Mustering Caesars Legion

After introducing the initial idea of Ancient SAGA with Caesar's Legion, it is time to bring some (plastic) pieces together and get it started. The basic foundation of this project are two boxes of plastic 28mm romans from Warlords Hail Caesar range.

To be flexible, it started with both boxes of roman legionaries, those with gladius and those with pillum. Both boxes cover 24 soldiers incl. command, that should be enough to field a proper sized warband for SAGA (around 6 points + sideboard). These romans wear the montefortino helmet, which has a nice and distinctive look to it, plus it gives the warband a first line of consistency.

There are three sprue variants, legionaries with gladius and slings, legionaries with pillum and the command sprue. Both boxes cover each 5 of the legionary sprues and share the command sprue.

Here is a close up. The upper part is the same on each sprue. So they all have 4 different shields, 6 different heads, 4 different bodies. In case of the command sprue you receive the parts for an officer, musician and banner bearer. The pillum sprue adds 4 right arms with pillum, and the gladius sprue covers 4 right arms with gladius, two arms with slings and two ammo bags.

The cast is pretty good and the details convincing as well. Especially if you keep in mind, that chainmail is a tricky texture for plastic models.

As I had a few of the Early Imperial Roman sprues around, I looked for bits and pieces, that could be useful for variation, like heads and weapon arms to mix in. As well as additional Caesar's Legion sprues that I bought individually at one of sales from Warlord.

Beginning with the 3 groups of warriors, I stripped the pieces from the sprue and started sorting out the poses. As each group of 8 would be lead by one of the centurion models from the boxes. These decanus would all wear the gladius, so I modified the sculpted swords they carry on their belts and cut of the upper part from the scabard. So it look like the gladius are drawn.

In addition, as I'm not fond of a clone army, I cut of the helm crest and switched these with the montefortino helmets for more variation as you can see from the second picture. Each group of 8 consists in this case of a decanus (leader of 8), a standard bearer and 6 legionaries with pillum.

To support the regular troops, I bought a few blisters. Vorenus and Pullo as Warlord, a command blister for the hearthguard and casualties to mix in, maybe fatigue markers etc. The hearthguard would be carrying gladius to distinguish themselves from the regular warriors. I went with the metal command blister, as these had more dramatic poses and added five legionaries with gladius. Of course, I modified the molded scabards to fit with the drawn swords.

A brief group shot of the warband, with the 3 groups of 8 warriors, the 2 groups of 4 hearthguard, the warlord and a group of 12 levies. The levies are regular roman legionaries, armed with pillum (I had to mix in a few weapon army from the EIR range, as I was running short on pillum arms and wanted more different poses) and the horsehair cut away, to make them look less glorious compared to the other units of the warband. In addition the levies will not receive the large shields, only the smaller one - if at all.

As 2x 4 hearthguard felt a bit short, and I wanted to have the option to field two groups of 6 each, I build another 4 hearthguard, but in a more veteran look with the bandaged heads from the EIR sprue and a bare head from the late roman kit by Gripping Beast.

As a final mid-step the bases were taken care of with filler, and I decorated the base of the Warlord(s), so next up would be adding sand to the bases.

Currently still waiting for the Aetius & Arthur supplement to be delivered, as well as the remaining re-inforcement for the other two ancient warbands (unarmoured warriors and cavalry for the Iberians, and the proper hearthguard for the Germans).

Hope you liked the insight in the planning and building process, next up is adding the sand, primer and first colours. I'll keep you posted.