"Do you have any nude figures in historical armies?" Topic

I started my Gauls as auxiliaries for my Carthaginians.
Naturally I gave them chariots. A vendor at a convention at Widener had Lamming chariots. They had nude charioteers. I'm a firm believer in using as many different manufacturers as possible in Irregular armies. So, some made it into the field.
A command stand featured Gaston the Gaul, or Henry the Brit, along with my "standard" standard bearer, a Roman officer's head on a spear. A photo of that stand made it into the pages of the Courier magazine. I do believe that I might be the first person to have featured nudity in a wargaming magazine.

I also had an Indian army. Naturally I had the topless Maiden Guard. I quickly realized that 12 Regular A MI was too small a unit to be useful, so they became the foot soldiers on elephant stands. His Nibs also had some in his howdah.

My Pirate tavern had saucy wenches, but merely wearing low cut tops.

Who else has had legitimate nudity in their armies? "Legitimate" meaning accurate, and not for shock value. Did your army "need more boobies"?

I did also have some topless female gladiators. Sadly there is no Gladiator Board to cross post to.

Just a few. Not averse to them, but when almost all my gaming was with kids at school there was a certain amount of self-censorship.

So the Vikings always carried off a pig and not a maiden. Easier to explain to the 11 year old what they plan to do with the pig.

But now that I game mostly solo, I do have Gringo's captive woman slung over the saddle, for CYNTHIA ANN'S WAR.

I think we need a gladiator board. There are some good fantasy gladiator games and, e.g., Splintered Light makes fantasy glads.

I also have Gauls and Indian maidens (only two). My Vikings also have a maiden to carry off. I also have some nude Mycenaeans, I think.

I don't think so.

Anyone remember:
"They ran through the briars,
and they ran through the brambles,
and they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn't go?"

Fighting a battle involves such activities, and that is not the sort of thing you want to do with no clothes. Moreover, in the case of the Gauls, our reports come from their enemies, the Romans, who had an interest in making them seem uncivilized.

So, I am dubious about nude warriors. For my Vikings, some of the packs of berserkers came with one figure totally naked. They have been painted and are used.

My Celts have a few nude warriors, but I did not buy packs of Gaeseti nude warriors to form whole units--it just did not seem right.

My Mycenaeans also came with a few naked guys. Some of them ended up having a kilt added, though others run around naked.

As for bare breasted females, yes, I have some of them. They tend to represent civilizations whose females we believe frequently dressed like that. Eve there, I have some concerns. The snake goddess outfit from Knossos would have been incredibly labor intensive to cut out with a knife and sew together--I strongly suspect they were limited to special occasion wear for a few queens, top tier priestesses, and ranking nobility, not the sort of thing all the girls were wearing.

Grelber

No. Nothing looked worth it to me.

Grelber
"To the Gulf of Mexico!"

As to the other point. Although I get the value of propaganda for the Romans, I sometime wonder if going shirtless in battle with edged weapons would be such a bad thing. It seems like a sword that goes through dirty clothes first might be more likely to get infected and become fatal?
But what do I know?

A few – most barbarians like the savage Celts (for historicals) as well some Amazon archers and charioteers (the latter being fantasy)

A bunch of naked Celtic fanatics. Just infantry, though.

I've also got a few topless female porters for my Ancient Near Eastern armies. They wear what looks like bikini bottoms, based on Egyptian reliefs if memory serves.

If male toplessness counts, quite a few further Celts qualify, incl some horsemen, as well as various Near Easterners wearing only kilts.

I have a few of the obligatory berserkers in the 15mm Viking army.

martin

Mostly dancing girls and a few captives to rescue in 28mm--and, of course, Red Martian women as described by Burroughs and Brackett. As for legitimate--are you impugning the honor of the royal family of Helium? OK, possibly Madam Khan's girls and the other professionals of the Low Canal towns, wearing nothing above the waist but the bells in their hair--which don't show up even in 28mm. As Sola once explained to John Carter "There are women you fight for and ask, and women you just fight for."

Minoan/Mycenean skirmishers
Minoan/Mycenean civilians/priestesses
ancient Egyptian civilians
Zulu civlians

I think thats all.

Nada. My warriors go in fully clad.

Nope.

In 15mm, does that count?

Got a few nudes Celts mixed in, that's it.

Plenty of nudes with painstakingly painted pubic hair in my Greek army

Gallic Army for WRG 6th, Sold long ago

Nope.

A small number of Greeks and Gaul. I do have a bunch Tupinamim or Amazonian tribes in both 15mm and 28mm. I think that I have a few other Central or South American tribes, but not sure.

Mostly Gauls in a variety of ferocious poses.

I do have some topless gunners for WW2.