When it comes to modelling, I have the attention span of a ferret: plenty of projects started (in various scales), few finished... And now I've got a new plan!

Johnny Shumate's artwork in issue II.6 is wonderful as usual and helped by the strict guidance of author Christian Koepfer, it provides a fairly unusual image of soldiers of the Roman imperial army. Already having Soldiers' Roman 3rd century legionary (SR-40) lying around, gave me an instant fix for the inspiration Johnny's image conjured up (this is how modelling projects often start for me). Hopefully doing a Step-by-step blog will give me the discipline to see it through.

Parts and assembly

I detest cleaning parts for assembly, so I was delighted that flash was absolutely minimal. The man himself consists of one large casting with his legs, upper body and right arm, his head, his left arm and the right wrist area with left hand. I glued the right wrist, head, scabbard (should probably not have done that yet...) to the body and let it dry overnight. The next day, I burnished the mail with the wire brush attachment on my Dremel tool to make it all nice and shiny. Next, I painted the mail with thinned Vallejo black glaze to add relief to the nice sculpt. I went over the creases with some extra black glaze when the first layer had dried. Highlights were added by drybrushing with a mixture of Vallejo silver and natural steel. When the mail was dry, I primed the rest of the figure with Citadel grey foundation paint. No particular reason for using Citadel, but it makes for a nice thin primer.

(from Science News by Bruce Bower)

PHILADELPHIA — Roman soldiers defending a Middle Eastern garrison from attack nearly 2,000 years ago met the horrors of war in a most unusual place. Inside a cramped tunnel beneath the site’s massive front wall, enemy fighters stacked up nearly two dozen dead or dying Romans and set them on fire, using substances that gave off toxic fumes and drove away Roman warriors just outside the tunnel.

Quickly making the rounds in the German press, a bit more slowly in English, but German archaeologists have announced the discovery of an early 3rd century (AD!) battlefield in Germany, quite a bit from the normal limes.

See the summary of news reports on Rogueclassicism and a thread with many links to German news reports and a discussion about the finds on RomanArmyTalk.

It's hugely overdue, but this Sunday (the 21st), we'll have another Skype-phone conference to record the 5th podcast. Murray Dahm and I will be joined by Mark Schwartz, who wrote 'Warriors at the dawn of time' in AW II.5. Hopefully Angus will be able to upload the result somewhere in the Christmas week, so you'll have something to listen to, when you've had your fill of food, drinks and family.

On his blog Ferrous Lands Ancient Warfare illustrator Andy Brozyna is running a sort of collaboration project. All figure and mini modelers are invited to paint a winter scene and join the fun at his site. I think I'll paint some wintery Romans. I've got an old model lying about, but maybe I'll use something else completely.

My third interview focuses on the author – Brendan McGinley (BM) – and illustrator – Mauro Vargas (MV) – of the web-comic ‘Hannibal Goes to Rome’. The famous story is lacking representational evidence, especially from the Carthaginian side, so it’s always interesting to see what artists come up with.

Mainz is cool. So is nearby Bad Kreuznach, or at least its Römerhalle. It's all even better with friends who share a crazy interest in the Roman army

I normally forward reader's questions and remarks to authors and / or publish them in the 'News and Letters' section of the magazine, but that is limited. We currently have our own sub-forum on Romanarmytalk for further debate, but I wonder whether that is accessible enough for our readership. I'd love to encourage more debate among our readers and between readers and authors. After all, there is often not enough space in an article of limited length to address all angles and problem of a subject. What do you think? Should Ancient Warfare get its own forum on the magazine's website?




Part 2 of my blog interview series features Stephen English, known to the readers of Ancient Warfare as the author of an article on Macedonian 'Heavy' infantry. Steven recently completed his first book about the army of Alexander the Great, which will soon be published by Pen and Sword books.

It took forever, but once our study was in working order and our ISP connected us to the internet, I too was ready for a late night podcast recording session. It was, as usual, fun to do. Hopefully it's fun to listen to as well.