Roman Armour

DaiSho · Post by **DaiSho** » Tue May 26, 2009 7:09 am

Hi All,

Doing some Late Roman types (as per my pictures in this forum).

I'm going to paint them up so that each BG of 4-6 has a particular colour. Like, the ones that I've already done are 'red'. The next ones I do will be 'green', 'blue' and 'orange'. That way I can moderatly easily distinguish between the BG's and tell quickly and easily what grade/armour etc the troops are. Probably not overly historical, but I've always said 'never let the facts get in the way of a good paint job' and whilst they aren't particularly fantastic, in this particular case I'm using it for games purposes as well.

So, in broad terms I'm probably going to have something like 50% of my army with 'Armoured' and 50% of my army with 'Protected', and additionally 50% superior and 50% average.

So, I got to thinking, sure I can paint up different colours and know 'red' is always Armoured Superior and 'green' is always Protected Average, but if I'm pretty sure I'm going to have my troops 50% armoured and 50% Protected anyway - why not paint some of the armour Iron and Bronze. Considering at the scale I'm painting the most prominent and obvious armour is helmets and shield bosses. I've noticed artworks in the past (q.v. plates 'b' and 'f' of the Osprey The Roman Army - from Caesar to Trajan (revised edition)) with Romans wearing Bronze and Iron interchangeably, but I'm not sure it that was artistic licence of two centuries of time difference in one frame with artistic licence or whether they did indeed use different metals at different places and times.

Given this is Dominate Roman, it's fairly late (and I'm also totally clueless as to the makeup of the Roman army - I'm pretty much making it up as I go along), so I'm wondering - do you think it would look totally 'out of character' for half of my army to be helmeted (is there such a word as helmeted?) with bronze and the other half with steel?

That way, if one day I play the whole army armoured and/or protected I can just ignore the metal code and keep the colour codes for qualities etc etc. A bit more scope for qualification.

Interested in feedback.

Ian

philqw78 · Post by **philqw78** » Tue May 26, 2009 7:22 am

Why not use the shield patterns to differentiate your units. Much more historical, and then you can also pretend you know something about them. Late empire shield patterns are known as is the status of the unit they belonged to. Palatina for superior, comitatensis (? spelling help needed) for average, pseudo-comitatensis for poor BG.

philqw78 · Post by **philqw78** » Tue May 26, 2009 7:27 am

Try

http://www.ne.jp/asahi/luke/ueda-sarson ... alis1.html

Or

Armies and Enemies of Imperial Rome from WRG

DaiSho · Post by **DaiSho** » Tue May 26, 2009 7:29 am

philqw78 wrote:Why not use the shield patterns to differentiate your units. Much more historical, and then you can also pretend you know something about them. Late empire shield patterns are known as is the status of the unit they belonged to. Palatina for superior, comitatensis (? spelling help needed) for average, pseudo-comitatensis for poor BG.

Because of two reasons:

The Romans are probably actually going to be used for things other than Romans (and out of period too) like Palmyrans etc and in 10mm I'm not going to try to do fancy sheild patterns. A bit of a spash here a bit of a dab there - that'll do

I may (as time passes) fix them up a bit, but my immediate aim is to get them on bases by the end of next week

Ian

philqw78 · Post by **philqw78** » Tue May 26, 2009 7:30 am

Why do you care what their armour looks like then?

madaxeman · Post by **madaxeman** » Tue May 26, 2009 8:39 am

You could get away with bronze for (some) helmets in this period as helments were easier to make in bronze than iron, and some may well have been handed down anyway, However armour would mostly / all have been iron - bronze would be out of place.

caliban66 · Post by **caliban66** » Tue May 26, 2009 9:24 am

Polibius describes roman helmets as cast in bronce, not in iron. (see book VI).

Fulgrim · Post by **Fulgrim** » Tue May 26, 2009 3:18 pm

didnt they "decorate" with bronze on edges and such? perhaps they decorated the whole helmet once in a while...

DaiSho · Post by **DaiSho** » Tue May 26, 2009 7:28 pm

philqw78 wrote:Why do you care what their armour looks like then?

There is a difference between painting the army generic so that it can be used in multiple areas and painting the armour pink with yellow daisies.

Your suggestion (which I accept as a good one - and one in other circumstances I may agree to) would mean that I'd have Legio 'blah' who should be 'Superior' and Legio 'blah' who should be 'Average', so if I wanted to use them all as average in the Palmyran army I'd have some total tool in a comp say (as I've had similar said to me in comps before)

"That's Legio 'blah', they never fought for the Palmyrans. Besides that, they were in the west, not in the east. You've totally got the wrong colours as well, it should be red, not scarlet. The yellow looks a little pale too. You've made them AVERAGE? They were superior. Don't you realise that the commander of this Legion, who also happened to be brother to the commander of Legio XXI was second cousin to the Emperor, and these exact men became the Pretorian Guard... but they weren't called the Pretorian Guard at this time..." said the Grognard Wargamer
"Is it ok if I put my figures on the table now? These are Protected Average..." said Ian,
"PROTECTED? PROTECTED???

They were always armoured..."
"

Yes, but I'm using them as Protected... they are only a representation of the troops ok?"
"*mumbles* might as well use tiddly winks".

I guess there is a good side to that type of start-up to a game. At least you know from the start what kind of game you're going to have!

Thanks for your input tho Phil.

Ian

DaiSho · Post by **DaiSho** » Tue May 26, 2009 7:30 pm

Fulgrim wrote:didnt they "decorate" with bronze on edges and such? perhaps they decorated the whole helmet once in a while...

Well, in this case the entire BG 'decorated' their helmets Bronze

That's ok.

I like the rationale

Ian