Roman Auxiliaries

Finally, I actually completed something.

I had the figures painted for weeks now but they were entirely unbased. Now I finished them off raising my rank and file total to 18 Auxiliaries. I have another 16 on painting sticks that are undercoated and waiting for some attention. My centuria is now up to 1/4 strength. At this glacial pace, I may wrap this up in another couple of years.

Roman Terrain and a tree

I did manage to get some work done over the weekend. I built a Warbases Roman watch tower. I really like the model. It came together pretty quickly as far as that goes. But once assembled, It struck me that it did not look like the reconstructions that I have seen along the German Limes. Then again, the reconstructions might not have looked like that actual thing either. What I wanted for the look I am going for is having the entry door raised above the ground. Right now, it looks too short to me. So I am adding a block of foam under neath it. This will provide a bit more height to it and allows for a ladder to access the doorway instead of it being on the ground.

Here is the model as it stands so far. The base for it has been cut. Warbases provides a small block of wood to help with the assembly. I will use it on top of the foam as a spot to glue the main tower to it. This should hopefully make it a bit stronger with that join. Then I need to make it look like stone. Not sure how I am going to do that yet but one step at a time.

Next up, was an attempt to make a tree. I saw a great tutorial on petitguerre.blogspot.com. He had trees made from repurposed junk. I tried to duplicate that effort. But since 15mm is smaller, I purchased some cheap flower wire instead of coat hanger wire. I then wrapped the shape in floral wrap. It still needs some flocking to make it look more than a dead tree. I wanted a few Larger trees than I currently have. This did not take a huge time investment to get to this point. Once it is flocked, I will determine if it was worth the effort.

Now I need to lay down and try to get over a case of Strep that I picked up somewhere.

Welcomes and More Roman Terrain thoughts

Welcome
Welcome to the Wilde Goose. He runs a blog called "The Wilde Goose." It is a very interesting blog with lots of Napoleonic games. He is also part of Prague Wargamers and Bohemian Gentlemen Gamers. All are well worth a visit.

Roman Terrain
Roman Roads in 15mm are not really easy to come by based on my quick scan of the vendors that I could find. I did find Battlefield Accessories USA. They have some cobblestone roads that look promising. What I am thinking is to take the cobblestone road that they have and put a small bend in it so it has the curve seen in Roman roads. Then base that on some felt or other material and build up the sides to show the drainage ditches for it. That and a milestone should get me what I am looking for. Anyway, I am getting a sample section of road from them to see how it may work out.

Thomas N pointed out that I need lots of good ambush terrain such as forests and swamps. Absolutely. Besides, you can never have enough trees. I tried to make a forest area based on some instructions that I found online. The canopy came out OK. For the base, I had it the right shape and painted. Then I dropped it on the ground and the base basically shattered. I just have not had the heart to try to fix it. I have some individual trees but never enough.

Swamps are another issue though. Given that I hate making this stuff, the Battlefront swamp pack looks interesting. I think JR Miniatures may have something as well. Anyway, that won't happen soon.

One last thought, I have a scenario that is a raid on one of the small forts along the limes. I really want the JR Miniatures Mile fort to work. The drawings of the fort show it having walls with no towers at the corners. The mile fort kit has that. Walls with an earthen ramp on the inside - the JR minis kit has that. A plain gate set in the wall with no gate house - there I am out of luck. Or a gate with a tower above the gate rather than a gatehouse - again no joy. Inside the fort I would need a barracks building, a small workshop and a granary. The artist rendering has a small oven inside the compound as well. I could try to scratch build something but that does not seem to hold much excitement for me at the moment.

I think the starting point for me will be the roads and the watchtower. The watchtower should be top priority since I already have it. Maybe next post I will have some figures painted. Oh, that reminds me, I figured out how I will base these. I have a large flat rectangular magnet. The plan is to cut this into squares and use that as basing. The officers will be readily visible due to their head gear. Once they are based up, I can make a movement tray to move them in formation. Well, that is the plan at least.

Roman Dux under Construction

Well I have decided to to the German Limes route with this. The Upper German-Raetian Limes to be exact. This was a 353 mile (568km) stretch of fortifications with some 900 watchtowers and over 60 forts. Each watchtower was behind the palisade wall by some 20 to 50 meters. Each watchtower was separated by 300 to 800 meters provided they had a clear line of sight to one another. Just as with Hadrian's wall there were small fortlets (kleinkastel) staged along that held detachments from 40 to 80 men in strength. My area that I wish to copy is that of the Cohort fort of Saalburg. This is a great site in that they have some of the most complete reconstructions of a roman fort in Germany. Also it is dead easy to find data for it on the internet. (Remember, I am lazy.)

What did I stumble upon today but the most marvelous site: Vici.org. It has fantastic maps of the whole area that I am looking to include in my campaign. Here is the first map I made from this site.

Map from Vici.org. Terrible white lettering over the map is all mine.

Here we see the Cohort Fort of Saalburg with the watchtowers associated with it and the milecastle/kleinkastle that also had the same unit - Lochmühle. Saalburg was the home of Cohors II Raetorum Civium Romanorum Equitata. This was an Auxiliary unit that was at least in part mounted. This fits in with my preference for a mixed unit. To the northeast, Lochmühle had elements of the same unit present. While the milefort to the southwest was a unit of Auxiliaries from Legio XXII.

The Cohors II Raetorum Civium Romanorum Equitata was a Cohors Quingenaria Equitata unit. Formed by six centuries of infantry (80 men each) and four turma of cavalry (30 men each). This matches with the size of the fort.

The fort of Saalburg is well documented and there are any number of diagrams showing what it would have been like.

Taken from http://www.saalburgmuseum.de/geschichte/kastellgeschichte.html

Just 200 meters from the back gate of the Saalburg fort is the lime itself. The German Wikipedia sites are actually really helpful here. There is a diagram of what the gate through the lime would have looked like near this fort.

taken from http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:ORL_A_03_tab_10_pic_03_Limes%C3%BCbergang_Saalburg.jpg

The child fort at Lochmühle is another story. This is far less documented as what it would look like. The general size is known. It was a 18 meter by 22 meter rectangle. It was set back about 30 meters from the lime. The artists reconstruction is dubious in that some sources claim that this fort had only one gate and this shows two gates.

Image taken from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/8/8b/Kleinkastell_Maisel_-_Kleinkastell_Lochm%C3%BChle_-_Ringwall_H%C3%BCnerber_069.JPG.

Basically if you take the drawing at face value, there are room for 4 tent parties and an officer in the truncated barracks as well as a storeroom, a workshop and an outdoor oven. So that works out to about 32 men plus a head NCO, just under half a century.

That just leaves the watchtowers. These would be temporary duty for about 8 men who would take turns manning the towers. These would be wood or stone structures of 3 stories in height with the entrance on the second floor. In addition to this, there would be the patrols. Plenty of things to be going on for a campaign.

I am putting an artificial dividing line for the towers to be at tower 3/63 for the purpose of the campaign. That would be as far to the southwest as the troops at Saalburg would have to patrol.

Now, if push really comes to shove and the forces at Saalburg need backup, they have to call out to Legio XXII Primigenia Pia Fidelis at Mogontiacum or Legio VIII Augusta at Argentoratum or even Legio III Italica at Castra Regina. This could come into play if I ever venture into 6mm miniatures for Romans.

I think my next step will be to make some terrain.