Early Romans & Germans

My gaming table is out of commission for a while as I need to rearrange furniture to make best use of what space I have. In the meantime I sorted through the 6mm Early Imperial Roman collection I brought back from England. So far so good - the contents of the box got a bit jumbled in transit but there's no sign of damage to any figures. Even the buildings came through mostly unscathed. I was quite stunned by the discovery. Airport baggage handling systems are not known for their delicacy.

The legion itself is made up mostly of Irregular Miniatures with a leavening of Heroics & Ros. The Germanic horde is mostly Heroics & Ros with a leavening of Irregular Miniatures. I use a man-figure ratio of 10:1, but with a bit of readjustment the legion could even take the field at 1:1. It's quite a sight lined up ready for action. Hopefully once the table's back in operation I'll be able to take photos of it.

Part of the legion deploys in front of a Roman civilis in the province of Germania, somewhere near the Rhenus. A cohort of Classiari (Marines) takes post behind the legion's left flank. Auxiliary archers take position in front of the Cohor Millaria whilst the legate gives a rousing speech.

All the buildings are scratch-built. There's even a statue in the centre of the pool in the apartment house courtyard. My eyesight was much better back then. A few Irregular Miniatures civilians gather in the grounds of the bathhouse, gossiping over the presence of so many soldiers whom they suspect vandalised the tree in the corner of the grounds. A funeral party attends the temple at top left. The dingy native quarter is at top right.

Not shown are the resin earthen ramparts and gates to make town walls for frontier settlements. I did make an entire basilica, the administrative heart of any Roman town, but unfortunately it proved too bulky to bring away. I shall build a new version. I also plan to expand the town with more buildings and roads to the point where I can play out a game of urban insurrection using the (in)famous Rioting in Alexandria rules published many moons ago in the Society of Ancients magazine.

So, here are a few more figures, this time Germanic tribesmen paying a not-so-neighbourly visit.

Tribesmen, comrades of Hermann. This is about a quarter of the total number of figures. I must do something to improve the basing, though.

Some of the relatively scarce Germanic cavalry and a gang of skirmishing youths make a speculative foray against the legion's left flank.