Wargames Factory Romans I Building the Legionaries

Box Contents

Here are all the pieces, cut off their sprues. You get three cornicens, three signifers, six optio/centurion torsos, and 12 each of three different legionary torsoes. You also get three heads with transverse crests, three heads with front-to-back crests, 18 heads with plume laying on the helmet, and 18 heads with plume just off the helmet. You get three arms with vine staffs, three arms with sword for the optio (or centurion), three arms with cornicen, three arms to support the cornicen, three arms with totem-style standard, three arms with a legion's eagle, 45 shield arms, 12 arms holding an upright gladius, 12 arms stabbing with gladius, 12 arms holding an upright pilum, and 12 arms throwing pila. Finally, you get 48 shields and 72 transfers for the shields.

Heads

Here are the two legionary heads with plumes. The head on the right will be useful for anyone wishing to cut the plume off, but the plume on the left head isn't going anywhere. At least half your legionaries must wear plumes.

Head with plume, head without plume

This is the same head style. The plumes were easy to cut off, and the clean cut made it hard to tell the helmets had ever had a plume. I made one unit of plumeless legionaries, which you'll see soon if you keep reading the review.

Torsoes

The legionary torsoes come in three flavors. This was my least favorite of the three, since the legionary appears to be squatting. I've read on TMP that some people don't like the look of the Wargames Factory figures, thinking them too squat. Honestly, this is the only pose that criticism applies to, and there are only twelve of these in the box.

Here you can see that I cut away the gladius handle on these torsoes, since these figures are for my unit with drawn gladius.

The figures took glue very well, and I only had one slight breakage during painting (which was easily fixed). Still, constructing the figures took a long time. I would suggest that Wargames Factory consider making the shield arm part of the figure on future sets, which would save time building the figures, make the pose more natural, and allow the figures to rank up more easily (more on that later).

The Finished Product

So here's what you get for your $30. These are all 48 of the box's figures.

Part II: Advancing with Gladius