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Men in Boxes: More Velites as Rome gathers an army




Building the Republican Roman army is now in full swing! With the Velites painted already, I'm getting ready to start painting the rest of the army. The figures have been primed grey and based. I'll be trying out a speed painting technique someone suggested and see if I can knock off a hundred of these blokes a weekend.

As you can see, I've finished just a box of these figures from Hat Industrie. The company also released another set of velites together with it's Roman catapults set (Set 8035) but the figures there are 25mm, far bigger than the 1/72 range they were supposed to go with. So I didn't use them in these formations and may save them for 28mm gaming instead. All of the figures I used were from set 8018, with each box containing 16 velites.
According to historical sources, the velites did not form their own units but instead were attached to each maniple of hastati, principes and triarii in groups. They positioned themselves at the front of the legion before battle and harassed the enemy with javelin fire and to prevent the enemy doing the same before retiring behind the lines to allow the heavier infantry to attack. They fought in a very loose, staggered formation like most irregular troops. In addition, the velites were effective counters to war elephants and chariots. With their high mobility and ranged weaponry, the velites were much more effective against these enemies than heavy infantry.


I've also purchased a new set of craft knives. I've been having trouble getting the mould lines off these figures, sometimes chopping off more plastic and losing detail. I currently use two sizes of craft knives and a set of micro files. Normally, these would suffice in working with scale model figures of the hard plastic type, but not so with the soft plastic commonly used in 1/72 figures. I tried sanding with a file and ended up with burrs and textured surfaces.
Here's a set similar to the knives I just got.


Now, I have to do some research regarding the color of clothes the Legions wore as well as shield designs and stuff. Any recommendations?

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