Warlord Games Studio Painter Andrés Amián, not content with the inventive application of decals and selective use of highly contrasting paints to make his Epic Battles Romans stand out on the tabletop (see part one of this series), has unsheathed his hobby tools to convert up some Penal Legionaries for his Punic Wars collection. Here, he tells us how he went about it…
AF – This is the second instalment in a short series of articles about converting and modifying Hail Caesar Epic Battles figures. Whilst the figures as they come are fantastic in their own right, I always like to add a little bit of extra flavour to my own figures. In the first article, I showed off my Allied legions – which was less of a conversion than a painting solution (with the use of decals).
There are a few troop types in the army lists for which there are not specific figures right now. One of these is the Republican Roman penal legions. Raised hastily with convicts, these were troops on the hunt for redemption after prior displays of cowardice. Their equipment wasn’t the standard Roman fare, but rather looted weapons liberated from a Gallic army after the Battle of Telamon.
The unit is formed by three stands of Penal Legionaries. The conversions are not extremely complex, with part of it is once again being a painting solution. I used the Hastati and Principes from the plastic Roman frame as my starting point (I’ll be sure to make use of the Triarii in a future project – they’ll not go to waste!).
The first step was to remove the spine and shield boss from a few of the figures of the front rank. If you really wanted to you could reshape the shields entirely to give them a hexagonal shape but for my purposes I didn’t want to make things more complicated than necessary. I carefully cut the parts from the shield, and then scraped the leftovers with the flat edge of my modelling knife, until I achieved a smooth surface. You don’t need to do this with the entire rank, just a few figures to break up the uniformity of the shield wall.
The second step was to remove some of the square armour plate at the back of the figures, as well as their straps, concentrating on those in the rear rank which would most easily be seen. These were scraped away in the same vein as the shield bosses as described above.
Next, I cut off the feathers from some of the helmets. In some cases I needed to cut away the pilum or gladius as well, but since I’d be replacing them in the next step, this wasn’t a problem.
I drilled holes where those weapons had been and inserted lengths of wire or metal spears. There was no need for them to be uniform, the secret was to glue them in at slightly different angles, and purposefully make them different lengths, representing a variety of spears, javelins and pilums.
You might be able to see that the spears in the finished examples are thinner than those in the work in progress photos – I did this purposefully to make it easier to see the stage-by-stage.
With the principes, I decided to leave the chainmail relatively unscathed, as in formation it lends them even more visual variety. You could scrape away the texture on a few of them, if you wanted, but otherwise they can be treated as per the hastati.
For those fans of video (with questionable elevator music), Andrés has caught the whole process on camera!
That’s the conversion work then, the rest is the painting solution. You can paint the tunics in as many patterns and colours as you want, the same with the feathers and helmets – you can see I’ve painted mine to variously represent bronze and iron helmets.
Finally, to get a very colourful (and eye-catching) front rank, I painted some shields with Celtic patterns (you can go so far as chequered ones if you are so inclined), some with Roman designs, and made use of decals as I did for my Allied legionaries. It might look like a lot of work, but it is relatively simple to do, and can be accomplished in a few short hobby sessions. I’m not intending to have very many of these units in my full army – so the effort is worth it to make them stand out.
Want to follow Andrés’ example? The Punic Wars range is rife with choice, from the aforementioned Romans, the forces of the Carthaginians and the many and varied allies available to both sides. Make your own mark with Hail Caesar Epic Battles!
