Late Roman Saga Warband

(As always, click on images to enlarge).

As you may have seen already on the blog, I've been fiddling around with a Late Roman version of Saga, set in Gaul in the fourth-fifth centuries AD. I've done a bit of playtesting of the battle boards that you'll find elsewhere on the blog, and will shortly fix up a version 2.0, but today I finished a unit of 8 spear armed warriors to complete a late Roman 'warband'. In Saga terms this is actually 5 points worth, but I'll add another point of barbarian foederati at some point. All the figures apart from the 'Warlord' are from Black Tree Design, and very nice they are too. The Warlord is from Westwind Productions. Here he is, looking suitably like a Frankish warrior in Roman service.

According to my Late Roman rules for Saga, Warriors (which I call comitatenses) can be armed with bows, as here:

...or with spear and shield. According to the Notitia Dignitatum, a late Roman administrative document that includes, amongst other things, the shield designs for different military units, these men carry the shields of the Romanenses. This was a 'pseudocomitatenses' unit, which probably meant they were frontier troops taken into the field army.

And here are the palatini (hearthguard) from the unit listed in the Notitia Dignitatum as the Bracchiati Seniores.

I'm looking forward to doing some more playtesting using these chaps. I bought enough Huns to make a warband from Colonel Bill's Wargames Depot. Colonel Bill's is a real find - they sell second hand and unused figures. My Huns are from Wargames Foundry, but at a price that makes buying them actually a realistic prospect. But before painting the Huns, the next task is to finish my Scots warband.