We have taken a look at the plastic 28mm Roman Legionaries. Assembling and painting them ready for the battlefield...

The box contains enough parts to assemble 30 Roman Legionaries on 25mm bases. Taken out of the box, the frames look clean and with very few mould lines. The flash is easy to scrape off with a scalpel and the feeds are in places that do not interfere with detail too much.

In the box there also is a frame of bases of different sizes. This allows you to glue up to 5 romans in a single rank making the whole deploying and moving of the entire unit much easyer. The bases are only a couple of millimiters thick allowing the unit to better blend in with the tabletop once deployed. And there also is a sheet of transfers for the shields.

Each model is in 4 parts: body (with left arm attached), right arm, head and shield. For some models there is the option of glueing on a right hand with a gladius or with a pilum, allowing you to replicate the traditional Roman combat tactics of throwing the pilum when the enemies were closing in and then switching to a faster stabbing short sword, the gladius, by arranging the first 2 ranks with a gladius and the rest with pilums. There are also arm options to build an officer model, a musician model ad a standard model.

All the parts have to be glued together using poli cement or superglue.

I have opted to assemble 2 bases of 5 romans each, 2 bases with 3 romans each, 3 bases with 2 romans each and the rest on single bases. Posing the models was easy and fun, allowing to show variety in the ranks but still maintaining a uniformed look.

After glueing a mixture of gravel and sand on the bases and priming the models black, I proceded to paint them using acrilic colours and inks. No one can really know for sure what colour were the tunics of the Legionaries but I have opted for a dark red as it looks very martial. Painting the models was fairly easy as the surfaces are clear and the detail fine.

Overall these are excellent models and would look fantastic in any Roman army.