To begin, here's my first batch of miniatures completed ever: Polybian era Roman triarii.
The unit is made from a variety of manufacturers: Aventine Miniatures, Gripping Beast, and the newly released units from Lucid Eye. I have them based in order to use for the Hail Caesar ruleset.
To differentiate different classes of infantry on the tabletop, I decided to use shield and tunic color to denote wealth. For example, my triarii will wear bright bleached whites, crimson, scarlets, and indigo. It felt appropriate to use two different shades of red given its Mars' color and I imagine that middle aged veteran soldiers would be more reverent to Mars for letting them be victorious in battle (or at least survive it) From my research, there is no evidence that Polybian Romans decorated their shields as part of a unit, so the only units with shield transfers will be officers.
So here are some things that I've learned at the end of my first project:
*Obviously I need to learn how to paint faster if I hope to finish my army this century. I noticed that I tried fixing painting mistakes even before the model was fully base coated, which resulted in more mistakes and more touching up. I need to stop that.
*Basing is a massive pain when you have multiple models on a single base, especially when they are chunky Aventines. I first tried spackle as a basing medium, but with the models so closely packed together, it was nigh impossible to not get some on the models (which thankfully is mostly hidden by the grass). I ended up going with watered down tacky glue and sand, but I wasn't entirely happy with the coverage (lots of gaps showing wood ) and it doesn't exactly look like dirt. I think I'm going to experiment with technical paints from Vallejo alongside a tiny bit of spackle to hide the "pitcher mound" bases next.
*I used Vallejo medium skintone for the Romans' skin, which worked nice and will probably use for central and southern Italians and various Hellenic people, but became a bit too dark when I used Reikland Fleshshade. Maybe I need to water it down first?
