Gladiators in Roman service

To make the Gladiators I used heavy armoured legionaries from the Foundry collection. I used a range of poses to make the unit look alittle less organised than its Roman brothers. The odd gladiator conversion and Celtic figure added to the mix also helped to give it a motley look. This look was also achieved by painting their tunics in a multitude of colours.


Their shields I based from my memory of that classic scene in The Fall of the Roman Empire, when a cohort of ex-gladiators is sent into the forest to lure out the waiting Germans. With this scene in mind I painted my shields a dark leather brown. To give the Cohort a strong feel of being made from individual characters, I personalized each of their shields by painting on different designs and motifs. These ranged from tridents (for those who had been Retiarius), to spears and swords for other sorts of gladiators. The unit also had a strong Celtic feel to it and so I gave it a Celtic standard to really mix things up. One of the final touches was the idea of giving them loads of different styles of shield, which made the unit look like it had drained the local storage depot to equip its self.