Reclaimed Romans

A sad feature of getting older is the increased prevalence of your contemporaries dying, and in the case of wargaming, this also means their collections being passed on by the bereaved families. In some ways it is quite comforting to think your 'stuff' living on and continuing to be used by people who appreciate it.

In this vein I recently acquired some figures from the estate of the late Robert Plumb, in this particular case, some Roman auxiliaries. Just the thing to beef up my Imperial Roman forces.

Both units of auxiliaries, one of infantry, one of archers.

Western Roman Auxiliary Archers, quite large plastic figures, and I've no idea of the manufacturer.

Being plastic these figures needed a fair bit of  tlc on the extremities, so I undercoated the bows and arrows in PVA before repainting them. Otherwise they just got an inkwash and another coat of varnish.

They fit in OK with my HaT Eastern Auxiliary Archers, they are a bit bigger but not noticeably so.

The rear rank are the Auxiliary figures I got from Bobs collection, I made up the other two bases from figures from the HaT Imperial Roman command set.

The figures had originally been painted as Greek light infantry, so needed completely repainting. I did them in a standard Imperial Auxilia scheme, shield designs from Mr Barkers book.

Compared to the HaT figures these fellows are quite large, but don't look too bad if they stand behind.

I wanted four bases to make up a unit for Neil Thomas's Ancients Rules, so I stretched out to a final base of command figures.

I was pleased with how the figures came out and they are worthy additions to the might of Rome. I hope Bob would be pleased to see them striding out on the tabletop once more as well.