I applied a Basecoat of London Grey (VMC 70.836).  Next was a dry brushed highlight of Neutral Grey (VMC 70.992). In hindsight, the Neutral Grey didn’t really add very much and I think in future I will skip that step and go straight to the next two.  These were a dry brush of Sky Grey (VMC 70.989) and a final light dry brushed highlight of Silver Grey (VMC70.883).

I then painted the base with  my usual combination of earth colours which I’ve listed several times in earlier posts before adding some flowers and a bit of flock.

I have enough pieces to put together two inter-linked fields or to delineate the boundary of a farmhouse yard and its surrounding buildings.

Father Christmas was also rather generous on the terrain front this year, so there is rather a lot of updates to post on.  In order, they will hopefully be:

Completing the painting of my farmhouse
Acquisition and painting of a Saxon force
Building and painting a storage barn
Building and painting a watchtower
Building and painting a church

Finding the time will be a challenge but I won’t be bored in this latest lockdown.

This will be the farmhouse for my Romano-British farm.  I didn’t want to go for something as grand as a villa at this stage as it would probably dominate the tabletop and go beyond the small collection of buildings that the rules call for.  Moreover, I’ve read recently about the Orton Hall archaeological site near Peterborough which has revealed just this sort of arrangement for a Romano-British farm, namely a farmhouse surrounded by barns and storage buildings.  This is exactly the sort of look I want to achieve.  I therefore used the Vicus House by Warbases. A Vicus is the name for the settlements that sprang up in the vicinity of permanent legionary camps, so this isn’t a specifically agricultural building.  However, I think it will be ideal for a small scale farm similar to that at Orton Hall, where the owners ploughed the profits of their enterprise back into the business rather than spending it on flashy villas and mosaics.

In the three images above, you can see the application of roof tile strips.  These come from Warbases in laser cut A4 sheets.  You can get them in a variety of different tile patterns, but for this building you need the pantile pattern.

Starting at the bottom, you pull off a strip and then line it up with the pantile pattern etched into the roof.  You then glue it down with PVA.  The next strip will be offset against the previous one resulting in a half-tile overhang at one end.  This is intentional and the overhang can be sliced off with a scalpel once the process is complete. Make sure that this second strip is layered partially over the one below, just as tiles are in real life.  Repeat this process until the roof is covered.  This produces a textured surface on the roof that can be painted later and which hides the lug holes that you would have with the bare MDF roof.

The next three images show the application of further additional features to give body and texture to the MDF.

Coffee stirrers were cut to size with a sprue cutter and glued over the etched wooden beams with PVA. You need to take extra care where beams join at an angle to make sure they sit flat to one another.  I got a slight overhang with one join, so trimmed it with a modelling scalpel so it lay more or less flush.

The walls in between the beams were coated in PVA and then covered in fine sand.  The excess sand was poured away and once the glue was dried, the walls were given another coat of PVA to seal the sand in place.  This gives an impression of a finer plastering job than the polyfilla daub added to my earlier pig sty for example.

The plaster walls sit on a stone foundation layer.  These stones are etched into the MDF, but I used small pieces of Green Stuff to make it more three-dimensional.  I pushed them into place with wet fingers .  In doing so it isn’t necessary to be completely precise in following the etched pattern, but it is useful to do so approximately as it will keep you right when placing the interlocking stones at the corners of the building.  You also need to make sure that the Green Studd for those corner stones is bent around the corner as that makes it look like it is a single stone viewed from two angles rather than a blob of flat epoxy pushed  onto an MDF board.  Every so often, once I had done a few stones, I would scratch in some sharp chiselled edges in order to avoid uniformity.  This will also be useful later in providing texture for drybrushing.

The front door was covered in strips of card to simulate planking.  I cut up a box that had been holding some herb tea, but any cardboard packaging will do.

Finally, the model was fixed to a 15cm x 15cm terrain base and the ground covered in Vallejo base texture.  I heaped up some of the base texture into six raised beds that will become a vegetable garden.  Admittedly, at this stage it looks like six freshly dug graves, but hopefully the addition of some cabbages will correct this unfortunate impression!

This is a small enclosed orchard. Nothing very fancy here. The wattle fencing was painted in exactly the same way as that used in the pig sty in the preceding entry. The trees are from Woodland Scenics and can be detached to make room for figures within the enclosure. They were originally purchased for a 15mm scale project, but serve equally well as 28mm fruit trees.

I’ve been working on some terrain recently. In the terrain generation rules for Dux Britanniarum you frequently need some farm buildings, so building those has been my first objective. I decided to go for a collection consisting of a farmhouse, storage barn, orchard and pig sty.

The pig sty was tackled first. I’ve posted this image before and there are more details in that earlier entry, but briefly, this is the Warbases Dark Age barn enhanced with polyfilla covered walls, coffee stirrer wooden planking and thatch made from green stuff.

The daub walls were painted with a base coat of VMC Light Grey, followed by a second coat of 50% Light Grey mixed with  50% Off White. Finally, I did a dry brushed highlight of pure Off White.

The thatch was give a base coat of 80% Beige Brown with 20% Cavalry Brown. It was then given a dry brushed highlight of 70% Tan Yellow mixed with 30% of the base coat mix. This was then washed all over with Army Painter Strong Tone ink.

After the ink had dried, l repeated the drybrushed first highlight. I then drybrushed a second highlight made up of 70% Tan Yellow mixed with 30% of the first highlight. The third highlight was 100% Tan Yellow, but this wasn’t quite light enough, so I gave a fourth highlight of 100% Buff.  The overall effect is one of fairly recently laid thatch. If you wanted older thatch that’s been on for some years, then you would need to go for a much greyer look.

The wattle fence was painted Light Grey and then washed with Army Painter Strong Tone Ink. It was then give a first highlight of drybrushed Tan Yellow followed by a second highlight of drybrushed Buff.

The wooden planking was base coated in Neutral Grey and then washed with Army Painter Strong Tone ink before being drybrushed with Tan Yellow.

As this is a pig sty, I wanted the ground inside the enclosure to look muddier than my usual base colouring. I painted the base with a mix of 80% Chocolate Brown and 20% Black. I the. Added pure Chocolate Brown in selected areas to add some interest. The whole interior was then washed with a mix of 90% Chocolate Brown and 10% Black. I then added a drybrushed highlight of Beige Brown.

Finally, any pig sty needs pigs. I purchased some Iron Age pigs from Warbases. A bit of internet research revealed that the Iron Age pig has been recreated by breeding a Wild Boar with a Tamworth sow. This produces piglets with their mother’s ginger-orange colouring that goes much darker as the mature.

So the piglets were base coated with Orange Brown before getting a wash of Army Painter Soft Tone ink. They were then drybrushed with Light Brown before getting a final drybrushed highlight of 50%Light Brown and 50% Tan Yellow.

The adults were base coated in German Grey. This was drybrushed in London Grey for a first highlight, followed by a second highlight of Neutral Grey. This made them look a little bit blue, which wasn’t what I wanted, so a final drybrush of Beige Brown toned them down to where they needed to be and also gave a hint of their piglet colouring which you can often see in reference pictures.

So this is the completed starter force for a Romano-British warband in Dux Britanniarum.

In the second rank you have three groups of Numeri, being led forward by one of the Nobles, Urien Cadwalladr. In the first rank to the right as you look at them are two groups of Milites and to the left are the elite Comanipulares. The Noble, Peredur Constantine stands in front of them. To the far left of the picture is the group of four Archers.

The Lord, Garcianus the Victorious stands at the front with his Champion, Gwallawc.

I now need to consider what I do next. I’ve achieved my initial goal of producing a Romano-British warband. I should say that using the project system to update on progress has been very useful in keeping me on track and not getting distracted. It was also extremely inspiring to be given a golden button back in August which encouraged me to keep going. Thinking back to that particular XLBS show I remember Been and Gerry saying that they wouldn’t mind seeing reinforcements and maybe a battle report or two. Well to do that you need a campaign and that means that Garcianus and his men need some opposition and that means the Saxons…!

So we come to the final figure in this starter warband for Dux Britanniarum, the Lord, Garcianus.

Although he is only 24, he has already gained a name for himself and a roll on the relevant table shows that he is known as Garcianus the Victorious. This has no immediate effect, other than to make me hope that his performance on the tabletop will live up to his reputation!

He has a physique of average build and the Dutiful characteristic. This means he has the welfare of the people at heart and must follow the King career path in the game rather than pursue the life of a Warlord. The king he serves is 61 years old. This is relevant to the campaign, as the death of a king gives an opportunity for your Lord to take his place if he has gained enough support.

Garcianus is an exile, the son of a high-ranking father in a kingdom no longer in existence. This reduces his starting level of wealth and indeed, he only has a Beggar’s Bowl in funds.

Garcianus is Footsore’s Romano-British Warlord figure and was great fun to paint. The fur collar on his cloak was probably something on which I went a bit too far. I followed a tutorial in the Dark Ages edition of the Painting War series of occasional magazines.  The end result was an eleven step process and although I think it looks good, I do wonder if that was excessive. Nevertheless, I shall list out each step so you can have a go yourself should you be so inclined. These aren’t the precise colours used in Painting War, but the ones I had available that most closely matched their instructions.  The colours I used were:

German Camo Black Brown (VMC 70.882)

Orange Brown (VMC 70.981)

Light Brown (VMC 79.929)

Dark Flesh (VMC 70.927)

Pale Grey Blue (VMC 70.907)

Army Painter Soft Tone ink

Note that all highlights are applied by drybrushing.  The steps were as follows:

Base: German Camo Black Brown

1st highlight: German Camo Black Brown 50% plus Orange Brown 50%

2nd highlight: German Camo Black Brown 25% plus Orange Brown 75%

3rd highlight: German Camo Black Brown 10% plus Orange Brown 90%

1st Wash: Army Painter Soft Tone Ink

2nd Wash: German Camo Black Brown 10% plus Orange Brown 90%

4th highlight: Orange Brown 100%

5th highlight: Light Brown 20% plus Orange Brown 80%

6th highlight: Light Brown 40% plus 40% Orange Brown plus 20% Dark Flesh (note that this mix looks suspiciously similar to Tan Yellow, so that might make a suitable single colour alternative)

7th highlight: Light Brown 20% plus Orange Brown 20% plus Dark Flesh 10% plus Pale Grey Blue 50%

3rd Wash: Light Brown 50% plus Orange Brown 50%

The other prominent feature on Garcianus was the large jewel on his cloak clasp. I’ve always avoided jewels before now, but felt that I couldn’t do that with the model. I watched a YouTube video where a chap in Singapore was painting Eldar spirit stones and adapted the techniques he described.  Essentially it was a base coat of VMC Dark Vermilion over Black. I then painted a line of Orange around the lower left quarter rim, followed by an even thinner line of Flat Yellow over the Orange. Finally I did a small stroke of White over the Flat Yellow as the light exit point. This was complemented with a dot of White in the upper left corner to simulate the light entry point. Lastly, a coat of gloss varnish gave the jewel a general sheen.

This completes my Romano-British starter force for Dux Britanniarum. I’ll try and post some pictures of the complete force over the weekend.

This is Gwallawc Gwerthefyr, my Warlord’s champion. Champions add some period flavour to the game, doing such things as taking part in single combat in the pre-battle phase as a way of boosting Force Morale, and protecting your Lord in combat by taking hits that would otherwise go on him.

Unlike Nobles, champions don’t have characteristics as they aren’t in the running to take over should your Lord fall in battle.

Gwallawc is the Gawain miniature from Footsore, coming in a pack with Galahad. I chose him as the champion as he looked more of a professional fighter with his leather cuirass over his mail.  I kept the colours quite muted as a result, with only the white tunic to tie him into the rest of the army. One thing I did find was that I needed to make his belt, purse and baldric stand out from the leather cuirass, whilst still looking like leather of a different colour.  I therefore gave them a buff colour as follows:

Base: Beige Brown (VMC 70.872)

1st highlight: Beige Brown 50% plus Iraqi Sand 50% (VMC 70.875)

2nd highlight: 1st highlight 50% plus Iraqi Sand 50%)

As he was looking quite dark at this stage, I deliberately chose a brightly coloured red and yellow shield transfer to offset that. The design is tilted 90 degrees as the position of his hand makes clear that he is twisting his shield and punching it forward towards his opponent.

This is the second of my two nobles. A quick roll on the name generator dubs him Peredur Constantine, so clearly someone whose parents wanted to show that they were both Romano and British!

Peredur is 33, of average build, but has the constitution of an ox. This does make a difference in the game, allowing him a once per game re-roll if the prior roll would have resulted in a wound or death.  Like his fellow noble, Urien, he is also the son of an honestiore.

He is from Footsore Miniatures Late Roman Infantry Command Pack. The sculpt is a bit messy on the interior of the sword hand, but a bit of filing and a half-decent paint job makes it unnoticeable. I’m not sure who would be pedantic enough to inspect the model on an area you can’t normally see anyway.

There wasn’t anything particularly special about the painting. It’s the same combinations of reds and browns that I’ve reported on earlier in this project.  I did try to tie him into the red and white colour scheme for the Comanipulares. I imagined him as having a particular role as their commander. I used a Little Big Men Studios shield transfer that would complement that colour scheme as well.

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.

I completed the Comanipulares this week, the single Group of elite grade troops allowed to a Romano-British warband at the start of a Dux Britanniarum campaign (in contrast Saxons get two Groups of elite Hearthguard but fewer troops overall).

I originally thought of doing an all red colour scheme for this Group, but on reflection decided that would be out of keeping with the look of the rest of my professional warriors. I therefore kept the white tunic colour scheme I used for my Milites and just used red on the plumes and cloaks. This also then pushed me down the route of choosing a red and white set of shield transfers from Little Big Men Studios. These come with a fetching Chi symbol and added battle damage!

Keeping the white tunics ties the unit in nicely with the Milites, whilst the red makes them distinctive. I also like the idea that when you are inducted into this elite unit from the ranks the Warlord gifts you with a plumed helmet, red cloak and new shield, but the rest of your equipment you have to find on your own.

The colour combinations were very much the same as for the Milites, with the exception of the red.  This was as follows:

Base coat – Cavalry Brown (VMC 70.982)

First highlight – Cavalry Brown 50% + Dark Vermilion 50% (VMC 70.947)

Second highlight – Dark Vermilion

The flowers and tufts were from the MiniNatur range available from Warbases.

I particularly enjoyed painting these. They are from Footsore Miniatures Late Roman / Romano-British range. They don’t require much in the way of cleaning, but I would recommend paying attention to a particularly prominent mould line running up the left arm and head. A little patience is needed to make sure this has completely gone.

This completes the Groups of warriors. Just the four characters to go before the warband is ready.