Balearic slingers were a fixture of Roman armies for generations so where better to start my auxiliary support than with a unit of them. Victrix's website claims these are only available directly, at a price of £11.95 GBP for twelve figures, although there are a couple of resellers around with sets for a similar price.
The set contains six identical sprues, each with bodies for two slingers, four sling arms (including one two-armed set), four heads and two loose left arms. All the slingers are right-handed, but there's a third right arm on each sprue with a dagger instead of a sling. On each sprue you also get two sheathed daggers and two little bucklers in case you want to give your slingers shields. The card label, which provides a bit of historical background on the troops, notes that it's not clear whether these shields were ever used, so they're here for the option. I chose not to use them, but you could conceivably build half your "slingers" with a dagger and buckler if you wanted.
The two poses of body comprise one which is stretched out as if in mid-launch, and the other more hunched over as if preparing for or just having launched a missile. Not all the arms go well with both poses, and the two-armed "loading" sling piece only fits with one of them, but there is a fair amount of variety and it should be possible to put together twelve good-looking slingers none of which are identical.
Mould lines aren't too prominent and only take a few minutes to clean. The sling pieces are a little delicate and it's difficult to avoid getting white stress marks on some of them but they're robust enough not to break with moderately careful handling. Sculpting detail varies but is for the most part very good, as you'd expect from Victrix: if I had a criticism it would be that two of the faces are a little soft and could do with slightly sharper detail.
Size-wise they are on the large side for 28mm, arguably closer to 30mm, and at roughly £1.00 GBP a figure they are not the cheapest plastic infantry on the market but they are at least cheaper than metal slingers.
I am pleased with this set, although I suspect if fielded in a horde the figures could look quite samey, and if I need more Balearic slingers in the future I will probably get some metals just for variety.
