Dux Britanniarum!

Distraction strikes once again in the land of wargaming. I have been sidetracked from my ancients project with the prospect of Dark Age gaming, specifically the Arthurian age of Late Antiquity.

Since its always more rewarding to paint for a game where there are ready players I've let myself get talked into playing Romano-Britons versus an existing army of Saxons held by gamesmaster Damon using the Two Fat Lardies' Dux Britanniarum rules.

Here are the fruits of some sporadic painting over the last few months.

First up, a near complete two groups of Roman spearmen, figures by Footsore Miniatures.

Near complete as the shields and bases aren't done yet. I'm mainly undecided on the shields. For reasons I detail below.

Part of the process of psyching myself up for this project has been consuming literature related to Arthur and the Saxon conquest/migration.

One key text has been the fantastic Age of Arthur supplement for Warhammer Ancient Battles, now out of print and rather rare or exorbitantly expensive on the second hand market. Thanks to a Facebook group I was lucky enough to contact one of the authors, James Morris, and purchased a spare copy directly from him.

(James was also kind enough to dig up a spare unpainted and out of production La Dama De Elche from Gripping Beast for my Iberian project.)

The other inspiring text has been Bernard Cromwell's smashing Arthur trilogy, the Warlord Chronicles. This series presents a largely pagan or agnostic Arthur, although in all probability whoever may have been the historical Arthur would likely have been Christian whether he was Roman or Briton.

Still, I rather fancy a pagan Arthur for my campaign, or one not so obviously Christian. This meant scrapping my original plan for a red and white shield theme based on Little Big Man Studio's Chi-Ro transfers. In any case, the design below is somewhat speculative, not being in the Notitia Dignitatum.

I did purchase the decals below, but since they are for auxilia (the Cornuti) I wanted an historical scheme that could have been used in Britain in that period.

After a bit of research on Luke Ueda-Sarsson's excellent site on the Notitia I thought I might adapt the design of the Exculcatores Iuniores Britanniciani, part of the Comes Britanniae. It is somewhat similar to the Cornuti design above with a twin-headed element, especially the - likely erroneous - Oxford variant on the left below.

Since no version of this design is available as a transfer I'm going to try my luck freehanding it. I can't go too wrong if I broadly follow the contours of the Cornuti design.