"How to fix Old Glory 25mm Roman Heavy Cavalry CWG-21 arms?" Topic

I purchased some Old Glory Heavy Roman Cavalry from their Ceasar's Gallic Wars range (CWG-21) and the arms on the figures are unbelievable! Not in a good way … They are misshapen and WAY oversized. (please see the above picture – but that does not do how misshapen they are any justice!)

Not only the weapon arm so huge, the shield arm has the "peg" to affix the shield in the middle of the forearm (and this for a shield with a centre boss).

To be fair, only two of the three poses has outrageously sized weapon's arms. The third pose has an outrageously sized shield arm …

It is unbelievable these were allowed to pass inspection!!!

I must not be the only person to have purchased these – how have others fixed these problems?

I was thinking of cutting them off and replacing them with properly proportioned arms from Wargames Factory.

If so, and the WGF ones are plastic, what is the best way(s) to affix them to metal? Superglue? Gorilla glue? Pin them?

Hmm. I've always admired those figs and wanted to use them as officers in Celtic/ German cav units. I noticed the arm online but thought that it was just a weird camera angle. I'd probably used a Warlord Games plastic Roman arm if possible…WGF might just be too small and over correcting the other way. But whichever works. Superglue should work just fine for plastic. I've never had much luck with Gorilla Glue on metal to metal.

The rest of the figure is just fine! The rest is great and they fit the horses very well, unlike all the other Old Glory cavalry I have (mind you, that was easily fixed by just gently and slowly squeezing the legs tighter with pliers).

They would make great officers for those units – as long as the arms are fixed.

I was going to use WGF because they have extra arms. Whereas the Warlord ones do not have extra arms (unless I use the sling arms). Mind you, the command sprue does have an horn to it!

Sounds like a good idea, and I'll get some soon despite the huge arms. I was going to convert them anyway to make standards, musicians, etc. Very few manufacturers Roman cav for this period, and for mostly good reason. But there's no definitive proof that there were NO Roman cav anywhere,so I'm getting a small number of them.

I'm glad to hear that they're good figs otherwise. Thanks for the review!

There is no evidence of actual "Roman cav" --we made them with the idea that those that wanted them -- well here they are and could also be used as scouts, messenger,etc.
Totally agreed that the arms are very large -- The one guy looks like a muscle man shaking hands -- initially we were going to re-do them years ago but there were never enough sales/complaints to justify the expense and besides, the figure is alright except the arms and once painted up (like all figurines) looks fine -- perhaps Roman Cav on steroids?

regards
Russ Dunaway

Thanks for taking the time to post Russ. It is very rare a business owner takes such interest in his business and his product – not to mention so honest.

I simply cut the arm off one of them and attached another with an horn and it looks pretty good. I will take some pictures.

They are well worth getting for having Republican Roman Cavalry.

As for their historicity – one of the best works on Roman Cavalry I have found is by Jeremiah B. McCall entitled 'The Cavalry of the Roman Republic' (2002). He reports that Caesar, indeed did NOT have any cavalry with him in Gaul that was comprised of Roman citizenry. They were all auxiliaries. Yet, in 58BC Caesar mounted infantry (Legionaries) for his parley with Ariovistus. These figures could represent them.

During the battles with Pompey, it is reported that Pompey had 7000 cavalry that were the "flower of Rome and of Italy" (pg. 102). These would have been citizen cavalry; as reported by both Frontinus and Plutarch.

Wmyers, is the McCall work a book or article? I tend to agree with your assessment – I think it likely that they still existed in small numbers, even it they might not have been assigned to legions. I find those suspicious that the Romans became completely dependent on foreigners for all their scouting, messages, etc and probably had a small cadre left. They would have been eclipsed in the historical record by more 'exotic' foreigners.

Mars Ultor, yes it is a book (http://www.amazon.ca/Cavalry-Roman-Republic-Jeremiah-McCall/dp/0415619394/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1443543782&sr=8-1&keywords=cavalry+of+the+roman+republic; link link link

I think those prices are pretty darn high. Especially for the e-book edition.

You get a better preview of the book on Google Books: link

It is not the entire book, as parts are not shown, but enough of it is.

McCall does go into detail about the change of cavalry from the Equites to Auxiliaries. (Chapter 6: Dating the disappearance of the citizen cavalry corps)

Essentially, it is posited that the change occurs due to a lack of legionaries and as only citizens can be legionaries and non-citizens only Auxiliaries. He explores the arguments for/against Marius' reforms as well as those of Madvig and Frohlich. I won't ruin it for anyone as it is an interesting read.

Would any auxiliary cavalry wear Roman kit -maybe the Macedonians.
I was wondering what to use for a Roman Cav general in my DBA army.

mashrewba, that is exactly what I was wondering too. If the Legions were assigned or required to buy kit that was "uniform" perhaps the same would be required for the Auxilia, as well.

I know that Equites, Citizen Cavalry, supplied their own arms, armour and mounts so there would, undoubtedly be some individual differences (heck, even in militaries today where there has probably never been as much of a possibility as well as ability to issue uniformity of kit there are vast differences between individual soldiers in an unit – I know this from personal experience). That said, the term "uniform" has a definition.

I would imagine that each Legion and unit in the Roman army would have it's own traditions, ideas and practices that would be followed to make each one slightly unique (or maybe very unique!) from each other.

Mars Ultor brought up the idea of using these figures as officers of the Auxilia units. I think that's a great idea! Like the French officers of the Foreign Legion or our officers of the Indian Regiments. It makes sense and there is historical evidence for such.

Old Glory makes a beautiful Roman High Command set (CGW-17 – picture below) that could be used for the General(s) you are looking for (if you are using 25/28mm figures of course; I know a lot of people use 1/72 for DBA, as well).

(*Note how nice the arms are proportioned, quite a difference from the above set – it makes me wonder if they were the same sculptor and if so, how could there be such difference*)

One more question I've been wondering, WMyers…if Roman cav were lightly armored before circa Cannae according to McCall, how does he explain their success against Pyrrhus' heavier Thessalian cav? Shear guts and balls? Not that better armor means everything, but what's his explanation? (and don't worry about spoilers, it will be a bit before I pick up this book.)

Mars Ultor, I am not sure of his explanation off the top of my head. I would have to go back and look for that.

I do have some pictures of how I replaced the arm on one of the figures. It was super-easy to do and I think makes it look a LOT better. The hardest and most time consuming part was uploading the pictures …

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Here is a size comparison with Wargames Factory (the plastic figure).

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The head on the WGF figure is actually a Victrix Punic Wars Roman head so I can use the cavalry for that period.

Here is an horse size comparison with Old Glory Roman horse (the wider metal body) and the Old Glory Celt Cavalry horse (the very thin body) along with Wargames Factory (the plastic horse) and Warlord Celtic cavalry (the metal horse with the legs moulded on and the plastic body).

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Someone may say they believe the WGF horse body is too fat, but as someone who has horses and ponies in real life, ponies do have much wider bodies than horses do, in proportion. The Old Glory and Warlord horses are really just small horses, proportion-wise, but they are not like that in real life.

Regardless, it is good they are all the same height and can easily be used together.

The WGF figure fits very well on the horse (a result of the CAD process of sculpting, obviously, but I think it also shows quality mould making. It is just too bad they did not do their ancient's range to be of the quality of their newest figures. Yet, as can be seen, they are still quite well done and all of the WGF cavalry figures can be used across a period of over 1000 years by just changing heads and shields and weapons, for the most part. (They have unarmoured cavalry for Celts and Germans and they can be used well into 1000AD.)

A linothorax body and an unarmoured body wearing a tunic would have been perfect! They were going to make Numidian Cavalry, but never did, for some reason. Now that Warlord is going to be the exclusive distributor of these figures, rumour (from WGF) has it that the ancients line will not be picked up by Warlord (apparently due to too much competition to Warlord's own ancient line).

Below is the difference between the Celtic horse body and the Roman horse body.

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