When painting an irregular army, one of the first decision points is deciding on a paint scheme and your primary color(s). You could paint every Caetrati uniquely, reflecting that each man had to kit themselves out. That would be historical but also very time-consuming to paint up. An army painted like this can be a little hard on the eyes, or as my son describes it, a "clown army." Alternately, you could paint every figure the same, which would be pleasing to the eye. Visuals are important in our hobby but so too is an attempt at creating something historical. I split the difference by limiting my colors here and in the rest of my Iberian army. I picked 3 primary colors for the tunics-black, white and red. I limited the shield colors as well. You never know how it'll turn out till you hit the finish line and here, I think I have a balance that says "irregular" without veering into the "clown army." All Xyston figures with a nice mix of poses.
Caetrati provide skirmishing support to the main battle line of Scutarii warriors. As
Light Foot skirmishers, their job in Field of Glory will be threefold:
1. Protect my battle lines from enemy skirmishers and their missile fire.
2. Pepper the enemy battle
line with javelins in hopes of disrupting them.
3. Move, occupy and fight in poor terrain. I'll drag as much poor terrain on the table as I can with this army
.
Livy mentions the Caetrati in The History of Rome, Book 23: "Several skirmishes took place between the two sides who were alternately frightening and fearing each other, and the Numidian trooper proved to be no match for the Spaniard, nor the Moorish javelinman for the caetratus, who were quite as rapid in their movements and possessed more strength and courage." Who's bad? We bad!!
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Fear my Falcata |
Hi Monty,
ReplyDeletereally cool! great painting work! impressive masse of skirmishers!
I wish you all the best with them for their first meeting in V2.0 next weekend;
Cheers
Gilles "waiting impatiently the Scutarii ;-) "
Thank you so much, Gilles! I can't wait to try V2! Hopefully, I'll be able to give a run this weekend.
Deletereally nice Monty well done sir! I can them eat raw! :o)
ReplyDeletePhil! I can't read that without hearing a tortured voice saying "Give it to us raw and wriggling!"
Deletehehehe.....
DeleteHey, I also meant to say, when I was deep into the Pontics, I think you mentioned that maybe I should consider lighter basing colors. I did go a couple shades lighter on the brown and I might go even lighter still. So THANKS for the tip!
DeleteVery nice looking troops, a great idea to limit the colour pallet, seems to have worked well.
ReplyDeleteThanks Ray! Hopefully it holds up until the bitter end! And if not, well, there's always another army to paint!
DeleteLovely looking warriors !!!
ReplyDelete:-)
Deleteo flail wielding Bishops here, I'm afraid.
Those are bloody lovely!
ReplyDeleteThanks sir! But will they fight?
DeleteVery nice army, colorful, a good choice of primary colours!
ReplyDeletePhil! Thanks,I could probably go back and dress up some of the caetra at the end. Maybe the very end...
Deletesplendide !
ReplyDeletefor the big shield i find my inspiration thanks to little big men and their wouderful design (http://marcofwar.unblog.fr/category/non-classe/page/2/)
very nice !
Marco, I'd missed these! I need to work through your whole blog one day. We both painted Xyston Scutarii, although, with 150+ shields, I didn't paint mine nearly as nice as you did. Great work sir!
DeleteThese rock! It always amazes me how quickly you pump this stuff out. Good work.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I've forsaken all my other hobbies and loves for painting. I used to be a good drummer in Rock Band II, having worked my way up to Expert and then pushing from there. I used to practice almost nightly but I haven't done that in nearly a year as all I do is paint. One trick pony.
DeleteVery nice and quite colourful!
ReplyDeleteChristopher
Thanks Chris and hey, with your luck, you must get a game in with your newly won dice!
DeleteNice work!
ReplyDeleteGracias!
Deletethanks monty
ReplyDeletei create two blog,marcofwar and marcofwar2, when the first one was full
i create marcofwar2
with marcofwar2 i try to organise category best than in marcofwar (spanish are not in spanish category...)
i find very helpfull and simple to paint with the model of little big men studio
very inspiring
you paint very well : i like the colorfull aspect, your army will be wonderful
(sorry for my poor english)
Thank you sir, and you never have to apologize for being bilingual (or more!). I wish I could go into your blog and post in French. I can't, even though my daughter is studying 11th grade French. Helping her drill for her tests is no way to learn a foreign language!
DeleteGreat work!
ReplyDeleteThanks Pru and you've reminded me to post regarding the Roman conquest of Gaul.
Delete