Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Old Glory Marian Romans




My next ancients project is to build an army for the Roman civil wars of 49-30BC. I ordered up some Old Glory legionnaires, and I was pretty disappointed when I opened the pack and looked at the figures. I'm an Old Glory fan, but even I have to admit that their figures frequently do not march, but scurry around the battlefield. These Romans seemed to have a bad case of the scurries. When my buddy got his Gripping Beast Marian Romans, I was pretty tempted to chuck the Old Glory figures on the lead pile and start over with Gripping Beast.

I'm glad I didn't. I have to remember to say to myself, "figures always look better with paint on them." And then repeat it three times. And then just paint the darned things. Because once I put paint to metal, these figures started to look really good.

The command figures are almost identical to the Punic Wars Roman command pack. Only the centurion with the vitis and the signifer with scale armor are unique to this pack. They're both nice figures, but I don't like the inclusion of a Corinthian helmet on the centurion. Surely he would have the same Montefortino helmet as the men

3 comments:

  1. Really great job. I must say it cause i bought these figures too and i was very disapointed on them for many reasons. Btw if you wish to make other Marian/Caesarian romans go for the ones from Foundry by M.Copplestone and not for the ones from GB, bce the ones form Foundry are more historically correct cause of many helmet variants. Different type of Montefortino, bronze coolus but most of all some iron helmet like te Port tha was the "father" of imperial gallic helmet. So an army with all these different helmets would look really more intresting. Thx so much for your attention

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  2. I would love to use the Foundry figures, but they're just to darned expensive for me. My little WAB Marian Roman project requires 117 legionnaires and 21 command. I'm building seven legions. From Old Glory (with the army discount) that costs me $90. From Foundry it would cost me $546. Partly that's because of the odd command arrangement Foundry uses. I have to buy packs with four standard bearers and two cornicens, so it takes four of those packs to provide the seven cornicens I need. But mostly it's because of the insane Foundry prices. $21 for six figures? $3.50 per foot figure? That's almost six times what Old Glory costs me per figure. It's too pricey for me. I would jump on some of Foundry's army deals, but without getting to choose the figure poses or even to know in advance what poses I might get (will they even be uniform? Who knows!), I just don't want to take the plunge.

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  3. Did you had paint the shields?

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