Regular followers will know that one of the surprise additions of last year was a Saxon warband. That was an accidental spin-off from my Germanic tribes project and something that took on a life of its own. You can read more about that journey here.
Towards the end of that post I wrote, 'I've worked out that if I were to buy another twenty or so figures of Romano-British or Arthurian types, that would give me enough figures for both opposing warbands for Dux Britanniarum. Hmmm, twenty figures, that's not a lot now, is it......'. Even as I typed those words I knew how this was going to end.
While I didn't set any deadlines or timeframe, I had casually investigated what was available in terms of figures. In the end it was serendipity. While perusing one of the trade stands at the Cancon convention in January I stumbled across a heavily discounted set of Wargames Atlantic late Roman armoured infantry. A box of 24 figures, almost exactly what I needed. Not a difficult decision.
Naturally, that wasn't quite the end of it. I wanted suitable shield transfers and Little Big Men Studios had a few sets that would work well, except.....they didn't fit the Wargames Atlantic shields. Happily, Victrix sell sets of shields separately. So, the money I saved buying the figures was reinvested in the shields. Que sera, sera.
In terms of what I need for Dux Britannarium, from the 24 figures in the WA set, I can make a Lord, possibly someone we'd describe as a Tribune, his Champion and a group of six Comanipulares, the force's elite troops.
Together with most of the remaining figures I could make up a total of three units. The aforementioned Comanipulares, plus two groups of Milites or Combrogi, who are defined as Warriors in Dux terms.
From that one box, I now have those three groups plus the main nobles and the champion, which completes what I need for the British force. As with the Saxons, they are based on 60x60mm squares with six figures to a base. I discussed the rationale behind that basing in the earlier post about the Saxons, so there's no need to repeat it here, suffice to say it gives me some flexibility for a number of different rule sets.
Below are the two groups of milites with their noble.
Their Saxon equivalents come mainly from the Gripping Beast plastic range. While those figures are on the shorter side, especially if you compare them with something like the Victrix range they don't look too bad up against the Wargames Atlantic figures.
I've tried to mix up the helmets so they don't all look as though they are all dressed the same. While there is very little in the way of historical evidence as to how they appeared, we do know that legions remained in Britain and so there is a good chance the appearance didn't change significantly from the late Roman period. The nobles and champion are based individually, as I've done with the Saxon equivalents.
The levy in the British force are made up of Gripping Beast Dark Age Warriors. A box of these figures was what started this whole project and having sufficient of those to make up units for both a Saxon and British force led me to add the extra figures to complete each warband. While those figures are not a perfect match in terms of size, I don't think you really notice much of a difference when the bases are side by side (which they would rarely be in the course of a game anyway).
The Saxon nobles and champion are Victrix figures. They are noticeably larger than the Gripping Beast figures in the warband under their command, but not so much so compared with those from Wargames Atlantic, which probably sit somewhere in the middle.
So, with those Romano-British warriors and their nobles completed that gives me a range of options to field both sides for games using Dux Britanniarum, but also Lion Rampant or Midgard. It's all been a bit of an impulsive diversion from what I really should be doing and that's painting up the early imperial Romans to oppose my Germanic tribes. That's the next project on the bench. Well, that's the plan at least....
Of course, having created these two warbands, I now have to find time to actually play games with them. Bah, as if a small issue like that would have stopped this project anyway.
