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Getting my Dux in a Row

British

I’ve been playing quite a lot of Dux Britanniarum  and have become inspired to get my British in better order and to put together a force of Scotti.

I always thought that my British Levy looked far too smart, I was using some Wargames Foundry Late Roman Infantry for them and they just didn’t look right to my eyes.   Well I’ve sorted that by painting up some of the Gripping Beast plastic Dark Age Warriors and fitting them out with Arthurian shield transfers from Little Big Man Studios.    I just love those transfers, they’re such an easy way of making troops painted to a fairly basic standard look really rather good.  `

Levy

This has enabled me to tart up the Romans a bit and add some shield transfers, again from LBMS.

Warrirs

I think those troops look better as my Warriors than the Wargames Foundry Armoured Infantry I was using for my Milites before.     The Armoured troops are now restricted my Comanipulares.

Elite

The whole force still looks more Roman than I’d really like and I have plans to put together something looking more British – ideally a force using the  Gw?r y Gogledd (Men of the North) lists from the Raiders supplement.    It will have to be a long-term project as it will be rather expensive to do it so it looks exactly as I want – hairy arsed. basically.  And there’s no point in doing it any other way, I’ve got enough of the Roman looking types to do any British force available in the game anyway.  .

Scotti

In the meantime I’m working on putting together a force of Scotti which will use some of the same troops as I have for my Picts.   I’ll be using these blokes, Wargames Foundry Picts with rounded shields, for both Picts and Scotti.  I have other Picts with square shields who will be confined to the Pictish force.

Raiders

The other thing I’ve done is to put new shields on my Pictish Raider Cavalry to make them more flexible.  They used to look like this, with quite a few of the unusually shaped shields you find on Pictish wargaming models.

I’ve replaced those shields with medium sized round ones from gripping Beast and used some of the plainer Pictish shield transfers from LBMS.  To my min=d these cavalry will do fine for either Picts or Scotti.  I’ll save the more distinctive designs for some Pictish Nobles.

RaiderCav1

RaiderCav2

I’ve been reading quite a lot about the Picts recently and it seems that the cavalry didn’t carry the unusually shaped shields anyway.  I’m also wondering to what extent the unusual designs were actually used. some authors suggest that the H shaped ones in particular were possibly ceremonial and that most of the Pictish troops used the more conventional shapes (square early on changing to round as time went on).  It seems it might be a classic case of wargamers exaggerating differences between troop types and I wonder just how different your bog standard Pictish infantryman looked from his Scotti counterpart.   In my case the answer will be “not a lot” though I will make the Nobles look different.

The Scotti have arrived from Gripping Beast and are now undercoated and on the painting table.  I’ve got a week’s holiday from work and it’s time to get going.

Scotti

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