Here, There and Everywhere: Sub-Roman Skirmishers

For both the Sub-Roman British and the Saxons, the first specific group of reinforcements your army gets are a set of skirmishers. I've got enough assorted lightly-armed Saxons rattling around to fill this group. For the Sub-Romans, I've got a gap.

By the magic of arithmetic, if you add eighteen levy spear, fourteen warriors and four slingers, and take the total away from forty Gripping Beast Dark Ages warriors, you get... four skirmishers!

 Don't you throw those bloody spears at me!

I did a bit more maths, and the forty Dark Ages Sub-Roman warriors came to £21.50, including the West Wind heads, or fractionally under 54 pence each! Since I got a cracking deal on the late Roman armoured infantry that became the nobles and elite troops (via Ebay), the whole army went on the table for well under thirty quid. A bargain by anyone's standards, I'd say!

Skirmishers of the time would have been armed typically just with javelins. A good handful each. So to represent this, I drilled out both hands, and glued javelins in place, one ready to throw and a couple in the off hands ready to follow up. The javelins are made from hammered brass rod.

You'll have someone's eye out!

The last of the West Wind bare heads went on these. The shields fit nicely over the javelin hands, ad the shields are the usual white, but since these are low-grade troops, there are no fancy chi-rho's or anything like that.

Although no one can actually die from a skirmishers' attack in Dux Brit, the additional shock might just be enough to make a much-vaunted unit of warriors 'lose their amphora' and run screaming for the hills.

Should be safe from this angle!

Just out of interest, here's a shot of the selection of spares left over from the box of GB warriors. What a lot of bits for future builds!

Wow!

Merry meet again!