Cornwell's Arthur Series has inspired me to raise a Romano-British army for De Bellis Antiquitatis. I am using II/81c Sub-Roman British. To start off I painted the above spear element using all Hat figures. I'm not sure how soon I'll finish the whole army, but I really wanted to get this element done while I'm still reading.
On the left is Nimue, the druid. She is from set 8140 Gallic Chariot with Warrior Queen. Next is Lord Derfel. He and his spearmen are from 8100 Hat's Late Roman Medium Infantry. The models are un-armored, but I found that by poking the soft plastic with a pin it created a nice chain mail effect. I used putty to add the beards and the wolf tail helmet crests. The shields are painted with stars, which is described in the novels.
It looks like this could be the general element, but the DBA Sub-Roman army list only assigns the general to cavalry or knights. I can't wait for Hat to release it's 8183 Late Roman Medium Cavalry! The sculpts look great and will be perfect for Arthur and his cavalry.
Nimue was painted separately. She was glued to the rear of the base only after all the guys were all painted (this gave me better access to painting Derfel's back and Nimue's front)
Now that I have read the novels I realize that Gripping Beast has a 28mm set inspired by Cornwell's books. I have long admired these sculpts, but hadn't realized the inspiration. The Winter King came out in '96, but I only just read it! See ABR11 Wolftail Warriors and ABR12 Arthurian Personalities, and ABR01 Arthurian Command.
Check out Peter's 28mm Cornwell-inspired armies on his blog.
6 comments:
Nicely done! I wish they had more mail clad warriors...as the Wolftails seemed to be. Never-the-less, very nice!
Thanks, John. I'm very pleased with the pin-hole mail technique, so I'll be armoring more spearman that way.
Nice looking figures, the beards have come off really well. FYI I think Italeri have some Late Roman cav in the pipeline...
Very nice job on the figures, Andrew.
As for wolves, perhaps you can have some of ours? Here in NC, it was decided to repopulate some areas with wolves. The only puzzle within this is that the areas repopulated never had any wolf population. Ever, so far as we can tell. Perhaps we can ship them to your places that did actually historically have wolves?
According to PSR, Italieri have Gothic Cavalry and Late Roman Legionares on the way. Not until the end of the year. Here's hoping for something in scale with HaT! Also, New Line have started bulking up their 20mm line to include late empire stuff. Romans, Goths and Franks. I've ordered one of each command pack and a pack of Gothic archers. Not sure how good they will be...
Thanks! I didn't know about the Italeri Late Romans. I'll keep my eyes out for those.
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