The Legion Diaries- part 2: When in Rome

Since my last post on the Caesar’s legion project, I’ve been making incredible progress to the point where I’ve painted all of the miniatures! In fact, I think this series will be done with this post despite it originally being a 3 part series.

First up is a basic painting guide on how I painted my Legionnaires, using a limited selection of colours with no ink washes. The aim is to paint a smooth looking miniature mixing colours to drybrushing the highlight layers.

Paints needed:

• Model Colour Flat Brown
• Model Colour Flat Red
• Model Colour Matt Black
• Model Colour Matt White
• Revell Matt Yellow
• Revell Light Grey
• Greenstuff World Gunmetal
• Citadel Maccrag Blue

Painting clothing

1. Basecoat MC Matt Black
2. Mix 1:2 MC Black and Citadel Maccrag Blue and drybrush the model
3. Add an extra mix of Macragg Blue to the mix and drybrush the model
4. Make a careful drybrush of MC Flat Brown on the leather gear, followed by a light drybrush of Revell Matt Yellow
5. Mix 1:2 MC Flat Red and MC Flat Brown and layer paint the undershirt areas
6. Highlight the undershirt in MC Flat Red
7. Highlight white trim for the body armour with MC Matt White

Painting Silver

1. Detail brush or drybrush studs, strapping, bars and metal weapons in Greenstuff World Gunmetal

Painting light skin tone

1. Basecoat MC Flat Brown
2. Mix 1:2 MC Flat Brown and Revell Matt Yellow and drybrush the skin areas
3. Add more Revell Matt Yellow to the mix or add MC Matt White depending on what skin tone your wanting to paint

Painting Brown skin tone

1. Basecoat MC Matt Brown
2. Mix 2:1 MC Flat Brown and Revell Matt Yellow drybrush

You’ll pretty much end up with a unit looking like the the legionaries from Arizona, ready to take on the Mojave!

So far I’ve only played one small game of Legion vs AI Supermutants to experience the play style of the Legion. After six rounds only one Prime, one Recruit and one Decanus survived the gruelling matches. The Supermutants just made it with two Supermutants and one Master.

Some pointers from a casual gamer:

• Use ranged weapons only when necessary as your basic Recruit and Prime Legionaries aren’t great at skill tests. This is for their default equipment, so you could either equip them with better ranged weapons or take advantage of their melee efficiency with melee only weapons.
• Charge, just charge in and be the first one to strike.
• Fireaxes are beautiful to an unsuspecting foe, with charge bonus of a black marker you’ll get at least get four black dices. That’ll at least net you bonuses to damage, modifiers and armour penetration, as I found out in my game a Supermutant can easily be smited with one or more Primes!

Until next time,

-34th Tribe