Hail Caesar Armies

Alongside my World War 2 project, I have an ancient armies project ongoing too, focusing on Rome and her enemies. I haven't specified which era of Rome I am focusing on because I like the Republican and Imperial eras, and want to keep it flexible. 

To begin with, my first roman units aren't even within either of these categories, they are Caesarian legionary units (which puts them in the post-Marian reform era, or 1st century BC). This wasn't something I specifically chose to do, but ended up with a box of Italeri 1/72 roman soldiers (set 6021), so that's what I painted. 

This was my first ever attempt at painting soldiers, in any scale. I tackled the box in two halves, finishing one half then moving on to the next. 

I used Humbrol enamel paints, and created my own washes with the paints thinned down. The bases are 20mm x 20mm (standard Hail Caesar size) square cut sections of self adhesive floor tiling. To base, I spread on some pva and added sand. This Italeri set was ridiculed for its poor range of poses (there are basically two) and while I agree that the range is poor, it doesn't look too terrible when arranged in a regimented pattern such as this. I later painted the bases and dry-brushed them.

The colour palette for the basing turned out far redder/pinker than I'd hoped, so in the future I will search for a more suitable Burnt Umber -like dark brown for the first coat. But anyway, here are my first two legionary units suitable for a Caesarian ancient battle. 

There aren't too many options available for plastic 1/72 sets in this era, so next I will be moving onto later, Imperial roman legionaries. I feel that these Caesarian units share many qualities with later legionaries (standardized uniforms, weaponry, etc.) anyway, and so I will be happy to include them into  Imperial Rome battles.

Hail Caesar rules ask for Commander units, so here I've created such a unit (for now will serve as the head General no less). 

You can maybe guess, he is certainly styled on the great general Caesar himself, with the short blonde hair, and flowing red cape. I chose white for the horse colour, and was happy with how it turned out. The basing was painted and dry-brushed like the main units, and I much later added the vegetation (which I will discuss in a later post).

For the next post, I will discuss and present my first enemy units to face off against my Roman units - who better to face such a challenge than the Gauls..!