Cives Romani Adsunt

A wealthy land owner surveys his domain.

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have embellished my Roman town with civilians and added more trees around the perimeter. An arboreal perimeter or corner of the table is a good way to define your table top. Also, given the trend to dress up our tables with little vignettes, the table corners are the best places to put these little gems because the territory is out of the way of the main action.

Note that all of the buildings on display were made by Herb Gundt. The town plaza is a cork placemat turned over. The Egyptian obelisk was something that I found in an art museum store (I can't recall which one).

Note the additional trees on the perimeter of the table compared to the previous blog post.

Civilians are now congregating in the oppidom platea (town plaza) listening to the town crier delivering the news of the day. He stands on the steps of the thermae (the baths).

A view of the town plaza with citizens going about their business.

A garrison of limitanei man the local watch tower where they keep an eye on a possible barbarian border raid. The soldiers will light the two hay stacks on fire to signal any danger.

Roman watch tower protects the town.

In this period setup, my Roman soldiers are based on 20mm square metal bases and placed on a magnetic movement tray that holds twelve figures. Two such stands make up a legion in my large battles, but serve as a small company of soldiers should I choose to use them in a skirmish game. This particular set up will likely be played as a skirmish game, hopefully in the near future.

For my larger unit battles, I use my own "Age of Rome" rules which are a variant of my "Der Alte Fritz Rules for the SYW". That is to say, that the movement, firing, melee and morale mechanics are the same in Age of Rome as they are in my SYW rules. The rules are printed on one side of an 8-1/2 by 11 sheet of paper.

For skirmish games, I'm planning on creating a variant of Tom Kelly's "Woodland Wars" for Ancients period games.

I have some other surprises up my sleeve for the Rome versus Carthage Punic Wars Project; something completely different from what I normally do in my gaming. Stay tuned.

Work In Progress - Celts for Hannibal's Army

Here is a picture of some HaT 54mm Celts that I am currently working on. I have 22 painted figures that require the painting of shield designs to finish the figures. This will be a 32 figure unit. I expect to finish the Celts later this week. Once they are done, I have my core Carthaginian army painted: two Iberian (Spanish) units, one African, one Celt and one unit of Numidian skirmishers. I also have several painted elephants that I bought on eBay as well as eight Carthaginian heavy cavalry figures. Most of my cavalry contingent will consist of Numidian light cavalry and some heavier Gaulish-Celtic cavalry.

HaT plastic 54mm Celts or Gauls. These are work in progress figures as I have to paint the shields,
something that I am not looking forward to.