Over the past year I have found myself moving away from the Horse and Musket Period and into the Late Roman and Dark Ages periods, covering roughly the period from 300 AD to 1066 AD. It all started about two years ago when I watched a video of the movie The Warlord starring Charleton Heston and Richard Boone. Naturally, the movie inspired the idea that I could acquire and paint "just a few" Normans, Saxons and Vikings for a skirmish game. I envisioned a stone tower or keep, occupied by a Norman warlord and 20 retainers, guarding a village on the shores of Saxon England. The Normans would protect the village from Viking raids (maybe 40 Vikings and one longboat) and that would be that. One small and tidy little project that wouldn't take too long to complete.
However, as is my wont, my little Norman, Saxon & Viking ("NSV") project spiraled out of control and took on a life of its own. I have no idea where or when it shall end. After painting 20 Normans and 60 Vikings, I thought that it would be simple matter to paint a few Saxons for some variety. That led me to the discovery of Gripping Beast figures, something that really got me into a lot of trouble because they cover just about everything in the Dark Ages with their exquisite line of 25mm figures. Before you knew it, I had added 60 Saxons to my collection and I was looking at other brands of figures to provide some variety to the Saxon band.
This led me to Wargames Foundry's color catalog, where I found some Arthurian Britons to my liking. I figured that some of these could be used for the Saxon Fyrd circa 1066. Once I received the figures, I couldn't wait to paint them. Then I decided that they were too cool to enlist in the Saxon army, so why not start an Arthurian Britain (circa 400AD to 530 AD) project as well? I decided that I would have an army consisting of two 24-man units of spearmen and three 12-man units of cavalry and a dozen archers. I envisioned Arthur leading his small band of Romano-British warriors across the far reaches of Britain to fight off marauding Pict, Irish and Saxon raiding parties. This little army was painted in short order. Along the way I acquired a number of books for my reference library and started to acquire buildings for an Arthurian game.
Hmmm, it's apparent that my 1066 Saxons and Vikings aren't suitable opposition for the Arthurians, so I had better purchase a few Angles, Saxons and Jutes to fight the Arthurians. Out came my trusty Foundry and Gripping Beast catalogs, and before you could say "Excaliber", I had purchased 200 barbarians to fight Arthur of Britain. I also purchased several Viking long boats from Redoubt and had Herb Gundt paint and rig them as Saxon raiding vessels.
By the way, those Foundry Late Romans sure look nice and maybe it would be kind of fun to paint a couple samples just to see how they would look. Well, they look pretty darn good if I do say so myself, and what the heck, I'll need just a few more Romans to fight the barbarians. After all, it will only be a skirmish game so I won't need many figures.
Gee, these 24 Roman auxilia look pretty nifty when formed into a unit eight figures wide and three figures deep. Maybe I'll paint another unit and see how the pair look together. It's only a skirmish game and I could always use another unit. Not bad, but I wonder how a 30 figure Late Roman legio would look (10 figure frontage by 3 figures deep). Well, to make a long story short, I now have a Late Roman army consisting of 8 auxilia, 3 legio, 1 unit of archers, 3 ballistae, and 6 cavalry units (1 clibonari, 3 medium and 2 light cavalry - all 12 figure units). They are currently opposed by 20 Saxon/Allamani warbands containing 20 figures each.
The NSV project has now turned into a full blown Late Roman project that will be centered around the Battle of Strasbourg in 357 AD. A Roman army of 10,000 to 13,000 commanded by the future emperor, Julian the Apostate, defeated some 30,000 Allamani. Those are odds that will really keep a wargame commander on his toes! Julian was the nephew of Constantius II, one of three sons of Constantine the Great. Julian had no military background, save for having read Caesar's Gallic Wars, and he was sent by Constantius II to Gaul to restore the borders, which had been over run by barbarians (Franks and Allamani, among others) during a recent Roman civil war. Julian proved to be more resourceful and talented than anyone had imagined, and with minimal forces, retrieved Gaul from the barbarians over a two year period. Naturally, this caused some concern for Constantius II, who conveniently died of natural causes after the ambitious Julian announced his usurption of the throne. Julian later took a spear in the back during a disastrous campaign against the Persians in 361 AD. By the way, there is an article on the Battle of Strasbourg in an old issue of Slingshot. I have not been able to find a copy of that issue and would like to ask any of the readers to send me a copy of the same, if they have it.
Instead of a skirmish set up, I am now organizing the Romans into 24-figure auxilia units, 30-figure legio units, and 12-figure cavalry vexilations at a 30:1 scale. Historically, the auxilia had 500-600 men per unit while the legio had 1000 - 1200 men. Cavalry vexilations had 300 - 500 men per unit. The barbarians will be organized into 20-figure warbands with a modest amount of 12-figure cavalry units. These are arbitrary numbers and reflect my estimate of the number of followers that an individual chieftain or warlord might have. Also, in my as yet unwritten rules, the barbarians will have lower morale than the Romans and be more susceptible to running away. Thus they need large numbers and an appropriate level of "heft" to each unit; so 20 figures seemed like the right number to me. The barbarians in this period were largely an infantry force. At the Battle of Strasbourg, the Allamani cavalry actually dismounted to fight the Roman cavalry because they were more accustomed to fighting on foot than on horseback. This suggests that the barbarians used cavalry for raiding or for transportation to the battle, where they would then dismount to fight.
The figures are mounted individually on 3/4" square metal stands that I purchased from Wargames Inc., and this allows me to use the figures in both skirmish games and "battalion-style" games. To facilitate movement of this hoard of figures, I built movement trays that have magnet sheet affixed to the surface. This way, I can place the figures on the movement tray and the metal stands adhere securely to the movement tray. I purchased the magnet sheet at a local sign shop.
Ultimately, I plan to have about a dozen Late Roman infantry units and two dozen barbarian units. These will be painted as Franks, Saxons and Visigoths for the most part. Most of the barbarians are from The Foundry and Gripping Beast, while the Romans are all Foundry. Gripping Beast recently started producing a vast range of Late Romans and I plan to add a few units of these figures as well. Maybe I will use the Gripping Beast figures in an Eastern Roman Army for civil wars or for fighting GB's new line of Sassanid Persians. Somebody stop me right now!
Foundry released a few packs of 25mm Huns and I have been looking forward to fielding a Hoard o' Huns in the near future. So far, I have painted a band of 20 Huns and plan to beef this up to 60 figures. The Huns played both sides during this period, as often being allied with the Romans as fighting against them. They could also be used as Alans to augment my barbarian light cavalry in the 5th Century.
As for terrain, I commissioned Herb Gundt of HG Walls to make an assortment of Roman buildings, which include a small temple or basilica, a country villa, an apartment block, a granary and several town buildings. I liked these so much that I asked Herb to build a quay so that I could create a port city and use some of the new ancient galleys that JT Miniatures has just released. I saw some samples of these at Little Wars 2003 and have to say that they looked absolutely awesome. Next on Herb's list is about 8 feet of aquaduct, some more temples, a triumphal arch, and other assorted public buildings for Ancient Rome.
Herb also made some exquisite early Saxon England buildings, including a long house and some thatched huts, to use for my NSV project, which has taken a back seat to the Late Romans. He also produced a Norman keep (mud & waddle and timber) that sits on a base surrounded by a moat. I can lift the keep off of the base and use it without the moat if the scenario dictates a slight change of scenery. Herb also rigged up some Viking and Saxon raiding vessels in 25mm. I also purchased a siege tower from Citadel along with some mantlets, ladders and battering rams so that the attackers can storm the Norman keep.
Rules
Next, I intend to write my own rules in a beer and pretzels manner. I like to keep the rules simple so that the players can enjoy the game and not have to worry about the intricacies of rules. I might use Warhammer Ancient Battles for smaller skirmish games, but I'm a little turned off by the amount of variables that you have to keep track of in these rules. I must say though, that the Warhammer presentation is one of the things that drew me into this period. The rule book also serves as a good source of inspiration through its color pictures as well as a beginners reference source. I've also found the internet to be helpful. Just type in Roman+Military+ History in your search engine .and you can access more information than you can handle.
Finally, I should mention that I recently watched the movie "Gladiator" and thought that the costuming and sets were spot-on accurate. However, the movie took a fair number of liberties with the actual history of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. Nevertheless, it was an entertaining movie and one of the better "sword and sandal" movies to come out of Hollywood. Along with "The Patriot" and "Private Ryan", I hope that this signals a growing trend from Hollywood to produce more historical movies.
As you might guess, the movie inspired me to go out and purchase about ten pounds of lead from the Foundry covering the Early Imperial Roman Period (roughly from the reign of Augustus through the mid 3rd Century. I bought enough figures to field about six cohorts of legions and four cohorts of auxilia. I'll probably use the same basing system that I am using with the Late Romans so that I don't have to make more movement trays. I haven't purchased any early German figures yet, but then Foundry has recently released hoards of Germanic tribes that are suitable for the 1st through 3rd Centuries. I've decided to hold off buying them until I get my Late Roman project completed. And I'm not even going to open the box of Imperial Romans that I bought for quite awhile for fear of going off on another tangent. I guess I need to stay away from historical movies.
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© Copyright 2003 Hal Thinglum
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