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Roma Victrix: The Polybian Legion of Early Republican Rome



The Polybian legions of the early Roman republic was a manipular army whose structure was based partially upon social class and partially upon age and military experience. The army is based on units called maniples (Latin manipulus singular, manipuli plural, from manus, "the hand"). Maniples were units of 120 men each drawn from a single infantry class. The maniples were small enough to permit tactical movement of individual infantry units on the battlefield within the framework of the greater army. The maniples were typically deployed into three discrete lines (Latin: triplex acies) based on the three heavy infantry types of hastati, principes and triarii. 

My Polybian legion is currently composed of various HäT Industrie 1/72 plastic scale models. The company is a designer & manufacturer of 1/72 and 1/32 scale soft plastic and 28mm hard plastic military miniatures designed with the plastic toy figure collector, wargamer or hobbyist in mind. I've worked around the problem of painting soft plastic such as these but would detail these later on. For now, here is a list of the kits I have either in painted and finished mode or in primed and in "when-I-get-time-to-paint-them" mode:

  • 8017 Princeps and Triari (painted & finished 1 box; 5 boxes to go)
  • 8018 Hastati and Velites (painted & finished 1 box; 3 boxes to go)
  • 8021 Roman Cavalry (assembled & primed; 2 boxes to go)
  • 8035 Roman Catapults (mint in box)
  • 8051 Roman Command (mint in box)
  • 8040 Italian Ally Infantry (2 boxes assembled & primed; 3 boxes to go)
  • 8054 Italian Ally Cavalry (1 box assembled & primed; 2 boxes to go)
  • 8024 Numidian Cavalry (1 box painted & finished; 1 box to go)
  • 8055 Spanish Cavalry  (1 box assembled & primed; 1 box to go)
 Plastic Soldier Review has short useful reviews of all of HäT Industrie's current product lineup. You can check out the reviews of the kits here. Over here, you can check out the beginnings of this plastic army with the first figures primed and based.

 Next: The Velites
 Info paraphrased from Wikipedia

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