"Basing 6mm Punic Wars Romans" Topic

I'm rebasing and expanding a collection of H&R Punic Wars figures. I inherited them from a couple of friends years ago, and am building them into BBDBA armies. My question is about how to base the Hastati and Principes. In DBx they both count as Blades, so there is no special distinction between them. The H&R figures for the Hastati have them throwing pila, while the Principes are depicted in an advancing, but not fighting, pose.

My idea was to base two ranks of figures on a base; the first of Hastati, the second of Principes, the reason being my understanding that they fought integrated as a sort of proto-cohort. Is this reasonable? Or would it be better to base them as separate types, so the Bd elements are split between Hastati and Principes? I'm not sure. Silly, I know, but I'd appreciate people's ideas about the basing.

Many thanks.

I quite often use a Punic Wars-era Roman army under DBMM, and I usually deploy the Blades in two ranks of elements, the first effectively representing the hastati and the second the principes. Therefore, in your position I would definitely base up my first rank of elements as all hastati and my second as all principes.

In DBA, with fewer elements, the two-deep deployment may be less common and so the visual arguments different, I don't know.

I don't think the hastati and principes fought together; rather the line of principes relieved the line of hastati. So I would probably suggest separate basing. This depends on the rules that you are using, though; this might be too deep for DBA.

BigRedBat: that's really the point. In DBA, you can assume the element represents a mix. Hence I thought about basing to represent the separate lines. But the more I read, the more it looks as though the cohort mix was really a later innovation.

Probably will end up using separate elements, though, as it will let me depict Camillan armies with the same figures.

Using distinct elements is also insurance against the day when the army lists don't classify the two types the same any more, or in case you someday move to a set of rules that differentiates.

GurKhan: Good point, although I'll probably be sticking with DBA 3, it's worth thinking about.