Little lead men of valour: We who are about to die salute you!

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

We who are about to die salute you!

Do you like…Gladiator movies?

Okay well how about Gladiator miniature games? Well I certainly do, and Gladiators was a nice small project to work on over the Christmas break.

A fellow club member had picked up a bunch of gladiator figures on the cheap and had been talking about getting some games in (and maybe running a short campaign) in 2018.

Old Glory (West Wind) have a nice Gladiator range of figures and so I took the opportunity of a larger Old Glory order to add in a couple of packs of Gladiators. The first pack consisted of five medium gladiators (shield, helmet, greaves) and the second pack had light gladiators (nets etc.)

So, over the Christmas break, after being full up on Turkey, ham, beer and other seasonal indulgences I cracked open the packs and got them based and undercoated.

Painting was in my usual style. A nice neat base coat mainly with Vallejo acrylics followed by a wash of GW Agrax Earthshade. Once dry I then went back with the original base colours and added a highlight.

Here is the result. I am quite happy with the final paint job. The ten figures were completed over a few days.

So now I had my Gladiators but they needed an arena to fight on. I wanted to make a nice simple arena that would be big enough for games of 10 or so miniatures. A smaller arena typical of ones on the fringes of the empire. I decided on a diameter of 35cm for the arena. I then cut out a circular arena from 9mm MDF board with a jig saw.

I then needed to decide how to mark out the board for movement. This would depend on the rule set we would use for our games.

Now I have seen quite a number of Gladiator rule sets over the years. Some have used squares for movement, others hexes, while others still just used a tape measure with freeform movement.

In the end I opted to make the arena double sided. One side was marked in 30mm squares. This would be suitable for a rule system like Jugular (Gripping Beast) while the other side was marked out for the rule set Red Sand Blue Sky (Two Hour Wargames) which uses an area movement system.

After marking out the areas I used a saw to score in the lines.

It was then time to add the sand.

I covered the board in PVA glue being careful not to get any glue in the lines and then covered the board with sand. Once dry and all the excess sand was removed I started painting.

Painting was a series of heavy wet brushing. I started with Burnt Sienna followed by a 50/50 mix of Burnt Sienna & Yellow Oxide. Then I applied a coat of Yellow oxide and finally to finish I used Unbleached Titanium. I used cheap acrylic craft paints for all the painting.