Monday, April 16, 2018

Arthur and the Gang

     So, I finally finished the Gripping Beast Late Roman Infantry that I have been puttering away at for the last couple of weeks. I think they turned out rather well ( aside from the hand-painted shields, that is). Now all I have to do is build and paint the twenty-one cavalry  from the two boxed of Dark Ages Cavalry that I bought and round up some Welsh-looking lads to use a skirmishers and I will have my little army ready for battle.

a solid all-infantry force, but I need some cavalry and light troops 


as the Roman Empire died supplies of armor became scarce
more and more troops had to rely on a large shield

having switched to a largely static defensive role
 the infantry needed massed missile power

these numbers increased as the opponents were now often light horsemen

the command group, Arthur is ably assisted by the still-fearsome centurions 
and will soon be back-stopped by a cavalry force

more spearmen, as the Empire waned these first became sedentary
 then degenerated into militia

in rare cases there were still some heavy shock type infantry with body armor

5 comments:

  1. Looking good there bro, we will have to throw down in Saga very soon!

    Cheers
    Kevin

    ReplyDelete
  2. Excellent job!
    Would the fully armored infantry possibly be Arthur's guard troops?
    How much armor is on the cavalry? Are any horse archers? Looking forward to seeing the completion of this project.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I am going to have two sets of cavalry, one will be unarmored (assuming that the heavy cavalry went to Gaul with the Emperor-presumptive) and another set of armored "knights". I am still sorting out the light troops situation, by 450AD it seems most of them were militia or foederati, so uniforms are problematic

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nice job. I am currently trying to finish an Anglo-Danish warband at an agonizingly slow pace.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Dave, I find that the quality of today's miniatures is an obstacle to speed.....while I was painting the spearmen I stopped to research if the tacks holding the leather cover on the back of the shield were brass or iron. ... then I realized that I had gone down the rabbit hole. Nobody would know or care aside from me!

    To say the least I feel your pain

    ReplyDelete