I have decided, tentatively, to try a figure:man ratio of 1:30. So I have set in to make some more movement trays - the raw materials can be seen above. These trays are to hold eight figures in two ranks - two trays will be needed for each quingenary (480 man) cohort - I already have plenty of bigger trays for milliary (800 man) cohorts.
I may just paint up another 24 legionaries - I have a spare box Paul sent me (can’t remember why he sent them now, but it seems a pity to waste them!) to use as a ‘First Cohort’ alongside the four units of 16 I already have.
I’m undecided as to whether to paint up the auxilia I’m waiting for as units of 16 or 24. If I do them as 24s, I can use them as either quingenary or milliary cohorts by using different movement trays and by leaving out some figures. If I paint them up in 16s, I could have more units - but on the other hand, Steve at LBMS has ‘only’ made five varieties of auxiliary transfer, so I’d finish up having to hand-paint a design on 16 figures. I could do that, but even if I was right at the top of my game, I couldn’t make them look as nice as Steve’s designs.
Having decided that I want to make my Roman units more regular, I was looking at my Britons and thinking that, with the exception of the cavalry and war-dogs, they look too regular...
So the next question is how to address that! It would be nice have the main warband units in somewhat more disordered ‘mobs’. I thought one way to achieve it might be to make some new movement trays with space for the first couple of ranks to be full (10 figure) width, and then decrease the rear ranks a bit, adding a part rank at the very back, to try to show a unit which is quite bunched up in the middle, and ‘thinner’ on the flanks. In WAB, this would have implications for rank bonuses, but I could just come up with a house-rule to cover it, and simplify the figure-counting that might otherwise be needed once the units start to take casualties to work out how much rank bonus is left. Either that, or I could just combine all the units into one big battle-line, and place the bigger/deeper units at the middle of the line, with shallower units on the flanks - that might look good too! 200+ figures, all in one ‘mob’, does look rather spectacular.
There’s something very pleasurable about ‘messing about’ with armies which are ‘finished’ - changing them around, adding more units, etc - so long as it doesn’t involve rebasing. I loathe rebasing. That’s where the pennies and movement trays/sabot bases come in! So, I am having fun with this.
Thursday, 16 April 2009
