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| Box front |
I such a non-ancients player that I'd confused my boxes of Celtiberians and Spanish in previous posts,
but I believe that they're both one and the same anyway! (And both probably featured in Hannibal's army.)
Both boxes are from the HaT range of ancient figures and I'll use this post to show what I've managed to achieve with the figures although I'm still currently 'working' on them and haven't got any finished off yet - real life issues as always getting in the way of any real progress.
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| Back of HaT box (*snigger) |
The reverse of the box, as is normal with HaT boxes (*smirk) shows line drawings of representations of the figures, which, as usual, are four poses to a sprue and four sprues to the box, giving sixteen figures.
There are two distinctive 'uniforms' to these figures one with a helmet and the other with a distinctive headgear that I'm sure ancients gamers will recognise. Two of the figures are armed with small shields and two are armed with larger shields, maybe not quite scutum size but fairly large nonetheless. (Didn't the Romans nick the idea of their larger shield anyway ?)
All the figure are also armed with a distinctive short sword (falcata ?).
The following two photographs show the fronts and backs of the figures on the sprue, but has been photoshopped so that they all have the same orientation.
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| Front view |
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| Back of fiures |
As is usual with these figures, the detailing is very good, well above the level of toys but probably well below that expected of collectors - still good enough though for my purposes.
The most annoying thing from my perspective though was the shields on the figures, as the 'spear throwers' each have a different type of shield to their purely sword armed counterparts!
As I did with my
Velites I wanted to make four pairs of figures, four with spears and their sword-armed counterparts for using after they had thrown their spears. (I am aware that their "spears" are actually pila and there are rules for these).
Whilst the distinctive 'Spanish' headgear isn't that useful for my purposes, the smaller Roman style helmeted is very usable in the arena.
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| Small helmeted spear-hrower with large shield |
As I wanted pairs of figures with identical shields, the
solution was to cut shields from figures and attach them to an alternate figure, thus getting the pairs of figures I wanted. It was a pretty tricky jobe especially as the spear-throwers' shields were also attached to the figure, rather than just their arms. Much cursing and spilling of blood followed but eventually I managed the task.
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| Small Helmeted sword-armed figure with small shield |
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The two photographs show the conversions, that will eventually yield two of the small (roman style) helmeted figures with small shield and throwing spears and two other spear-thrower with the larger shields, giving me four figures each with a counterpart.
So, four pairs of figures in total, which although not entirely historical (maybe) very usable as generic 'light' gladiators for my games.but they do give me a bit more variety to my lighter-armed gladiators. There is reference to the "eques" too, fighting in tunics and no armour other than a helmet, so I do have a kind of historical precedence (Note though that the helmet is different and had feathers ) .
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| Mosaic of two "eques" fighting |
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| Four spear-throwers (top row) with their sword-wielding counterparts |
Here's a photograph of eight of the figures that I've "converted"; the figures with the distinctive Spanish head-wear may well not see any action in my arena!
TIn the photograph, the figure are paired with a spear thrower on the top row and his sword-armed counterpart beneath him on the lower row.
I've got four others 'converted' currently being painted up and a final sprue of another four to 'convert' (swap shield about)
That's it for this week I hope that there's been something of interest here, hopefully I'll be posting up pics of the painted figures next week, health and time allowing.
