Romans on the Rhine

Having put together a force of Germanic tribes to use with the Infamy, Infamy rules, I felt an irresistible urge to then create an opposing force of Romans. Hole... Rabbit....you know the story.

The initial motivation for putting together that force of Germans was to trial the Infamy rules. At the time, Dave my regular opponent, had a good selection of figures in his collection for the period, but Infamy, Infamy is all about the Roman conflicts with the tribal kingdoms on the frontiers of the empire. Dave's collection includes several of Rome's enemies, but none of them are barbarians. My mission was to provide a suitable hostile force. Rather conveniently, it coincided with a sale by Victrix and that was all the extra incentive I needed. They produce a lovely set of figures for the Germans and I really enjoyed the project (more about it in this post).

As it turned out, we found Infamy, Infamy a particularly engaging rule set. It does a splendid job of recreating the asymmetrical warfare on the edges of the Roman world and I wanted to make the most of the figures I'd painted. The best way to ensure that was going to happen, was to create my own collection of Romans. 

Well, that was my rationale (or flimsy excuse, depending on your perspective). My starting point was the list in the rule book that's suggested for a force from an Imperial Legion. It's made up of three groups of eight legionaries; one group of eight auxiliary foot and one group of eight auxiliary archers. I'm really pleased with the way the figures have come out. The painting was very straightforward and the shield transfers from Little Big Men Studios set them off perfectly.

I gave a fair bit of thought to how I should base the figures. The Infamy rules use figure removal to mark casualties and my initial thought was to make use of my existing sabot bases. They would allow for figure removal and give me the regimented look suited to the Roman style of warfare.

However, I had second thoughts. The sabot bases are 60mmx60mm, with each figure on a 25mm round base. With hindsight I can see that both make for too big a footprint. Then there's the aesthetic issue of how to deal with sabot slots once a casualty is removed. I've never been prepared to have empty slots and so made up bases to fill them. These might hold a mini dice frame to mark shock, or feature a casualty figure, or in some cases simply left blank with matching terrain. 

The Germanic tribes were a different case altogether. I used a different convention, with either one, two or three figures to a base. It worked very well for my Mahdist Ansars and creates the less regimented look I want for tribal groups and irregular troops. It allows for individual figure removal while retaining some of the convenience of moving multi-based figures. 

However, the Romans more disciplined formations called for a more formal basing style. Instead of sabots, I decided I would go with multi-basing, putting four figures on a 50mmx50mm base. 

I did consider trying to squeeze this down to 40x40mm, but it seemed too crowded, especially for the second rank figures, most of whom are throwing pila. Although, to be honest, now that I've completed them, I do wonder if I should have gone for the smaller base and a more compact looking unit?

Having said that, the Germanic tribes are based in such a way that one of their groups of ten figures occupies a frontage of approximately 100mm, so the two 50mm bases for the Romans works well from a game perspective. 

I opted to use the Victrix set of legionaries in fighting poses, rather than those that are advancing. Given the game is very much about close combat, it seemed only fitting the Romans should match the dynamism of the German poses.

When paired off like this the two sets work well together. Ideally this is how they will be spending much of their time during a game and in terms of photographs for the blog it makes for a more compelling image.

The Auxiliary foot from Victrix come in only one set of poses and so I couldn't create the same dynamism for these groups. As the set includes enough figures for twenty foot soldiers and four command figures I have more than I need for this initial force, but, as it happens, not enough for two of the other suggested forces which are principally composed of auxiliaries. Back to Victrix then....add to cart. Sometimes this hobby is so predictable.

These are based exactly the same as the legionaries.

Last, but not least, we have the auxiliary archers. Once again, these are figures from Victrix.

Unlike the archers from the Germanic tribes these are more formally arraigned, whereas the German archers are in smaller groups and individually based.

Overall, I'm very happy. If I have one gripe, it's that the pila and spears are quite flimsy. During the process of basing I snapped a couple and had to replace the missing sections with wire. I suspect that won't be the last repairs I will need to make. That aside, the Victrix figures are lovely sculpts and, as you might expect, match up perfectly with the Germanic tribes.

And then, before you knew it, there was a Romano-British warband

Regular followers will know that one of the surprise additions of last year was a Saxon warband. That was an accidental spin-off from my Germanic tribes project and something that took on a life of its own. You can read more about that journey here.

Towards the end of that post I wrote, 'I've worked out that if I were to buy another twenty or so figures of Romano-British or Arthurian types, that would give me enough figures for both opposing warbands for Dux Britanniarum. Hmmm, twenty figures, that's not a lot now, is it......'. Even as I typed those words I knew how this was going to end. 

While I didn't set any deadlines or timeframe, I had casually investigated what was available in terms of figures. In the end it was serendipity. While perusing one of the trade stands at the Cancon convention in January I stumbled across a heavily discounted set of Wargames Atlantic late Roman armoured infantry. A box of 24 figures, almost exactly what I needed. Not a difficult decision. 

Naturally, that wasn't quite the end of it. I wanted suitable shield transfers and Little Big Men Studios had a few sets that would work well, except.....they didn't fit the Wargames Atlantic shields. Happily, Victrix sell sets of shields separately. So, the money I saved buying the figures was reinvested in the shields. Que sera, sera.

In terms of what I need for Dux Britannarium, from the 24 figures in the WA set, I can make a Lord, possibly someone we'd describe as a Tribune, his Champion and a group of six Comanipulares, the force's elite troops.

Together with most of the remaining figures I could make up a total of three units. The aforementioned Comanipulares, plus two groups of Milites or Combrogi, who are defined as Warriors in Dux terms.

From that one box, I now have those three groups plus the main nobles and the champion, which completes what I need for the British force. As with the Saxons, they are based on 60x60mm squares with six figures to a base. I discussed the rationale behind that basing in the earlier post about the Saxons, so there's no need to repeat it here, suffice to say it gives me some flexibility for a number of different rule sets.

Below are the two groups of milites with their noble.

Their Saxon equivalents come mainly from the Gripping Beast plastic range. While those figures are on the shorter side, especially if you compare them with something like the Victrix range they don't look too bad up against the Wargames Atlantic figures.

I've tried to mix up the helmets so they don't all look as though they are all dressed the same. While there is very little in the way of historical evidence as to how they appeared, we do know that legions remained in Britain and so there is a good chance the appearance didn't change significantly from the late Roman period. The nobles and champion are based individually, as I've done with the Saxon equivalents.

The levy in the British force are made up of Gripping Beast Dark Age Warriors. A box of these figures was what started this whole project and having sufficient of those to make up units for both a Saxon and British force led me to add the extra figures to complete each warband. While those figures are not a perfect match in terms of size, I don't think you really notice much of a difference when the bases are side by side (which they would rarely be in the course of a game anyway).

The Saxon nobles and champion are Victrix figures. They are noticeably larger than the Gripping Beast figures in the warband under their command, but not so much so compared with those from Wargames Atlantic, which probably sit somewhere in the middle.

So, with those Romano-British warriors and their nobles completed that gives me a range of options to field both sides for games using Dux Britanniarum, but also Lion Rampant or Midgard. It's all been a bit of an impulsive diversion from what I really should be doing and that's painting up the early imperial Romans to oppose my Germanic tribes. That's the next project on the bench. Well, that's the plan at least....

Of course, having created these two warbands, I now have to find time to actually play games with them. Bah, as if a small issue like that would have stopped this project anyway.

2025 - a gaming year in review

Well, it seems 2025 was a particularly productive year, something I hadn't quite realised until I started putting a retrospective together. Followers of the blog will know it was only a week ago that I posted a review of my Chain of Command related activities, but looking back at other rules and periods it dawned on me that there was more than enough to warrant a second post. Excuse the indulgence! 

The biggest new painting project for the year was undoubtedly the German tribes for Infamy, Infamy. I didn't buy the figures during the year, which is partly why they became a 2025 project, they were long overdue painting. The vast bulk are from the Victrix plastic range, with shield transfers from Little Big Men Studios.

The few metal figures in the collection are from Wargames Foundry, like this group of wailing women.

As mentioned, the spur to paint the figures was to play games using Infamy, Infamy. My regular opponent Dave has quite a Roman collection and they were just awaiting suitable opponents. I wrote up a detailed report of one of our first games, which you can find in this post. 

The figures also featured in a number of games at the club.

I needed to add a small group of slingers to the German force and adapted those from a set of Gripping Beast Dark Age Warriors that I had lying around. Little did I know, but that decision would then lead me down a completely different rabbit hole. One thing led to another and within very little time I had a Saxon warband. A long story, but one you can follow in more detail in this post. 

This was inspired in part by our Dux Britanniarum campaign Warriors of the Old North. We played the first game at the tail end of 2024 and it continued into the first half of 2025 with another three games. 

All the figures came from Dave's collection, so there has never been a need for me to create an additional warband for this campaign. Well there you go, sometimes this hobby can lead you down all sorts of unexpected paths. 

When it came to basing those Saxons I did it with a number of rule sets in mind. That started me thinking about how I could use some of my existing figures for other periods for different rule sets. 

I have a number of Hundred Years War figures that were created with Lion Rampant in mind. While those rules were fine for a casual game at the club, I was keen to do something on a grander scale. I'd played my first game using Midgard in April. That was a big, multiplayer scenario set during the Trojan War and was very enjoyable. 

When I saw that James Morris had compiled lists for the Hundred Years War I looked to see if I had enough figures to put together a French and English force. I was close, but not quite close enough. What I did have, were a number of Perry plastic sprues that would provide me with enough figures. For a reasonably small investment of time I could add the various crossbow men, archers and men-at-arms to make up the numbers needed. 

The only other additional work was to make up a handful of suitably based figures to represent both French and English heroic leaders.

All that remained was to create suitably sized sabot bases of the standard 120mm Midgard width that would hold up to eight figures per unit.

Our first game used the lists for Agincourt. We decided to see how the rules would play out if we created a scenario that tried to mirror the actual battle. Anyone familiar with Agincourt will know that is likely to create a game with a decidedly English bias. Nonetheless, we thought it might be a good way to test out how well the rules replicated the historical situation. True to that narrative, the French struggled across the muddy ground to confront the English. Those that did make it across came to grief in front of the stakes set up by the archers. French courage was not lacking and their heroic leaders racked up a significant number of reputation points leading charges. While few fell in combat, the same cannot be said for the men they were leading, which ultimately assured English victory. 

That was a satisfying result, in so much as we felt the rules were able to give a plausible historical outcome. That inspired a second game, using the 'defend the hill' scenario in the Midgard rulebook. That delivered a more satisfying game, where the opportunities for victory were more evenly balanced and with the outcome only decided toward the very end. 

As it happens, the sabot bases also work for another set of medieval rules Blood and Horse Droppings by Rob Jones. I've played these before and as Rob is a medieval historian there's no surprise that these do a good job of focussing on the challenges of command in the period. Given I had the figures and bases it made sense to give the rules a run out again at the club.

Much comes down to decisions made by commanders as they enter or continue to fight in melee. As always with the period (and in common with Midgard), leadership and heroic deeds count for much. By the way, the rules are free and available as a pdf download from Rob's website Historian in Harness.

Having played a giant Trojan War game using the Midgard rules, our host also wanted to try doing something similar, but this time using Hail Caesar (or, as the detractors at the club like to call it 'Fail Caesar'). These were my first games using those rules and I have to say, they didn't grab me. Despite the game looking quite spectacular with hundreds of 28mm figures, I found the rules rather vanilla and the games not as engaging as Midgard.

O Group was a rule set that consumed many of my evenings at the club. We managed to play through both the France 1940 and the 1941-43 Eastern Front supplements. For these we used my opponent's large 15mm collection and terrain, most of which was amassed for Flames of War, but has since been repurposed for O Group. 

It's not a complex set of rules, but it does have a lot of nuances. We found it really benefited from repeat play and without keeping too long a gap between games.

We like the system, but we do have one gripe. That's with the scenarios and in particular the victory conditions. Despite setting objectives that can be captured, any game can also be won by inflicting a number of casualties on your opponent. As a result, we've often found the game coming down to our ability to pick off low hanging fruit to rack up those casualties, rather than a focus on capturing key objectives.

More recently we started playing the scenarios from the Normandy supplement, which was an opportunity to use my 12mm collection which I had created with O Group in mind. 

The 12mm collection also saw use at the club playing Crossfire, where I introduced the rules to a gamer I have known since my Advanced Squad Leader days.  

Despite the disparity in the size of their respective rule books, he found much to like about Crossfire's elegant simplicity. Talking of which, I've been using the elegantly simple 2'x2' introductory scenarios designed by friend of the blog Dick Bryant. It's been a very useful tool for taking people through the rules, whether they be new players, or those just inquisitive to discover how the rules play out. For those games I've been using my 20mm terrain and the multi-based figures I still have in 20mm for playing Crossfire (more about those here).

Playing games set during the American War of Independence using the Sharp Practice rules is of particular interest, but 2025 saw very little of that. Sadly, there's only so much game time available each year. However, that period was not entirely neglected. I was able to paint up three groups of ragged Continentals, a lovely set from Eureka Miniatures.

There was only a solitary game using Sharp Practice and that was set during the Peninsular War, not in the rebellious American colonies. However, there were no complaints from me. Once again, our host supplied a magnificent table and an equally magnificent selection of figures.

John Savage, the author of What A Cowboy, very kindly shared a draft version of his modern variant of those rules entitled What a Cartel (these have since been published in the 2025 Lard Magazine). It was an opportunity to dig out my rarely used figures and terrain for Afghanistan and we ran a simple extraction scenario, where a team of private military contractors attempt to save a downed helicopter crew.

Whilst not miniatures, I also played through the whole of an Undaunted: Stalingrad campaign with a good friend. He's an avid historian of the war and an equally enthusiastic player of board games, but any attempt I've made to entice him over to playing miniatures has failed. I've long since given up hope of bringing him over to the dark side, but that doesn't mean we don't continue enjoying gaming together.

So, another full year of gaming. It's funny really, because that's not how I felt about the year when I was first reflecting back. For some reason my mind focussed on the lost opportunities and disruptions. In hindsight these now seem minor and while a year with even more gaming would have been great, it would be churlish to complain. Huzzah for 2025.