Roman Western Archers contubernium

Last year Librairie Donjon, a gaming shop in Montreal, brought in a number of packages of miniatures by Warlord Games. I thought it a fine opportunity to check out the quality of the figures as well as pick up a box of Western Imperial Archers. My army already contained two units of Eastern Aux Archers (figures by Old Glory) I also purchased the Auxiliary Command pack which contains a Centurion, Cornicen, Singifer and a separate signum standard.

The following Archer unit utilized 14 of the 16 archers that came in the box. The box contained four main figure designs. These are equally divided between standing and kneeing figures. The figures appear to be true 28mm scale, are very clean and needed almost no work to remove excess flash. They were a joy to paint. I like the fact the base of each figure appears to be of about a uniform size and shape. I only used the Cornicen and the Singifer from Warlord Games on the command element. I felt the Centurion would not add to the unit’s look and substituted archers.

The unit below consists of 20 figures based on 5 elements. The command element is a BTD Auxiliary Command Pack at 28mm scale. The main body of men was produced by painting up two packages of Wargames Foundry IR7/8 Western Auxiliary Archers. The packs I won on EBay each had 7 figures at what appear to be 25mm scale. I then filled out the unit with two kneeing archers from the Warlord Games collection of figures.

The Warlord Games Auxiliary Command pack differs from the Black Tree Design Command Pack in 3 main ways. The signum standard is a separate piece in the Warlord Games pack. I personally prefer the standard to be integrated as part of the figure. The BTD pack includes an Optio (the cohorts 2IC) as a 4th figure. The last point is the Cornicen and the Singifer of the Warlord Games figures are wearing wolf pelts, while the BTD figures appear to be wearing bear skins.

The figures are all mounted on Baccus Bases as described in the posting on Roman Auxiliary Infantry. I'd like to add that I do not think you can go wrong if you decide to add some Warlord Games' miniatures to your armies.