Romanesque Imperial Guard?

[Tiger9gamer]

hey, Just stopping by to ask if it would be possible to do a roman themed imperial guard army. They have more of the numbers for what, in my mind, to better represent the roman legions over the space marines.

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

Sure, it'd be doable, just find some good models to convert from.

 

One of the most iconic pieces of equipment they had was the tall scutum shield; maybe use that to represent Carapace Armour?

[WarriorFish]

It depends on what you mean by "possible". The Guard comes from countless planets and systems each with their own cultures and ways of battle so having them as Roman Legionaries would be possible in the background. The real issue is models - having Romans with lasguns or the like would be quite a feat but you could also theme and style other models.

 

Colour schemes, symbols and the like would be simple enough and you could do stuff like give them standards instead of banners for example. Maybe some green stuff additions or modifications with the help of third party bits? It's really more of a question of how far you're willing to take it and the associated effort and costs!

[EPK]

I suppose it is very likely that regiments of IG hailing from Ultramar would have such a theme. Just reading on lexicanum that the PDFs of each world in Ultramar are known as the Ultramar Auxilia and it is written that many regiments join with IG when needed. You could always start a small contingent to supplement your current IG models to represent this partnership and expand from there.  Keep in my that if you go that route, I would say that they would not be in any way technologically inferior - Ultramar is known to be very industrial and up to date.

 

Of course, with so many worlds in the galaxy you can virtually say they hail from any planet with any level of industry. So the other option is go Romanesque ala the Vostroyan route where they would have much more rugged looking attire and weaponry (I'm not saying use those models, just the feel). They could even be fairly backwards only recently being brought back under the Imperial Aegis and clinging to old ways.

 

Like WarriorFish noted, the biggest challenge may be the conversions.

 

EDIT - found some bits that could be helpful...

 

Late Roman Style heads

Velites

 

Warlord games has other minis as well. Never used them myself, not sure the cost.

[hendrik]

i'm pretty sure there's a guy who has a roman based army, it also has green fatigues and only the models in the command squad had shields. However, i can not find any links to it anymore.

[Nicodemus Doloroso]

Conversions might not be too difficult, depending on how far you want to go. There are a few places like Anvil Industries (see: http://www.anvilindustry.co.uk/index.php?route=product/category&path=77_66) that make Roman-style helmet crests. If you put their "small roman crest" on Cadian troops, painted their armour silver and their fatigues a dark red (or dark blue if you want to go the Ultramar auxilia route), they'd look pretty Roman without much else. Give the sergeants and/or officers the "large Roman crest".

[Kierdale]

Depending how 'Roman' you want to go...in the extreme:

Shields for carapace armour, gladii(sp?) for close combat weapons, and laser-tipped spears for lasguns (not so much spears that are actually thrown, more like those used by Custodians integrating a weapon).

[WarriorFish]

Damn it, I don't want to get sucked back in to Rome II I have models to work on! :lol:

 

It would be very cool, but I think the number of models and amount of work required makes it impractical for all but the most dedicated of hobbyists.

[Durus]

A few years back I did a conversion along the lines of that idea. If you change the shoulderpads a little you can get the lorica segmentata look pretty easy on plastic cadians.

Here's an old picture but I guess you get the idea. I added a armor plate below the normal shoulder pad with GS and added one above with plastic card. And some straps for a pseudo cingulum.

 

 

It's also worth thinking about using historical models. Warlord games do have a range of plastic romans, that compared to GW prices are cheap. The only issue here would be equpping them with lasrifles. But as others have pointed out there are a lot of 3rd party products that would make that pretty easy as well.

I guess in the end buying a box of Warlord romans and equpping them with Victoria Lamb's lasrifle arms, should cost about the same as buying GW, but you get something a lot more personalized.

[Kierdale]

Really nice work there, Durus.

Do you have any photos of him/them painted?

[Durus]

Thanks.

I never got around to painting him. He was part of series of conversions I did to try and see what I thought might be feasible conversion work to do on an army. Which led to me making my mind up about looking into casting, which in turn led to me sculpting different heads and torsos and changing my mind so often about what I wanted to do with my IG that - as I just realized - over six years later I still haven't painted a single IG model.

Oh, man. Wow.

[WarriorFish]

That's really cool, goes to show what even a little bit of work can do if it's well thought out :D I'd definitely be interested in seeing more, though perhaps not with another 6 year wait :P

[walter h]

That was an awesome conversion,Durus. It is an interesting conversion,the time factor is the question,as it seems that the expense would be card,and a little G.S..

[Durus]

That's really cool, goes to show what even a little bit of work can do if it's well thought out I'd definitely be interested in seeing more, though perhaps not with another 6 year wait

Don't worry, I've collected enough pieces to start work on my Chem-Dogs of Savlar "soon-ish(™)".

That was an awesome conversion,Durus. It is an interesting conversion,the time factor is the question,as it seems that the expense would be card,and a little G.S..

Yeah, if you only want to do the shoulderpads and belt pieces it's really fast. Honestly I'd say holding the plastic card in place after glueing, probably took the longest.

I just pulled the mini out again and took a look, in case anybody wonders the plastic card was just rectangular strips about 3x11mm with one of the long sides bending outside until the strip is about 4mm wide in the middle. That's supposed to be the inside, facing the head when glued, so it's flush with the curve of the plastic pad underneath. Rolling the strips over a brush before glueing makes it a little easier to attach them.

So even the small sheets of plastic card you can get a modelling shops will last you an entire army (I bought one square meter of plastic card in a model shop for architects several years ago. Still plenty left over.)

And the GS work just involves putting a little underneath the pad, smoothing it and taking the excess off, leaving straight edges on your new "armor".

Apparently imageshack updated their site so I just threw the other pics in an album here (hope that works) for anybody who cares to take a look. In there is another pic of a stormtrooper conversion, with multilayerd armor plating on the shoulder made with only GS, which looks similar but took a lot longer.

So that's all I can contribute to the topic of romanesque IG. Sorry for the temporary thread jacking.

[WarriorFish]

We'll hold you to that, I expect to see some Chem-Dogs soon(ish) ;)

 

A shame it won't be an army of Legion Guardsmen though...

[walter h]

Great,and it's interesting that you chose Chem Dogs. I can't wait to see the build.