On The Painting Desk: A Ludus of Gladiators

 

I have a large collection of Crusader Miniatures gladiators to play The Games: Blood and Spectacles with.  I can easily field just about any combination of gladiator types, and I probably have enough models for 3 different gladiator troupes.  However, when I ordered my Chaos Guard Kill Team from Only Games I also picked up a pack of the Wargames Atlantic 3D printed gladiators.  Did I need more gladiators?  Not at all.  Do I have more gladiators?  Oh yeah! 

About 9 bodies and an assortment of gladiator gear, weapons, and heads came in the mail.  The models needed a bit of work removing flash and connection points.  About the same as removing flash and sprue connections from just about any models.  The bodies came as one piece, with separate arms and heads.  It looked like I could make a wide variety of gladiator types.  I started by gluing the torsos to some washers to act as bases.  

Before I got too far in the project, I decided I needed to get out the rules again to make the appropriate gladiators I would need.  Glancing at the Ludus creation rules the core of the Laniste's troupe was 1 gladiator of each class.  That meant I needed a Heavy, Medium, and Light type as a base.  It would be a no-brainer to go with a Murmillo, Secutor, and Retarius as those were the "core" gladiator types.  However, I had some options to make a few more exotic designs like a Gaulus (Big axe) or Dimachaerus (Two swords).  Oh, time to make some decisions! 

One thing I noticed right away was that the proportions on these guys are much more accurate.  The Crusader models have a bit more exaggeration in order to make their type obvious.  Not so much with these 3D Prints.  That makes some of their helmets look a lot less interesting or intimidating, but much more realistic in scale.  The weapons too are more delicate and less blocky.  Not sure how I feel about it yet, and am a bit concerned with how they will mix in with my existing Troupes?   

Primed, but not fully undercoated yet

 Per the rules, you start with 500 Denarii to spend.  I want the core of my Troupe to be hardened fighters, so I spend the money on 3 Deserters to be my core gladiators.  I decide on a Hoplomachus for my Heavy, a Dimachaerus for my Medium, and a Retarius for my Light.  That takes up about half of my recruiting cash up front, and now it is time to fill in the rest with some back-ups!  I probably want at least 1 back-up per type as well.  I pick-up 3 slaves to train-up as well, and I chose a Murmillo (Heavy), Secutor (Medium) and Retarius (Light).  That is 6 Gladiators for 3 events per Games?  I do not think that is enough.  I decide to purchase a Barbarian Gaulus for the giggles.  That will leave me some money in the bank.  A Troupe of 7 gladiators out of the 10 I have to paint.  The others can be used as Damnati or Noxi opponents as needed.  The rest of my money gets split-up and goes into reserve.       

1. Deserter- Hoplomachus  
2. Deserter- Dimachaerus
3. Deserter- Retarius
4. Slave- Murmillo
5. Slave- Secutor
6. Slave- Retarius
7. Barbarian - Gaulus

With that sorted, it is on to the painting!  I start by doing my standard Grey Seer spray, then dark grey wash, and then white highlight.  Nothing too special there, but it is a different approach then what I used on my Crusader gladiator models, so we will see how they look together.  

Primed and Ready! 

For these guys, I wanted a wide variety of skin tones, and my speed paints were not going to be up to the challenge.  When painting, I try to go from the lowest point, i.e. skin; and work my way up on a model.  I was going to have to use my Armypainter paints along with my Flesh Wash to get the desired outcomes.  I used Elven Flesh, Barbarian Skin, Tanned Flesh, Fur Brown, and Monster Brown as my base skin tones.  Hopefully, that would give me a wide-variety of skin tones to match the cosmopolitan look of the Roman Empire?  We will have to see how it all turns out in the end!  

Diversity and Inclusion in this Ludus

From that step, I decided to go back to my Speedpaints and Metallic Speedpaints to finish them all off.  I was not 100% sure how that would look with my existing Base+Wash gladiators from Crusader.  Plus, I have not really used the Speedpaints on Historical models.  This would be a big experiment for me.  It would probably help me decide how I was going to paint my Anglo-Saxons next. 

For the most part, I was batch painting this guys.  I started with their foot wear and slowly moved up the models.  I would take a look at what the details were and then gather a couple paint options for that detail.  Then, I would put them in little groups and paint them up.  They took about one evening to get all the block painting done, and then I let them dry.  

Block Painted with Speedpaints

After letting them dry, I gave them all an Armypainter Soft Tone wash.  That would cover any missed gaps, define the models a bit more, and just dirty them up a bit to look more like gladiators.  I find the soft tone works pretty well for fleshy models or natural colors as it is based on a brown, sepia like tone for the wash.  

Painting is done!

That left the final step, basing.  My gladiators I have based differently than my other figures. Instead of the usual Territorial Brown with scattered lichen, I will be using beach sand to base them.  I stuck with the Territorial Brown, lathed it onto the bases.  Then, I dipped it into the sand and tapped off any excess.  This only took a few minutes to get them all based up.  

Based up

Here they are next to some of the other gladiators from Crusader.  

Wargames Atlantic 3D Prints on the left, Crusader metal gladiators on the right

Well, that was a nice little palette cleanser and test before going onto the next project.  The Anglo-Saxon army.  That has about 50 models in it.  However, as a test for using Speedpaints on Historical models, I think these turned out well.  In addition, I was able to successfully combine using regular Armypainter and Speedpaints to get a good result.  Doing this also sped up the time it took me to finish these 10 guys tookabout 3 days of work time, or a weekend for a unit.  A good pace.  

Until next time!  

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