"Painting 10mm OG Roman shields - ACK!" Topic

I was digging through the lead pile recently and found a bunch of Old Glory 10mm Caesarian Romans I had primed black but not gotten beyond.

Sure, I said, why not?

So now I'm at the shield stage and I'm losing my mind. These shields are small and overlap each other (infantry on strips, which I like). And those Romans liked their fancy-dancy shield designs.

I undercoat black, but painting red shields over black doesn't work. Sooooo…gotta put a base of yellow first.

There's no way to do decals, so I'm looking at:

1. Undercoat black
2. Base paint shield yellow
3. Paint shield red
4. Base paint shield design white
5. Paint shield design yellow

In 10mm.

For, like, 1000 miniatures.

I may be mad, but I'm not crazy. I'll never finish that!

My dear, enabling wife suggested when I paint the red, I paint the symbol in negative by leaving it yellow. Good idea for a single 28mm mini, but that would be really fiddly in 10mm, let alone for 1000 tiny Romans.

What's an aspiring First Consul to do?

Looking at the OG site, it looks like this guy didn't paint shield designs:

Probably saved his sanity and marriage.

Any suggestions out there?

I would go for a very minimalist design, or none at all.

Definitely leaning that way, 79th.

The shields have a raised vertical centerline and boss (note figure on the left below):

What about painting that yellow and leaving the rest red, to suggest something like this image below, but not going cray-cray.

Try using that design, but doing it with a yellow gel pen. Try it out on a couple sample minis.

I had great success using a white gel pen to make Eldar Rune designs on a 28mm scale W40K Wave Serpent. Make sure you let them dry before giving it a quick spray of matte clear coat.

My very first commision as a pro painter was for 10mm Romans, and I got decent results by using black undercoat painting the design in a simplified representation in white of buff (yellows tend to be too transparent) and then filling in the black space with the field colour. For reds I found that not diluting the paint much worked best for coverage.
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You don't have to cover the black super accurately for the effect to work.

Good suggestions – thanks.

How about?

1)file off the shield detail for a smooth finish
2)undercoat shield white
3)paint shield red with a slightly darker red line down the middle of the shield.
4)apply shield transfer
5)apply black paint and metallic colour to gap in the centre of the transfer.

Did the Romans use shield covers? If so, assume they are fighting in the west of Britain and need to keep the shields dry, so paint them leather colour. Otherwise, prepare to go blind. I did a couple of hundred in 15mm and that nearly drive me insane.

Set them on the table where they normally would be during a game. Stand on the other side of the table where your opponent would be standing. Look at your miniatures, which are probably 6 feet away now.

I would go with darth or just solid red. I played against a 10mm OG IRE enemy with solid color shields and it looked fine to me on the game table.

BTW how do the OG Republican strips fit on 40mm stands?

Mister Tibbles – mine are from the Caesarian Roman line. The command strips are 25mm wide, and the legionaries are 30mm wide.

I am clipping a few stands to fill out base widths.