More Samnite Warriors

As the title says, time for some more Samnite Warriors. As has been the theme lately, these are from the Linnen Legion. That is all painted in white, and with the dash of silver inbetween.

Here is the whole unit.

No surpise in the looks. As I wrote above, they are all white. I like to think of these as being the elite Samnites, among the Elites. The Linnen Legion was in itself elite, but someone has to be even more elite than the elite.

Here is the pose that is the most numerous in the unit.

I really like it. He looks tough, and stands like he is more or less ready for anything. Really the pose I like the most of all the poses in the HäT set.

But with so many copies of the same figure in the unit, I thought some variety would be welcome. So three of the have the same helmet now, that the one to the left has on this picture. It was a simple headswap, from the kneeling pose, that I have yet to paint.

The figure on the right is also a headswap conversion. This time with the head from the "officer figure" that I have shown before.

The HäT set does not come wth a standardbearer, as earlier discussed, but I am using the spear with an enemies clothes as one none the less. The horn blower or musician in this picture, below, is not from HäT.

It is from the Odemars, Oscan Infantry set. I found most of the poses in that set useless. Much to flat, or too much flash, and too little definition. Painting this guy was mostly to see if it could be done. And it could. He looks alittle out of place, but not much.

Next up, I think I might just finish the Iberian unit that is on my painting table and has been for a while. I just need to paint the belts and leather straps in plausible colors, and then paint the bases of the figures. So not much. Alas I do not feel up to it in this heat, we are having here these days. But maybe if the nights turn out as sleepless as recently I will do it during one of those.

~Claus

Samnite Cavalry

I realize it has been a few days since my last update. I was suffering a little bit from burn out. I guess it is one of the risks of painting many figures. Well fear not, I have some units almost ready to jump of the painting table, and onto the photoshoot.

Here first is the unit of Samnite Cavalry, of the Linen Legion, that I have painted.

It is a smallish unit, compared to the ones I usually make, even for Cavalry, but it should be proportionate to the number of infantry I have in my units.

Here is a picture of the horse pose, with rider, in side view. Note I usually do not paint the many pieces of bit and tackle. So I have omitted those here. Also I don´t usually paint hoofs. So likewise omitted.

I try to paint horses to a certain scheme. That is always a color I know a horse can be, with a darker mane, and tail.  believe it gives a nice realistic look, without being too complex. Horses of course are not all brown, nor black, but mine usually are. It is simply easier to deal with when painting.

Here is a look at the rider and horse in front view.

I took this picture, the way I ordinarily take pictures of rank and file troops. But in this case I had to take it at an angle. Why do you ask? Well the feathers on the horse simply obscured the riders face, and much of the helmet. Making it look rather strange.

I am assuming that these riders are all samnites, because they have the triple disc pattern on the breastplate/pectoral. I found a note in one of Ospreys titles that said that they would look much like the Campanian Cavalry depicted, except that they would have the samnite breastplate. Originally I thought one of the more unarmored ones were samnites.

~Claus

Samnite Auxilia

I painted up some Samnite Auxilia, of the Linen Legion. I am going on the asumption that the legion included both light and heavy troops, as well as cavalry.

Here is a look at the unit.

They are not surpisingly white and silver in color. I tried taking the picture from an angle and alittle from above, to give an impression of depth. I think I succeeded. The unit does not look "flat", so mission accomplished.

Here is a look at the pose that is most numerous in the unit.

White on white is not the best way to bring out details. So I have used light grey as crest color, and a yellowish cream color for the back of the shield. I think it looks ok. The belt, sources show, are inlaid with silver or iron, so, I painted it silver.

Here is a look at the unit leader.

Not much to say about him really. Except that the difference in silver and iron is much more prominent on the pictures I have taken than in real life.

At the moment I have three units on the painting table. One Samnite Linen Legion heavy unit, One Samnite Cavalry, of the Linen Legion too, and a unit of Iberian Caetrati. The two first are HaT products, the latter is all Orion figures. So those are the coming attractons!

~Claus

Samnite Infantry

Another Oscan unit, this time a Samnite Infantry unit, part of the Linen legion (or silver legion) has raced ahead of a Iberian unit I was painting at the same time.

It is a unit, 16 strong, with 14 identical poses. They are as earlier mentioned part of the Linen Legion, or Silver Legion. Thus they are considered elite. The Linen legion was chosen in the following manner. The General, selected 10 men who he considered to be strong and braver than the rest, these in turn again each selected 10 men, and so on, until the Legion was 16.000 strong. They were then placed on the right side of the battlefield, as this was a position of honor. They were all clad in white, and had silvered weapons and armor. This was considered holy to them. The rest of the army was deployed on the left, and they numbered some 24.000. They were not clad in white and silver, but had many colors, and golden weapons and armor.

Here is a look at the pose that is the  most common in the unit: the spearman.

Again I have on purpose given him "shoes". The metal on him is either painted silver or chainmail color. Everything else, is white or whitish. The spear is kept in wood color. The box, which you get these figures in (HäT 8040), does not specify which Italians are which tribe, but the samnites are easily recognized by the tripledisc breastplate that they have.

The officer, and standardbearer are the same pose. The standardbearer is not really carrying a standard either. It is a spear with the tunic of a defeated enemy drapped over it, and his belt on top. The idea was to display that your enemy had been forced to become naked, and thus was defeated.

Here is a look at the standardbearer.

As you can see, he is more heavily armored. It is quite possible that he is actually not a Samnite, but some other type of Italian, as he is not wearing a triple disc. However he will do just fine for me. He is also a headswap conversion.

Here is a look at the officer.

He has been equiped with a sword, which I guess will denote him as an officer.  The crest on his helmet might not be a crest, but part of the helmet design. But I have chosen to paint it as a crest. Not that it is very visibile with the Silvered helmet and the light grey crest (Ghostly grey).

Thats it for this post.

~Claus

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

Oscan Auxilia

A bit in from left field is here a post about my recently painted Oscan Auxiliaries. To be honest I got a little bored painting the Iberians, and thought a change of pace would be fine. Better to be painting something than nothing at all.

So here they are. A single unit. 12 men, 2 poses. Or rather one pose, and an officer. I more or less painted these from imagination, rather than a historical source. Then I check the sources and tried to make up for my blunders. A smaller blunder of mine is that perhaps the Oscans never really wore shoes. The officer is clearly wearing some, so perhaps I should have painted them skin color, so he would be barefoot like the rest of them.

Another blunder can be seen on this shield design. Not sure that this color combination ever occured. So to make up for it, I thought I would put a symbol on the shields that was definately Oscan. Turns out its hard to find symbols. Then I got a brainchild, what if I used part of the Oscan Alphabet. And sure enough, it was less hard to find the ancient Oscan alphabet. So I used one of the 21 letters they had as a symbol. A V with a dot in it.

The officer is perhaps not an officer, but just another Oscan. However he is heavily armored and with a cupped hand. I put a sword in it. The shield is also glued on. Both are from the HäT set which these figures are from.

This is then a small unit, by some standards, of just 12 men, but with just one pose it felt like there where more, when painting them. The standard pose is unarmored, and just has a shield and spear, so they are Auxilia. They are basically painted generically enough to represent any Oscan tribe, the tribes of ancient Italy, before Rome took all of it.

~Claus