Spanish Scutarii

Slight diversion!  After packing up the Gallic army for an Australian buyer, I realized I'd sold off my last unit of Medium Foot from my Field of Glory Carthaginian army. D'Oh!!!  I dug through my pile of unpainted Xyston and discovered I had enough Scutarii figures to paint up 10 stands at 3 figures a stand. With the size of these shields, I'm not sure how well they'd fit 4 to a stand anyway.  If I paint another unit of Scutarii, I might settle on a single pattern for the shields to give the unit a more unified look.  Its tricky because you want these fellows to look a bit irregular and wild looking but you also want them to be easy on the eyes.  In any case, my Early Carthaginian list now has Medium Foot again and I'll bring these down to the club Saturday for our 600 point double match.

I've always loved the look of Scutarii units.  From time to time, I've considered painting up an ancient Spanish army but truth be told, they'd be roadkill in the Field of Glory system, just like Gauls.  Plus, I'm not certain I have the stamina to repeat this drill 6 more times to get 200+ figures for the army!  Speaking of stamina, how about a tip of the hat to Mr. Roach, who finished painting 341 28mm Scutarii in spectacular fashion.  The rest of us can only dream!

UPDATE:  Sebasto asked how long these took to paint and the funny thing is, I intended this to be a  "speed painting" feature since I rushed them for Saturday's match. Then I forgot to time the last steps so I discarded the idea!  Here is the speed version of a speed painting article.  To save time, the shields and figs were primed black and I didn't paint the back of the shields.  I  used black in the color schemes for the shields.  I picked 4 or 5 styles for shields and painted each style in a batch.  Shields were painted before gluing them on the figures. I picked 2 schemes for Scutarii, block painted them, heavy Devlon Mud wash, highlights on cloth but not on straps. Kept the basing very simple, which is in keeping with my Carthaginians.  Ballpark 5-6 hours start to finish.  There's room to trim further on this as I painted the faces.  Clearly that doesn't help! 

I have 150+ Xyston Gauls to paint up for an Impetus Gallic army once I finish the Pontics.  I have some ideas for balancing quality and quantity.  For example, batching the shields is a good idea with so many "custom" Gallic shields.  And I'll do a better job of keeping track of time!