Warlord Roman War Machines

Author:  Jim Zabek

Fear The Historical Miniatures Wargamer – or dammit, Jim, I’m a PC wargamer, not a minis guy!

Anyone who knows a historical miniatures wargamer knows what’s coming next.  These guys put the grog in grognard.  Some of the nicest folks you’ll ever meet, but man…they know their military history so well it’s scary.  They tend to be focused, knowing one or two eras at the most.  But what they know would fill volumes. 

So it is that when Warlord Games shipped us a bunch of their new 28mm Roman minis in a boxed set, I have to say I was intimidated.  My normal go-to guy for minis was booked solid.  That left me.  These minis have sat on my shelf for several months.  Actually, they did more than that.  They haunted me.  I’d carry them around, knowing that I needed to review them, but also knowing that I was simply not up to the task.  Then, about a month ago, the dam broke.  I busted out my Warhammer 40,000 miniatures are started painting.  It didn’t take long to get things moving, and pretty soon I felt confident enough to tackle these minis.  No longer was I anguishing about every last detail or stroke of my brush.  I was free.  I was painting and enjoying it and making mistakes, and…it was fun. 

Here, I’ll prove it: http://www.wargamer.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=339123 http://www.wargamer.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=342106 http://www.wargamer.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=342453.

Go ahead and look.  I’ll wait.

 So as I wrapped up the latest bunch of Warhammer minis, over the weekend I broke out my first Flames of War mini and painted one of the vehicles in it.  Nothing extravagant – at 15mm the scale is so small you can almost roll them in dirt and they look good.  But it allowed me to take the next leap.

My eyes fell on one of the boxes from Warlord Games.  I’m not much into ancients (part of my reluctance to tackle their minis, actually) but of all the minis in the world to fall into my hands, one of them happens to be Roman War Machines.  After a trebuchet, a Roman ballista is about as cool as I’m going to ever find.  I resolved to do them justice.

So, let’s see what we have.

Starting with the box, I have only one small complaint (sorry, I’m a critic – it’s what I do).  The box is attractive and openly advertises all that’s there, with one small exception.  There’s no indication of scale.  A quick look on the Warlord Games website (www.warlordgames.co.uk) and it was easy enough to confirm: 28mm.  I don’t know if any of these minis are sold in retail outlets, but that would be my one suggestion to add to the box.  Let folks know what size these guys are.

Figuring out the size. Note also how clean they are; very little flashing.

And now a few words on the scale.  As I mentioned above, at 15mm the scale is so small that details are lost.  At 28 mm, however, the scale approaches a conundrum.  Details and perfect lines can be ignored, but do show if someone picks up your work to examine it.  The question is whether you’re painting to have this work looked at, or if it’s just one of a hundred other soldiers on a table and you want to apply the three foot rule.  The choice is up to the individual, but at 28mm  it’s still a choice.  Larger and the granularity of detail will almost demand perfection.  Smaller won’t matter.  At 28mm it’s a sweet spot to be in, where you can put as much or little effort into the detail as you desire.

Inside the packaging is great.  They come in blister packs (or whatever those plastic shells are called), and the minis are free of almost all casting sprues.  There is still some flashing that needs to be trimmed, but the minis I received were in great shape and it only took a few minutes to get them all cleaned up.  The box comes with one resin ballista, two resin scorpions, and eight pewter roman soldiers.  Some assembly is required, but not much.  Here is my second observation (not a critique, per se, as we’re about to find out).  There are no instructions.  Granted assembling these guys isn’t rocket science.  Comparing the illustrations on the front and back of the box, it’s easy enough to figure out what goes where.  More vexing is the question of color selection.  The box, of course, is a guide, but there is nothing inside for the novice.  I’m not sure how historical minis wargamers come to their knowledge.  Perhaps they must first pass a written test and become certified by HMGS.  Or perhaps they are born with the knowledge, a priori as it were.  Me?  I’m just a guy who happens to not mind getting in over his head.  It’s no sweat, I’ve got just enough painting XP to be able to do this, and I have enough bottles of paint to pretty much custom brew any color I need.  However, it would have been nice to know what color, say, fresh oak looks like for the siege engines.  I had to guess. 

The box showed him red, so that's how I went.

I first turned to my Model Color stash for German WWII Panzers.  Something told me camo would be useful.  I eyed several of the colors and then grabbed Green Brown.  It’s dark, but might be woody.  Add to it an equal amount of Pale Sand, stir…bang.  It’s a color I can live with that resembles freshly cut wood. 

Pow. I had overcome my first obstacle.  The rest was rather easy.  Some boltgun metal for the soldier’s chainmail, the same for the metalwork on the ballista.  Now, what color for the stones?  Again, I had to turn to a custom color as none of my existing ones looked like rock.  Most rocks I see are either a sand color or have a bunch of rusty red orange to them.  But the image on the back of the box showed a color that was more slate-like in appearance. Once again, I turn to my Model Color paints.  A 50/50 blend of French Mir. Blue and Black Grey and I have a nice deep gray color that looks like a light shade of basalt.  These might be mistaken for cannon balls, but it’s what I’ve got and I’m following pretty close to the illustration on the back.  I figure even if I don’t really know what this looks like, I’m not too far off if I use the color schemes from the manufacturer.

A pretty good guess of colors, I'd say.  The penny is to help show the scale.

Next came the Roman officer.  Now I have been around enough wargamers who know their ancients that I know not every Roman wore a red tunic under his armor.  It looks great in the movies, but isn’t accurate.  However, the leader of this band does have a red tunic on the box (the rest of the Romans have white), so again, I take my cue from Warlord and slap some red under him.  Another observation – I didn’t have any decal for his shield, which meant that I would either hand paint the decoration on it or leave it blank.  I chose the latter. 

The full set painted and washed.

A quick bit of glue and all these guys needed was a wash to fill in the nooks and crannies.  I chose a brown ink wash.  It turned their tunics a dirty brown, but that would be expected working in the outdoors, sweating and getting dusty. 

With just a few hours of painting spread over the course of a couple of weekends I had my first historical minis painted.  These look great on my desk.  Even if I never get into historical wargaming, I have to say that the pride I take in painting my own Romans exceeds anything that I would enjoy from store-bought figures.  Whether you’re looking to add to an already standing Roman Legion, or just want to park something other than a Panzer on your computer monitor, these minis from Warlord Games are high quality and look great.  Some guidance as to the color scheme and assembly would have been useful, but it wasn’t difficult to figure out, and there are forums and websites like The Wargamer for folks to ask questions if they need to.  So if the muse hits you and you are looking for something in the line of ancients, the boxed set saves money over buying the figures in smaller lots, and besides, who doesn’t love a few good Roman war machines on their desk?

More angles of the entire set, plus box in the background.

For more information or to pick up these minis, head to the official Warlords Games website at http://www.warlordgames.co.uk