NGY 2018 Irresolution Four – Full Metal Hic Jacet
Pardon the Pun but the Romans in Britain or (Asterix the) Gaul have always had a bit of a Vietnam or Colonial feel to me. Eagle of the Ninth. Lost legions of the Battle of the Teutoberg Forest 9AD. Trained technically advanced troops versus masses of hit and run wily low tech natives, it’s similar in feel to Andy Callan’s simple rules ‘take’ on the Maori Wars. When he wrote these rules in 1982/3 he “saw them as a sort of Victorian assymetrical Vietnam equivalent – high tech westerners vs wily bunkered-down natives…”
https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2016/08/04/maori-wars-update/
15mm Romans, Picts and Ancients figures
2018: I now have a fair number of Peter Laing 15mm Ancient figures, including some lovely vintage Roman and Pict figures painted by Stuart Asquith! It was good to let Stuart know that they are in good hands and will soon be in action again. Bought during 2017, these Romans and Picts were embargoed in the present cupboard until Christmas. A Happy Christmas Day at the Man of TIN house. Patience apparently is a virtue …
2019: The Romans and Picts were in action again finally this year but for the sad reason that they were a tribute game to their old C in C Stuart Asquith who died suddenly in November 2019.
https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2019/11/05/a-muffled-drum-for-stuart-asquith/
Some of the other randomly acquired Peter Laing Ancients range of infantry, cavalry and chariots are named, some unidentified. I’m sure my fellow members of the Peter Laing Google G+ Community (set up this year by fellow Peter Laing enthusiast Ian Dury) will be a great help here with the ID.
Full Metal Hic Jacet may turn into a new sister or side blog or at least a thematic blog Page on this blog. I checked my Latin online and Hic Jacet is appropriately “Here Lies …”, a common epitaph.
Rules and Wargaming Guides
Ancients are quite a new or mystery period to me, apart from the familiar Airfix Romans and Ancient Britons. Cavalry or chariots on the battlefield are a bit of an unknown quantity for me too. Asterix aside, I have started reading up on Ancients, initially Phil Barker’s Airfix Guide to Ancient Wargaming and for simple Ancient rules Donald Featherstone / Tony Bath’s Ancient rules in Don’s War Games (1962). These link into my adaptation of Don’s previous Close Wars skirmish rules.
The Reading List – Inspiration
Rosemary Sutcliff’s centenary falls in December 2020:
Campaigns and Ancient ImagiNations
I also like the Tony Bath Hyboria idea of fictional countries, mentioned in Donald Featherstone’s War Games. This is something that fits well into or prefigures my ongoing Imagi-Nations work based on Angria, Gondal and Glasstown 19th Century Bronte (paracosmic) family fiction set in the colonies.
Maybe a campaign set in Hyperboli? The Hyperbolic empire is of course the biggest, best dressed, bravest, smartest and most impressive Empire and armed forces ever to grace the Ancient period and bread was invented.
I believe that there is a mysterious Ancient Empire tribe or race known as the Dubya-Arjies?
Uniforms (though not as well dressed as the Hyperbolic Empire)
For uniforms and troop types, there are various Ladybird books and another colourful childhood library classic (j399 SAX) Blandford’s Warriors and Weapons of Ancient Times by Neils M. Saxtorph and Stig Bramsen.
Man of Tin blog 