A brief tutorial about how to paint 28mm Warlord Games Roman Imperial Legionaries.

Once it is black primed, our first step is to paint silver armour parts.
1- First a base coat of Citadel Boltgum Metal (Games Workshop).
2- Wash it with Babab Black
3- Once dried, highlight exposed areas with Boltgum Metal again.
4- To ends, apply a final highlight with Mithril Silver.

If you use other paint brands, as you can see, steps uses once darker silver colours, black wash and a lighter silver color. Even if you only have one silver colour, try to mix it with black, to darkener it.

Secondly it’s time to gold areas.
1- Base coat with Tin Bitz
2- Apply a layer of Burnishing Gold over the base coat, without cover it entirely.
3- Wash with Sepia or Devlan mud.
4- Restore some parts with Burnishing Gold and a final highlight with Shining Gold.
For generic paints, steps are based in an oxide colour and two gold tones, with a brown/sepia wash.

Red parts:
1- Base coat with Mechrite Red.
2- Devlan Mud wash.
3- A mix of Mechrite red and Blood Red without cover all the base coat.
4- A final highlight adding Vomit brown to the Mechrite red and Blood Red mix.
For generic colours technique is based in a medium red, brown wash, and brilliant red and yellow brown or ochre. Another alternative for the final step is to apply a diluted layer of orange in the prominent areas. Don’t forget than red+white = pink, not a good way to highlight red capes. 🙂

Brown tones:
1- Base colour is a dark brown, such Citadel Scorched Brown
2-Higlight belts with Bestial brown, pilum with a mix of scorched and a lighter brown 75%/25%, and Sandals with Khemri Brown.
3- Wash with Devlan Mud.
4- highlight each area with their step 2 colour, and for the Sandals use dry brush with a mix of Khemri Brown and Bleached Bone (Bone White)

Flesh:
1- Base colour with a mix of Tallarn Flesh and a bit of red.
2- Wash with Ogryn Flesh.
3- Highlight with Tallarn Flesh+Red
4- A final highlight with Tallarn Flesh.
5- To shadow eyes use a it of black or dark brown.

(Easy )Basing:
1- Pumice stone paste, be careful with the figure.
2- Wash with Devlan Mud or a very diluted brown tone.
3- Add static grass or tufts in some areas.

Shields:
1- Black primed.
2- golden edges and Silver center.
3- Cut the transfer a bit smaller than the marks, they are some big, with the centre hole happens the opposite, it’s a bit small.
You can follow this video tutorial:
How to aply Transfers.

5- If some black primed area is at sight cover it with dark brown or red.
6- Wash with Devlan Mud.
7- Matt Varnish.

Step by Step picture.

Final result:

If you want to try with some Romans you can buy those here.

The Roman Scorpion. Crewed by two men this war machine was capable to fire a heavy arrow against troop formations or fortifications. Each centuria of each legion owned one scorpion, so around 60 scorpions were in a legion. The metal model from warlord includes two legionaries, the scorpion itself and a bunch of arrows.

Once the Greek States were conquered by the Romans in the 146-BC, the Greek war machines, more advanced, found their place in the Roman army. The most famous and used probably was the Ballista (a catapult) capable of fire stones against walls or formations.
After rework the Greek design the Ballista become to a very precise weapon, with a psychological and physic effect against enemies. The Warlord set comes with a metal Ballista, three legionaries and a stone pile.

About the set, it is very well details, although some problems were found to built up the ballista, the torsion springs are too shot and don’t fit properly their place, so some liquid putty (Citadel) was used to fill the gaps.

Ballista even had the wooden pattern in some parts and overall all the detail is good and the set is a pleasure to paint. The bases was primed all together, keeping the crew in position with “blu-tack” over temporal square bases to paint them separately.

Once painted is time to work the base, without the figures to work it comfortable.

The base is worked with Vandall (like Vallejo Pumice Stone) plus some natural stones. Devlan Mud was applied directly over the pumice stone and natural stones was worked with grey colours and dry-brush technique, applying light grey each time. After this some grass and turf were applied.

To built the turf (or moss) i used static grass, matt varnish and white glue. The string in the Ballista is made with a thick thread.

To paint the machines itself i used a mix of Bestial Brown and Fortress Grey (Both Citadel colours) and then Devlan Mud eash was applied. Highlight with dry brush of Fortress Grey (very dry). Metal parts are painted with Bolt Gun Metal, Devlan Mud and Bolt Gun Metal dry brushed again.
The roman legionaries are painted as in previous posts here.

A beautiful high quality set. You can find it through our utility here.

Warlord Games – Roman Testudo

It’s time to present the Roman Testudo, probably the most well know formation in history. Warlord Games manufacture it a 6 resin parts set. One for the cover shields, with a head looking out of the testudo, front, rear and 2 sides parts. Sets also comes with a separate Centurion and some arrows, to use as the box cover depict.

Once it is finished it will look great in any army, but to achieve this there is a long way. I can’t lie, at least my set, as you can see in the pictures, was damaged and mould quality wasn’t the best. The main problem a big bubble in the resin, damaging feet, plus other minor bubbles ans some resin burr.

It was purchased in UK in order to avoid the long process to claim for a new one y go ahead, reworking the damaged areas with putty.

Some areas are difficult to access to clean the mould lines, but it’s not important in all the interior side. Some other were hidden with the flock and grass in the base :). Total result is so impressive which probably nobody will notice this.

Set also comes with a transfer sheet for the shields, with some redundant decals, but probably you will broke some one during process…

There is no clear way to fix the cover shields with the other parts so i used some metal paper clips to do it.

About the painting you can work only the visible side of the parts, letting a basic coat for the interior side, as it will not be visible at all once finished, unless you prefer to let the cover shields unglued to show the interior…

Even if i get pissed off in some steps, final result is so good than i thinking in buy some more. 🙂

If you still haven’t this interesting set, take a look here.

Well, today I want to introduce an excellent set from the British brand Warlord Games. This one is the old box, still available in some retailers, which allows to built up 30 full legionaries with a complete command group. The new box only allows to built 20 legionaries, but also includes a Scorpion.
Set is spread in 3 sprue, 2 only for legionaries and the other which also includes the command group, Centurion, a Cornicern and a Signifer (Sargent, musician and standard bearer). It also includes transfers for 39 square shields and 3 for circular ones.

As you can see the sprue are very well detailed and with a lot of extra parts as helmets, Pilums and some shields. Legionaries can wear the Pilum or the standard short sword “Gladius”.

The figure which is in the corner close to the Signifier is an Option, the Centurion assistant. This figure is not part of this set, you can found it as individual figure from Warlord or in a blister with 3 different ones.

All the figures are very well detailed and you will enjoy a lot painting them. Their size is a bit small for some manufacturers, but for example they are quite compatible with the Foundry ones.

They are painted with Games Workshop/Citadel paints.

Picture above shows the paint work process, as you can see i paint heads and capes and some other parts separate of the figures. You can feel it is a tedious work but if you try it surely you will like it, as it ensures a good result and easy paint work over the figures.

Paint guide (Base/Washed/Highlight):

Primed: Chaos Black.

Helmets and armour: Boltgum Metal/ washed Babab Black/ highlighted Chainmail metal.

Golden parts: Golden mixed with Devlam Mud/ Shining Gold.

Skinn: Tallarn Flesh mixed with a bit of Red Blood/Ogryn Flesh/Tallarn Flesh.

Leather / Wooden parts: Bestial Brown/devlam Mud/ Bestial brown.

Red- Mechrite red/devlam Mud/Mechrite red.

White Leather: Deneb Stone/Devlam Mud/Skull White

An excellent set, which surely will looks great on your armies or stands. If you still haven’t it you can purchase it here.