"My new army: Spartacus in 15mm" Topic

Hi everyone.
A project done, another one is starting. I've always wanted to paint a Sparactus army. I know it's not about the results, but simply about the joy of collecting minis and painting them.
I've chosen mainly a mix of Corvus Belli and Xyston, and I've finished a unit of untrained slaves/levies. To avoid being swamped by the number of minis, I've cheated a bit and made some fiery rollers.

Tell me what you think:

link

very nicely done, excellent work!

too cool!

Ive always thought a Spartacus army would be hard to do, but you have done a great job with it so far!

I really like them!

The fiery rollers are a good touch

Excellent!

Jupiter's cock but they look set to purpose!

They look great.

They look great I would suggest a little more"Roman" and less Celtic. As the slaves were from all across the empire there would be a good percentage of non-bearded long haired types that we associate with Celts. There would also be lots of Roman type armor and of course gladiator types. What you painted would be very suitable for units on the flanks. I would suggest that the centre units be more heavily armored particularly in the front ranks.

from fanaticus look at the heavies in the front behind the skirmishers

Would I, a noble slave-owing civilized good Roman citizen allow a dirty unkempt barbarian to retain his barbaric plaid clothing, let alone his long hair and beard!? Certainly not.
However we do see this in the illustrations, and of recent 'reference' books such as the Osprey book on the subject.(*) My slaves would be in good Roman attire, of the cheapest quality I grant you, but Roman, not barbaric.

(*) While I grant you in many months long hair and beards may be regrown, where did they get the plaid? Not from the Romans and almost assurdedly these would not be allowed to be kept. And the shields of Celtic design?? Would they even build them or just use the Roman ones found left on previous battlefields? (I shake my head at those Osprey illustrations)

I know it is not 100% historical. I' ve chosen some celtic shields simply because I didn't have enough roman shields in stock ( bad planning, I know). I've received new ones, so it should be ok.
About the armour: those are the newly trained slaves. Did this "newcomers" have armour, maybe not. The trained slaves will be mostly in armour indeed. About the "hairy" look from some of them. Well remember that there were many Gallic and German slaves, and beards can grow very fast ( I know what I'm talking about;).

Cheers

I went with a mix of hairyness – after all, many were shepherds etc. who were virtually left to their own devices whereas others were field slaves – chained up every night and likely with cropped hair which may not have had time to grow.
I was also surprised by the Osprey pics with a German warband running up a hill at the Romans. For the wargames table a bit more artistic license is acceptable – I particularly like the flaming logs. :) Loads of energy in the poses too.

I put some links to the source material for the Spartacus War on my blog if anyone is inspired by Seb's work to do a bit of reading – link

If you're after 15mm gladiators in arena dress, I have a survey of manufacturers here --> link