"Late Roman horse archers and sub-general in 15mm" Topic

I finished the last full unit of my 'using up the 1980s lead mountain" Late Romans. A 4 base unit of horse archers, the Equites Secundo Sagittarii.

The riders are old Asgard (then Table Top Games, now Alternative Armies' Isarus range) on a mix of Asgard and Minifigs horses. I only had 8 riders, one of which was damaged from a failed 1980s conversion attempt so I swapped his upper half with a spare foot archer figure. To get more variety from these old mono-pose figures, I modified others with a couple of head swaps, additions of hats and re-shaping cloaks by filing or adding new folds with Milliput.

The shields on the original figures were tiny so, as I wanted something with a centre boss that would be big enough for me to paint a recognisable shield design, I made new ones using small sequins scrounged from my wife's sewing box with bossed from more Milliput.

I've also done another general using a real mix of figures: a Gladiator Games one-piece casting for the general, a modified Minifigs heavy cavalryman carrying the vexillum and a Minifigs trumpeter on a horse I found in my scrap and spares box.

There are more photos of the finished figures and some WIP on my blog.

smallitalianwars.blogspot.com

Really nice work.

They look great. Lots of effort. Thanks for posting.

Great work. They look like 28s.

Good work!… congrats!…

Armand

Beautiful job!

Thanks very much for the comments.

I've taken some pictures of all the figures that I've painted so far for this army: 108 infantry and 58 cavalry. I need another 46 infantry and 3 mounted figures to make this a usable army and hope to have these done ready for the easing of lockdown restrictions.

smallitalianwars.blogspot.com

Absolutely stunning brushwork and the conversions are relatively simple yet incredibly effective and brilliant.

It's impressive to see how much can be done with older sculpts when in the hands of a skilled modeler/painter.

It's delightful to see forgotten soldiers from a lead mountain turn out so spiffy for inspection. Great painting and basing. Top notch!

This is one of the best Late Roman armies in 15mm I've ever seen. Strangely, in the early 2000s I was trying to do the exact same thing; I wasn't happy with the available figures so I started converting these same figures- mostly Donnington and Tabletop and a few others. Same issues- headswaps, better shields (there seemed to be no two figures with the same size or shape of shield). In the end I thought it was going to be way too much work and I gave up.

I've since sculpted Late Romans in 10mm and 15mm, but never had the time to build my own armies.

Thanks for the kind comments.

Clininarium – I take it you sculpted the Khurusan Late Romans? When I saw those, I was very tempted to abandon these old figures with their many inaccuracies and lack of variety and get those instead.

Yeah that was me. It was one of the first ranges I did in 15mm. I was just starting out so contacted Khurasan and offered to do a sample figure. It all flowed from there.

I had the Pendraken range done by then so I knew what to do and not to do. I kinda fell out of interest with ancients, but still think the Late empire is the most interesting Roman army, even if not the most iconic one.

Thanks for sharing your work – absolutely beautiful. I've loved Late Romans since the PSL Guide to Wargaming and Hadrian's Wall postcards. I have a lot of 25mm stuff I picked up cheaply, decades ago. Looking at big bases for those and maybe keeping my 15s on DBX bases for now. Really well done and quite inspirational.

Hats off. Fab!

Thanks for the kind comments.

La Belle Ruffian: I have the PSL Guide to Wargaming too and the pictures in there of, I think, Minifigs 25mm Late Romans were a big inspiration for me starting this army back in the 80s. So far it is successfully hiding in the loft but, if I can find it, I'll do a side by side of one of those original images and what I've ended up with.