Roman Legionaries - Starting a Imperial Roman Army

One of the projects I have for 2015 is to make an imperial roman army, as well as some barbarians to proxy several of their enemies, such as gauls, germans and bretons.

I very much like the period of Caesar's wars, and even though the visual of my legionaries is of some decades later, I'll definitely be playing some battles against the forces of Vercingetorix and his wicked fellows.

These models here are from the set 1 of Caesar miniatures 1/72 Roman Legionaries. They have that characteristic look which has been immortalized in hollywood blockbusters and biblical movies, usually in disregard as to when legionaries actually began to dress like that. This is the iconic Lorica Segmentata, over red tunics and accompained by the no less iconic rectangular Scutum.

This uniform looks soo much better than the republican version, that it's easy to understand why they are usually portraited that way. Those guys mean business! and the sculpts in this Caesar kit have a feel to them that makes the soldiers very characterful. In my opinion, they are much better than the Italeri's, Hat's or even Zvezda's equivalents - and putting Zvezda is second place in any comparison is saying something!

The system I'll be using is Hail Caesar, from Warlord Games. It's an obvious choice, since I already play their excelent Black Powder, which shares the same basic mechanics, so learning this new ruleset will be a lot less toilsome.

I'll be making standard units of 24 models, distributed on 4 bases of 6 models each. Each unit represents an entire Cohort. The first Cohort, being larger, will have 6 bases, and will be a Large unit in Hail Caesar.

A setback of this kit is that a lot of the pila come bent, requiring extensive use of the hot water-cold water technique to get them to straighten up. Still, no deal breaker.

The real downside is that this kit is very rare. I one time saw a listing for 10 of them on ebay and picked 4. Oh, boy, how I regret not purchasing them all. A full 10-cohorts legion is going to require more boxes than the 4 I own.

Next up, I'll be showing here the command bases for this army.

*End of Transmission*