Saturday 21 September 2013

Basing 6mm Romans

I've been playing around a bit with the basing for my 6mm Romans and came up with an idea that sort of shows a unit in motion (based on the fact that no straight line of men can stay straight as it moves cross country) and thought I'd blog some pictures of the mock up I've done to see what other people thought of the idea?

I'm afraid that you'll have to use your imagination somewhat as I haven't done anything to the base yet and I didn't have a spare Optio (the chap at the back with the yellow shield) available with the right shield colour:









My thinking is that Roman units wouldn't be solid ranks of men (except perhaps if attacked by cavalry) as the Roman historian Polybius (writing in the 2nd Century BC) tells us that a legionary occupies about 6' of space. Being primarily a swordsman a legionary would need this space to move around in to fight effectively. That's some of my reasoning anyway.

Each of these bases would represent a 480 man cohort, and there would be 10 per Legion (with the first cohort being 800 strong).

All figures are Baccus and are from pack AIR1. The mdf base is from Minibits.

Any comments positive or negative would be welcome.

Thanks

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4 comments:

  1. Looking good. The top down view gives the best impression of the wavering of the line. Good idea - as you say, a line of men moving over anything but a bowling green will ripple and bunch up, some leading some lagging behind. The full legion should look most impressive.

    Cheers

    Andy

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    1. Thanks Andy. The full legion deployed in 2 lines with spacings between cohorts equal to their width would cover about 1m on the table top!

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  2. Certainly a very interesting idea, I might be tempted by a third rank (they look like 80mm x 40mm bases). Looking forward to see what they look like as they mass up.

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    1. Thanks for the suggestion of a third rank, I have another 12 legionaries to hand so will try it later on. The base is slightly bigger at 96x48 - they were brought for another completely different project hence the strange size. I might try the 100x60 bases I have as well.

      Cheers

      Richard

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