Well, winter's here and it's time to get back to painting. It's not that I hate painting (although I'm not in love with it), it's just that in the summer I can always find an excuse not to paint. Sun, warm weather, blue skies, green grass, etc., are not condusive to sitting in a room alone painting little metal soldiers. On the other hand dark grey days, the sun going down by 4:30 p.m., and snow (a true four letter word) provide the perfect ingredients to become a shut-in. For myself at least given a choice between shoveling the driveway or painting I'll paint thank you very much.
Right now I'm in the process of trying to finish a barbarian army. I'm not quite sure what it will be just yet. So far I've done 160MIor HI take your choice, 40 LI, 20 HC or MC and 10 LC. Still to come are more cavalry, some LMI, more LI and at least 6 LCh. Going over the new W.R.G. Army List I figure I can make Gauls, Gallatians, or Early Franks. That's just in Vol. I of the lists. I still hope to be able to make Later Franks, Dacians, Rus, and Vikings. This may be heresy to all the purists, but as far as I'm concerned barbarian figures are interchangable. One day call them Franks and the next call them Rus. After all they are supposed to be a rabble.
One rabble looks the same as the next rabble. I've painted up all kinds of figures for my barbarian army. Vikings, Gauls, Britons, Franks, Normans, Roman Auxiliaries, Persians, the odd Greek, hell almost anything as long as it does not look too 'regular army'. Once painted and based they look like your average rabble. Some have spears, others have swords and still others, axes. What's the difference. If the army list says they are armed with javelins I fight them as if they're armed with javelins. My feelings are that when the lists call for an army to be armed with a certain type of weapon it's more of an averaging out of the army's ability. I would think that a barbarian warband was a mix of weapons with everyone using what he had handy that day.
Now the point I'm trying to make out of all this is just that if one wants more than one army at minimal cost try it my way. Instead of just a Roman Army for example you can have four of five barbarian armies. That way you can fight with the army you feel most like fighting with at any given time. It's also a way to beat the high cost of figures. So what if they don't all look like Gauls or whatever. They look barbarian. As long as you tell your opponent what they're armed with, there shouldn't be any problems.
The W.R.G. Rules 6th Edition states on page 8, Depiciton of figures, Case 3 "Individuals with varied weapons & equipment mixed into an irregular body to enhance its appearance can be assumed to represent the average of the body." There it is gang! Straight from the GREAT GURU himself!
Now the figure companies put out all kinds of barbarian figures listed under their tribal names. you can get the feeling that in order to have a Frankish army you've got to order nothing bu Franks. The problem with that is there are only a limited number of Franks available and in a barbarian army the idea is to get as many different poses as possible. That way they look like a horde of barbarians not a horde of clones.
Another way of making your barbarians look like a rabble is to change poses on the figure itself. This can be done by raising arms, twisting heads, etc. Be careful though because some figures are more brittle than others. Minifigs can be moved about quite easily but I find trying to fool around with Ral Partha figures an adventure in nervous tension. I find them just a bit too brittle.
Luckily they are saved by the fact they have such excellent poses that you don't really want to change them much. Another thing you can do (if your figures have seperate shields) is to mix the shields up. That way one can have the same figures with different shields making the units look quite different. The same can be done with seperate weapons. Most importantly use as many different companies' figures as possible. Let's face it, Minifigs look like Minifigs. The same goes for Partha, Hinchliffe and the others. The same company looks fine if your making a regular army where everyone supposed to look the same but what you want is the illusion that there are no two figures the same.
Now I know that many gamers are completely content with one or two armies. But there are those who like to use as many as possible depending on their mood. I believe what I have just described is a good and inexpensive way to do just that. For the cost of about 1 1/2 armies you get four or five. Once you get the nucleus of the barbarian army which is usually HI o MI you can then pick up units as you need them to make a completely different army. In any case it's just started snowing which means I've got some painting to do.
Back to Table of Contents -- Courier Vol. III #4
To Courier List of Issues
To MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1982 by The Courier Publishing Company.
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com