Legionaries

Four figures in the same pose

I had a fanciful idea that I'd stage mini 'battles' as reported in many historical accounts and of course as featured in the film 'Gladiator', but on a much lesser scale.
Whilst looking for the best buy on my actual gladiators  I came across "A Call to Arms" Romans on ebay and as they were fairly cheap (about £4.50 for 16 figures) i thought why not.
The set consists of sixteen figures in four poses, with one of each pose per sprue.

Boring rear view.

As you probably would expect, some of the poses are more appealing than others. The first pose shown above probably loans itself more to 'converting' than the other three poses and I've bent the arms slightly on each figure to give more individualism to each figure,

Second most satisfactory

The second pose has little that can be done with the figure as the sword arm and weapon is firmly attached to the figure and my sculpting skills are far beyond coping with what would be major surgery. I settled instead for a slight change in head angles and their positioning on the base,

Ans the obligatory boring rear shot.

More or less acceptable after a head twist.

I wanted a dozen figures for the 'unit, which would leave me four figures spare
Here's a couple of the less-than satisfactory types on which I've have to turn their heads to the right, rather than leaving them  face-on with shield and weapon  outstretched.

Same figures, different view.

The picture on the left gives a more representative view , if the figures had their heads facing the camera.
Their sword-arms were also bent into a more acceptable figure too,

Last two, not too bad

The last pair of figures, again showing yet another strange position, though I have once more bent their weapon-arms.

With four figures 'left-over' i decided to make two of them casualties, other than being cut from their bases, these have had nothing else done to them.
You'll notice that I haven't painted nay of the lighting bolts or eagle wings onto the shields, my reasoning being two-fold.
1) I'm a crap painter
2) They're only fancy tokens after all.


Finally here's a group shot of them:

That's it for this week, next week I'll be trying to finish the figures I started last week. These legionaries have only had their bases painted up and they were actually painted months ago!