Retia

I finally got around to finishing off my retiarii by affixing the nets (the Retia of the title) to the

Onion mesh bag cut into suitable sizes ;circles'

figures. They have been painted for a while now after many changes in colour choices. I'm quite happy with the overall effect I've achieved by using so many different colours (three different browns, two greens and yellow ochre.
Originally I had made the nets to roughly circular scale 4 metres diameter (about 4 inches or 10cm), as my best research seemed to indicate. bebut found that when adding them to the figure they occupied far to much space, especially as I had to really fit them into the 3cm sided hexes I use.

Retiarius with net added

I therefore cut them down to a more practical size of about 3inches which suited me far better.
The attachment was very straight-forward in that I looped one hole in the net over the hand of the retiarius and glued  in place. The remainder of the net was then draped either around his had (if it was one of the gathered ends)  to represent the retrieval rope for a cast net or on the ground by his left side. spots of superglue on both the net and firmly attached the net both to itself and the base, finishing off the figure.

Same figure, different view

And again

Another 'net-man'

I did make an extra net to represent a discarded one, but haven't based it up yet (along with all the other detritus of the arena that still needs doing - i.e. weapons and shields); and that as they say is with these figures now 'finished',  my Gladiator project is all but finished.

And another different one...

...who has probably the most dynamic pose

The final one named "Blurius"

There are a few bits and pieces still to do of course, like the aforementioned detritus and a few counters too are needed.















I also have other, fairly suitable figures that may make an appearance in my arena and some animals too, so I will be still adding to the collection but not at the same rate as this last year and as they are added I will of course post about them.

Thanks for taking the time to visit here and I hope you've found something of interest.

Lights

"Red" sword and spear

I have managed to finish off the Carthaginian light infantry "conversions" that I posted about last
time; lack of enthusiasm, time and illness have all lead to my very slow output since pre-xmas and
I'm finding it increasingly difficult to produce anything  - I blame my age !

Although initially I was going to use the same format as my other pairs of figures, but I went this time with colour co-ordinated tunics , but as I was unhappy with the resultsI only managed two pairs  like this, the other two pairs being in white with some colour to denote their pairing with their sword/spear version.

"Yellow"

I wanted to have some fairly drab colours for the tunics and wnet for a dull red and a basic yellow ochre , although the shields on the "yellow" paring are in facte several different washes of brown (probably not that evident from the photographs).

"Team Green"

The blue and green pairs each were given a stripe of their allotted colour around the base of their tunic in addition to their shield colouring.

The whole group

 

 

I did discover that there is only so much you can do with 'converting' these figures (at least at the level of conversion I'm talking about) and some of the sword-arm poses s look a bit suspect, but what the heck, as I've said before these are merely playing pieces in my own elaborate version of a board game,  

Thanks for taking the time to visit, I hope you found something of interest.

Next time (note maybe not next week), I may even get around to fixing those nexts to my retiarii figures!

"Conversions"

HaT box front

I don't really know if what I'm doing to my figures really qulifies as converting them as I'm mostly just re-purposing and adjusting their stances.
My latest efforts in press-ganging figures comes from the HaT box (*smirk) 9120 - Carthaginian Light Infantry (as shown)
As usual there are four sprues each of four different figures in the box.
This was my first HaT box of 54mms that I bought and came from a fairly local model shop for the princely sum of £4.50 (less than 30p a figure!).

Rear box art

Unlike the newer box art of a single figure , this older version features an artists impression of the four figures in the box, whilst the reverse shows line drawings of figures within and a' painting guide' .
Opening the box is where reality clashes with artistry,
The two figures I'm currently interested in are the two helmeted ones, as shown on the front, with their red shields and long bronze spine.

Once more I've paired the two similarly dressed figures for use in the arena to be used as a spearman and a duplicate for when he has dispensed with his spear and drawn his sword. 
Even the line illustrations of the two figures
 don't give cause for concern as there seems little conversion work to do on either figure and all that will remain to be done is to re-position their stances a little to give at least some semblance of variation.
These of course being very lightly armed will be used as velites in the animal hunts (normally the first session in an arena's day (and in my games too- if they ever get really going on a regular basis).

The original on the left and plume-less on the right

 So where's the problem then?
Mr. Spearthrower (Thruster ?) has what appears to be a small plume atop his helmet,which is probably just sprue to enable easier moulding and was fairly easily removed, but his shield has none of the lovely veriucal spin on it as shown on the front box art - even the small drawing showed the pose on the left, thus hiding the omitted spine.

The Spineless Spearman

Original swordsman on the left, and 'converted' one on the right

His sword armed counterpart on the other hand does have the spine on his shield - as illustrated.
So for uniformity between the two figures (spear and sword armed) I got to cutting away the spine and the supporting pieces to the centre boss on the sword-armed version. This a more or less gave a suitably similar figure to the spear armed one, save for the very nicely done shield edge, which of course had to be cut away too as Mr Spearman didn't have one on his shield!

Re=positioned Spearman

  The spearman took little to no time cutting his his plume off and slightly re-positioning his spear-arm and leg (there's only so much that can be done) and were duly based up.
You'll probably notice the bases are cut-up plastic 'credit' cards and are great for my purposes. 
The quillons on their sword hilts were also cut back to more represent the gladius (- and as I thought the ones present looked odd)

The swordsman took a little while longer to finish off, especially after I stabbed my index finger on my left hand and slashed the corresponding one on my right hand a day later (the latter not hobby related! - for a change).
There wA A litttle more that could be done re-positioning the sword arm, but not much.

And in case you're wondering where the fourth figure of the group is - he went awol at the time of the photoshoot (but now found).. These will have their bases finished and painted in the coming week (or more) and I'll be taking another look at adding nets to my retiarii 0 which is all I managed to do to them in the last week too (i.e. look at them).

That's it then for this week.

Velites (3)

The completed Velites

I've been working on some more light gladiators from the HaT Spanish box, specifically the ones that don't look too "Spanish".
Following on from the last conversion of four of the figures (two pairs) to represent the same figure with and without spear I've converted the remainder of the less-Spanish looking figures.
The conversion was simple enough, cutting the shields off two figures and adding one to another figure. The great thing from my pov is that you can hardly see the join.

"Mr. Blue"

Following on my already established protocol of  having the figures colour-coded I painted the remaining pairs each with their own distinctive colours, blue, red and green, having already painted a pair using yellow.
The only difference between these additions and the original is that I added a coloured stripe to the hem of their tunics.
*You can see in the photograph above that the nearest pair don't have this strip though I may add it at a later stage)
Mr Blue on the left, you will note is the only one with a large shield - probably completely anachronistic for "velites" in the arena, though it does add variety

"Mr. Red"

The spear-armed versions of the fighter are each carrying a a "pilum" rather than the more typical spear or javelins used by the velites - or more properly the "venator" or animal hunters.
The rules I'm using do allow for each of the different types of throwing weapon, but I'm adjusting the rules on pila to allow for their effect on shields (if these are used against other shield-armed gladiators). 
Spears have greater 'range' in melee (two hexes) but are at half effect (combat factors) when used single-handedly. If used two-handed then they have full effect but only at close (1 hex) range.

The photograph on the left shows the original figure (leftmost) and the three others; other than the original (Mr. Yellow") each has some variation on the position of the shield and spear arms which can be made out from the photograph hopefully.

Add caption

Here's the equivalent figures with only their sword, having dispensed with their spears (pila in this case)
All but "Mr. Blue" (far right) have had new shields added and very little else in the way of conversion. Their shield arms are joined solidly to their torso from the elbow to the shoulder and anything other than moving the lower part of the arm is well above my level of modelling, so there is little in the way of different positioning. I have however managed to cut down their distinctive Spanish weapon to a more representative gladius, though once again  not on all of them, purely for variation.

Finally here's another group-shot.
We're just about ready to feature some animal fights in the arena so these should come in very handy.

Next time I'll either be featuring either my Retiarii (again) as I'm working on their nets (and have finally arrived at a colour for them that I'm happy with) or I'll show how I'm getting on with even more "velites" , this time from the HaT box of Carthaginian Light Infantry.


That's it then for this week and maybe there's something here to interest someone.

It's all about the money

Another grizzly end for a tyro.

The campaign continued with two new players, giving four players for this meeting. Once again the two newcomers rolled for five gladiators each getting the usual batch of good, average and poor.
Everyone is more or less off to an equal footing, the two new players fought a bout and then they decided the wanted to watch the two more experienced players (myself and son #1) fight a bout too so they could see how we played a one out.
As we each only had two gladiators available to fight, a generic light and a generic heavy, we opted for the heavies.
This was a very interesting fight, my  gladiator Gluteus Maximus a favourite of the crowd (favourite=high prestige as his social class determined that he had once was a Senator) was pitted against some no-hoper called Brutus (although I referred to him mostly as the victim).

Gluteus Maximus on the left, Brutus on the right.

The match was a very hard fought one with some very interesting manoeuvres on both our parts. We both had moved so as to avoid a charge (three hexes) from the other  gladiator.
We did however get into combat and the heavier armour of these fighters proved to be a deciding factor in many combat rounds.
Maximus managed to both disarm my opponent and destroy his shield. unfortyunately not before he had got a telling mortal blow on Maximus.


Despite my attempts (as Maximus) at both hitting him and preventing his sword retrieval, he did come up with a cunning plan, Brutus backed off away from me and then charged (over two movement phases) in the hope that he would be stunned by the impact and knocked out and hence ending the fight. My greater strength and shield prevented him from acheiving his ambition  and I cut him down instead, Unlike Maximus though he did live to tell the tale, the crowd (whom I am sure were bribed) granted him a missus for his brave performance.
So at the end of that particular bout I got 125 sesterces for winning, plus 300 sesterces for entering a gladiator and of course saving on doctors fees. Whereas Brutus' ludus gained the 300 sesterces for entring, nothing for losing but he has gained a experience  and has the cash to be attended by a medicus (doctor).
At the auctions (we 're probably going to have one next time), the starting minimum bid for any prospective gladiator is the combined total of the five characteristics that are rolled for each nre gladiator (Training, strength, agility constitution and wounds) multiplied by ten to give a final figure.
Thus the average cost of an 'average' gladiator is about 230 to 259 sesterces and with more than two people bidding it's hard to see me getting one anywhere near that price !
 As I said in the title "It's all about the money" !

In other news I've nearly finished another of three pairs of' 'Spanish' infantry that I'll be using as "lights" and they'll probably be the subject of next week's post. I''ve also found some suitable netting for the my retiarii, so they too can be fully equipped  once they're cut out and painted. The netting came from a sleeve of onions and is square, which I originally wanted and preferred to the hexagonal one I was going to use.

Campaign

The starting positions of the first contestants.

This month saw my #1 son and I start an on-going campaign for gladiatorial combat.
We each "diced-up" the stats for five gladiators that ranged from volunteer Senators to criminals condemned to the arena.  Once their stats were known we allocated them to generic  roles of a 'light', two "mediums", a "heavy" and a "retiarius". - after they had fought once ib their 'generic' mode they could specialize into a specific  role after they had fought once in the arena.

Maneuverings leads to some interesting situations.

I had hoped for at least four participants but the two of us went ahead anyway. In my campaign, the number of ludi (read players) determines the prize money to be paid out to winning gladiators in addition to the fees paid for gladiators attending. As there were only the two of us he winning gladiators were paid 125 sesterces and another 200 sesterces were paid to the ludi for each participating gladiator, Has we had more players the fees would have been the same but the prize money increases up to a maximum of 1000 sesterces per winning gladiator.

The inevitable conclusion.

 The campaign is all about cash, with each player trying to accumulate the most cash .
To avoid the obvious problem of those winning combats accumulating so much wealth that they can outbid others at the auctions for new gladiators I've set the limit of how much cash can be held by each player's ludus at 2000s) and anything in excess of the 2000 that is gained goes into an untouchable  'deposit' account. This latter account is the milestone by which we determine 'winning' the campaign.
The rules do allow for the individual gladiators to accumulate "experience" (i.e. Experience points or XP) so that they can slowly get better statistics.

The start positions of the second bout

The stats that are used are Training, Strength, Agility, Constitution and Wounds. The number of combat factors (the points we use for attacks) is calculated from the addition of the training, strength and agility factors. Training factors range from 7 to 13 with an average of 9; Strength from -3 (yes it's a minus) to 5, average of 1; Agility from -3 to 4, av. 0; Constitution 1 to6, av.3; Wounds 8 to 15, av. 10.

And another one bites the dust...erm sand

One of the 'newer' ideas was to add in social origins to character generation, (as mentioned above), which not only gives a little more 'colour' and background to our gladiators, but also allows adds minor adjustments to a few of the stats. For example a gladiator that was a soldier has a training adjustment of +2, whilst a criminal has a -1 adjustment to his constitution stat.
There is also a "Prestige" (popularity) statistic that we have adopted, that gives a bonus in both combat factors and when appealing for a missus.


So that's it for this time, my campaign is off and running and in case you're wondering, I did win two very closely fought fights, the first by manoeuvre and the second by very good dice rolling !

2015 Recap

Figures completed

As a round-up to this project here's what I managed to do in 2015.
Having finished the conversion of the Playmobil arena and mounted it on a solid base-piece I managed to finish off some forty to fifty 54mm figures, gladiators, casualties, legionaries and some miscellaneous others.
I also sourced some cheap animal models that would fit in with the figures as very few were readily available in 1/32 scale (54mm).

Various Animals for the arena

Rules for the combats in the arena and for a campaign are an on-going process and seemingly never-ending as there is always some detail that can be added.
Similarly my figure collection, whilst more than adequate for simple gladiator fights, will continue to grow as I finish painting more of the figures I have a mind to use as alternative combatants along with some extra animals I have that are still to be utilised.
That's it then for this post. This project is about all but wrapped up and whilst I may not be posting on a regular basis in the future I will still be putting out the occasional post when I have something to post about !

To any that read this I hope you  have a good 2016.