I'm progressing all-too-slowly with the blue-shielded cohort- it now includes 19 of the 20 minis I bought on eBay, and 5 more I have just painted to match. It'll have an aquila command stand by the time I finish. For all their dubious authenticity, the blue shields do look nice...
The veterans cohort lurks half-painted to the rear, awaiting their command minis, which I hope to start painting tomorrow.
4 comments:
I wouldn't worry about the blue shields, I think they look great. I'm sure they could of produced such a colour. If It helps, I have a blue Legion which looks quite striking (V Macedonica, battle of Narona).
One trick with 'new' cohorts of different colours is to give them a Vexillation flag.
This way they look like small detachments from other Legions which allows you to just have one or two Cohorts. The difference in shield colours looks great alongside bigger units and when the force gets big enough; you can give them an Eagle.
All is not lost anyway as It's always good to see an Eagle and Vexellium together in the field.
Blue is the new red!
As you suggest, I made some vexillation and aquila command stands last year. Basically I give every cohort an integral maniple standard, and use the higher level standards for when I want to group them into a detatchment or legion.
I'm thinking, for the really big battles, I'll use 2x24 figure units and a command stand to represent a legion. So I'll probably want to paint another blue cohort...
But what to do with all the spare Foundry Aquilifers? I'm toying with giving them cut-down scutae and calling them antisignani...
My Legions are made up of three 24 man Cohorts, this is about the maximum you can field with enough points left over for supporting units. It works well and theres enough soldiers to give a good impression of a Legion.
It's great for the campaign when you start to mention Legions by name and there's loads of them.
As for my spare Aquilifers, take a look back at my blog for I turned mine into a unit of wolf clad cavalry, inspired by the Rosemary Sutcliff book 'Frontier wolf'.
I also have a wolfskinned light Legionary unit that I use in the Army of the Rhine. Some of my Wolfpelted standard bearers ended up in the ranks.
There is a little evidence (trajans column) to suggest that there were Wolf-clad units still fighting in the Dacian wars, maybe as skirmish units. If you have 10 to 12 old standard bearers you could mock up a unit. Just give them Auxiliary shields and a few javelins and they're good to go.
Hi Secundus,
So far I've mostly gone with the same shield designs, so I can field single large legions. However I am just starting to branch out to have some different shield colours units for variety.
I do recall your wolf-pelt warriors, and the concept of the legionary light infantry is just what I've been thinking about, too! Just the right troops to guard the gaps between the cohorts...
Simon
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