More Oscan Auxilia

Once again a unit of Oscans have run past my Iberians waiting on the painting table. This time it is another unit of Auxilia. Auxilia by the way is latin for "It helps", meaning they are not part of the regular army, but more a reserve of some sort, that helps out in times of war.

Here is the unit:

This time I chose a more fitting uniform than the first unit got. The dress here is definately more Oscan, and the shield design is too more Oscan than before. This one can be seen on the box art, that is, apart from the inverted E i painted on, which should be replaced by a wolf. Since my painting skills do not make it possible for me to paint that many identical wolfheads on a shield I chose to paint the letter the Oscans used for E, and that is the inverted E.

Three conversions are present in the line-up of figures. They are simple headswaps. Can you find them? The 11 figures are all of the same pose, with 3 of the 11 being the conversions. There is also the Oscan officer painted in the scheme of the unit as well. 12 figures all in all.

Here is a close-up of the common figure in the bunch.

The belt is shown in all illustrations I could find, as being golden or gold, but I found that it was not to far fetched that it could be leather. This fellow too is barefooted. I could have made the edges of his sleeves white too I guess, but I went with a simpler design.

Here is a close-up of the officer figure.

I think I could have painted him a bit better. There are some edges along the armor on the backside that seem to have been guilded. That is golden paint has run out on the cloth. Not very professional of me, I guess. The camera really catches all those small faults you do not notice when painting, even in bright light.

A bit of info on the Oscans I guess is appropriate. Especially since I did not give any in the last post. They are an Italian Oscan speaking collection of tribes, that lived south of Rome, basically. The most numerous of them were the Samnite League, which I have yet to paint any of. These Oscans here are just meant to be general Oscans. They wrote from Right to Left. That is opposite of the direction you are reading this. They were eventually conquored by the Romans, but there were several big wars. The Samnite wars being the most known. There were three of them.

Oh and did you find the conversions? If not here they are.

The figure to the left is perhaps the worst one of the lot. His head and neck has a sort of platform that I forgot to remove before attaching the head to the body. The two others have the same heads as the "Officer". You got 8 of the "officer" pose per package of HäT Italian Allies, and I somehow managed to pick up 7½ packages. (Two of them just recently.... I should really have checked how many I already had).

~Claus