New year - new project

 After painting a lot of figures for my ongoing 1848 Hungarian War of Independence project, I started a completely new one in 2021. I have always been interested in the warfare of the Republican Roman legion so finally decided to reconstruct it in miniature.

My plan is to paint a Roman army from the time of the Punic Wars. By the way, Republican Rome is an excellent theme for wargamers to paint because you can fight plenty of opponents with your miniatures (Gauls, Carthaginians, Successor Greeks, Iberians etc.).

The first dose of my Roman figures is from Victrix Miniatures. I bought the 'Republican Legions of Rome' set I and II. You have to buy both if you want a complete army, because one of the sets contains legionaries only in pectoral armour and the other one only in chainmail. In these times - prior to the reforms of Marius - the legionaries had no standardized equipment, but they were divided into four groups: velites, hastati, principes et triarii. These groups were different in their equipment so you have to vary your figures according to the group standards.

Republican Roman infantry is deployed in smaller units: maniples. In the Hail Caesar ruleset each maniple contains eight figures which are glued to two 4x4 bases. For the start, I managed to paint a maniple of hastati and another maniple of principes.