Fifth Century Franks in Gaul: Modeling Ideas

Guy Halsall made some insightful comments regarding tabletop representations of the Frankish troops in Roman service in 5th Century Gaul in a recent post (see Comments). In short, he suggested those troops ought to have some distinctive elements of Frankish and Roman appearance - ie. Frankish axes and top knots, but Roman uniforms.
 

While I have never built a Frankish army like this (I've got an Essex 15mm Early Franks DBA army from the mid-1990s...), I think it could be done with some existing ranges of figures and accessories.

Gripping Beast offers weapon packs of the Frankish axe, which makes it a cinch to give Late Roman figures a quick and easy Frankish look. But what about the top knots? Well, with helmeted figures, no one will be able to tell. However, it would be nice to tell on at least some of the figures. So unless you are looking to do some head conversions, what can you do?

I think some Early Franks figures might could pass for Franks in Roman service if painted right. What I would look for is unarmored types whose tunics look like Late Roman tunics; avoid overlong tunics and skip the fur vests.  Equip them with oval shields and paint them to look like your other Roman infantry as opposed to giving them the striped Frankish tunic.
In general, I think some of Wargames Foundry's Early Franks/Saxons "Spearmen Standing" might be the best candidates for this.

The Horsa figure from the Wargames Foundry Arthurian characters pack (he's got the top knot, short scale shirt, and a sword) seems like a good officer candidate. As far as that goes, a number of GB's Early Saxon/German noble warriors could pass for some decent Roman-helmeted officers as well - just add some Frankish axes. Alternately, I suppose these guys could work as well-armored rank and file.

In the meantime, I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

A month out...really?

My apologies for the readers who regularly make a trip to the blog to see what new topic I've decided to ramble on about recently. Next week I will post a few things - touching upon a number of topics.

And yeah - still wrestling with the Dark Age Warriors (ca 6th Century) in wargaming mentioned in the last blog post. Offhand, I'd have to say Armati has given me some inspiration, but no definite answers.

Check It Out: Halsall's Battle in the Early Medieval West

I haven't made much time for the blog in recent weeks, but I thought I would share something with you that I recently read on Guy Halsall's blog, Historian on the Edge.

I took my time and enjoyed reading Guy's post of Battle in the Early Medieval West. He describes the piece as an unpublished entry submitted for an "Encyclopaedia of Classical Battle or some such." If you have not read Halsall's Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West c.450-900, then this is a great place to start. This piece really re-energized my love for the period after spending quite a bit of time researching, playing, and writing about other military subjects.

I think I am just starting to grasp how differently this period was from Roman Imperial Europe and the Late Medieval West. I mean, I thought that Dark Age warfare was different, but only in a rather superficial way for the most part - ie. not like Late Medieval warfare. As one might expect from Halsall, he challenges the idea that the military trip(s) from Point A (Late Antiquity) to Point B (Late Medieval) are smooth or that they can be interpolated simply by looking at data from better recorded periods.

How does this apply to wargaming? Well, right now I think I'm going to let that swim about in the back of my mind for a bit. I can kind of see pieces of how one could adapt rules to capture at least some aspects of Dark Age warfare, at least in regards to army list stats/abilities of certain types of armies. Try this - take a good look at how Halsall describes 6th Century weaponry and combat, and see if you can build a tabletop unit that moves and fights in the way described. Of course, this is just part of Dark Age warfare - there's also the matter of command and control and tactics. I'm looking forward to revisiting this subject later.

Hail Caesar released at Salute 2011

I suppose it was no big surprise that Warlord Games released their new ancients wargame title at Salute this weekend. Now that it's out, I know I've got to have a copy. When that happens, I'll be sure to post about it on this blog.

In the meantime, check out the PDF reference sheet downloads available at Warlord here (full color) and here (b&w). Talk about your troop types - it looks like 20 or so infantry classifications and another 20 split between all sorts of mounted, plus specials such as elephants and artillery.

I suppose as far as that goes, you might want to check out the previews and all that kind of stuff on the Hail Caesar page.

Hail Caesar! (Update from Warlord Games)

Warlord Games' Ancient Armies logo

I recently saw another Rick Priestley update on the Warlord Games website concerning the new ancients-themed wargame, Hail Caesar. 

I like what I am reading, so far. In short it appears the same kind of command mechanism found in Black Powder will be used in the game - command rolls are required to get your units moving and you cannot necessarily depend on how well they can do it. This kind of rule forces players to decide if they want to play it timid or take some chances on coordinating the maneuvers of the whole army. 

The game does not rely as much on shooting (which seems right), and keeps movements shorter and is geared more towards melee combat. That said, it kind of seemed to me that the missile fights may be sharp little affairs in the right context. I think as long as missile power is not, er, overpowering, the game is on the right track.

While I don't know or recall if Hail Caesar will have army lists, I hope it goes the way of Black Powder and provides a small host of unit qualities/abilities (tweaks) and scenario-based templates for putting stats to Roman legionaries, Celtic warriors, etc. 

Well, don't trust my memory or interpretation of what I read, you can check out the update on the Warlord site here.

Ammianus Marcellinus: The Siege of Amida

If you like wargaming the Late Roman period, I highly recommend Ammianus Marcellinus' history, The Later Roman Empire (AD 354 -378). He was a Greek officer who served in the Roman army during the mid-Fourth Century and offers a lot of anecdotes and personal perspectives on the era's politics and wars. The  heart of the work focuses much on the rise of Julian the Apostate.

The Persian siege of Amida is a great read. The assault against the Roman-held city walls has all the kind of punch you might associate with Speilberg's 'Saving Private Ryan'. Marcellinus really pulls you into the exchange of arrows, slingshot, and artillery missiles as the Persians try to take the city by escalade (ladders), earthen ramps, and siege towers. The city eventually falls after 73 days, but Marcellinus makes a narrow escape with a few other survivors. All kinds of game scenarios, big and small, suggest themselves from these pages. 

On an an army-building note, Marcellinus often refers to the barbarian clients/allies/mercenaries in service to the Persian King of Kings, Sapor. Unless I am mistaken, it kind of reads like Marcellinus was able to identify these Middle Eastern troops from 'true' Persians. Maybe an analogy might be to compare Roman troops and irregular auxiliaries. While I have never played a Sassanid Persian army (I have fought a few, at least on the tabletop), it did make me wonder what kind of possibilities there might be for them in miniatures. I'll admit, I have not done any manufacturer research on the army in years, but it seems whenever I see pics of Sassanid infantry, they often appear to be the standard levy lot. Sounds like I may need need to do some more digging around.

Wargaming the Roman Army - Online Extras

Wargames Illustrated asked me to write a piece (which turned into a two-part series) on the Roman army from a wargaming perspective. This was what I considered one of those Holy Grails of tabletop gaming assignments - right up there with the Vikings and the First Crusade. 

The first part appears in issue #272, right in the midst of the biggest collection of Napoleonic articles I think I've ever seen assembled. I'm honored that my work was included in such a magnificent endeavor. 


Anyway - when I took a look at the Roman army, I went all the way back. There's few figures for the earliest warriors, but a fair number of worthy substitutes and - you guessed it - lots of opportunities for conversions. Here's a link to the Wargames Illustrated extra online content for some cool conversions by Matt Parkes (see picture on the right for a sneak peak at the even bigger sneak peak of Wargaming the Roman Army). 

Age of Arthur: Dragon #257 and #263

While taking a few months off from work while taking care of our newborn in the summer of 1999, I queried Dragon Magazine about doing a campaign setting for Arthurian Britain. Editor Dave Gross advised me that it was a great idea - and that they had published Ian Malcolmson's "The Dark Ages" a few months earlier in Dragon #257(pictured right - cover art by Roger Raupp, who did another Arthurian theme cover for Dragon a decade earlier). This is the kind of thing that happens when you don't have a subscription... I did intrigue Dave Gross with another historical campaign idea - but more on that in another post. In the meantime I searched out what I believe must have been the last issue in Atlanta. 

The article offered great advice for modifying the D&D classes through the use of the 2nd Edition-style "kits" so players could assume the role of Saxon thegns, Romano-British horsemen, and clergy. Also, if the players wanted a little more fantasy in their game, the article listed appropriate monsters and the like. 

Malcolmson also wrote a follow-up piece regarding Saxon mythology which appeared in Dragon #263 that fall. It was pretty cool too; readers got to see older and somewhat creepier versions of the gods that appear in the Icelandic sagas.

Romano-Gallic Army (5th Century)

Last week I posted some blogs regarding the armies of the Romans, Franks, and Goths of the late imperial period (4th/5th Centuries). I recently added a link to miniature painter Andy Hawes' blog, which features a Romano-Gallic army of the period. Check it out in this entry.

As a teaser, I have posted a photo of his work on Comes Paulus (Count Paul), one of the last imperial commanders in Gaul.

Goths and Romans

Michael Kulikowski's Rome's Gothic Wars is another book that changed how I perceived late antiquity, especially in regards to the barbarian confederations that coalesced on the imperial borders from the middle 3rd Century. In this book yet another image emerges to challenge traditional thoughts that hordes of barbarians either advanced on Rome in great folk migrations and somehow developed politically independent of imperial influence. 


As with Halsall's Barbarian Migrations, we see a picture where smaller barbarian polities evolve into larger ones based on their relationships with the greatest power in their world - Rome. The Goths, along with the Allemani and the Franks, fall into this category. When did the assorted folk who did not necessarily share a common background, let alone ancestors, become the Goths? That answer lies closer to results of Roman policy than anything else.


So where does this lead us to in wargaming? Again, it comes down to the right miniatures for the right armies. A short case study involves the famous Gothic revolt which ultimately ended up in the massacre of a large Roman army at Adrianople in 378 AD. If I recall correctly from the passages in this book, a number of Gothic troops in Roman service - ie. regular Roman troops by any account - joined in the revolt after the Roman officials continued to compound an already volatile situation. Whatever the newly arrived Goths might have looked like at Adrianople, at least some of them probably looked and fought no differently from the Roman army they surrounded and destroyed. 


Indeed this kind of question arises throughout the Goths' intrinsic involvement in Roman military and political affairs over the next century. Does it seem likely that the next generation of Goths, raised within the Roman Empire, looked or fought so much differently?

The Early Franks in Late Roman Gaul

Guy Halsall's Barbarian Migrations (mentioned in the last post) also suggests a very interesting theory on the earliest Frankish kingdom in late/post-imperial Gaul (modern France) that made a big difference in the way I perceived the period and its armies. Essentially, the idea is that the first Frankish kingdom was not formed by invading barbarians (you've all seen the big arrows crossing maps of the Roman Empire in history books), but by the last Roman armies already in Gaul when imperial authority collapsed in the last half of the 5th Century. The admittedly confusing accounts of the Roman and Frankish commanders operating in the Loire region - and apparently competing with each other over control of the same army (or armies) -  in the 460s could very well serve as evidence of an Roman army transitioning into a Frankish kingdom.


On the game table this already makes me think that the fur-vested Franks and other outright barbarian types might be more of a minority in a 5th Century Frankish Kingdom army. I would think it would still look more like a Roman army, or at least have some Roman equipment. As for how an Early Franks army should play, that's probably a topic for another post sometime.


Update (February 23)
Andy Hawes, one of my favorite (and award-winning) miniature painters, did a great job with a late 5th Century Romano-Gallic army, which he posted to his blog here.

Guy Halsall's Barbarian Migrations

Professor Guy Halsall's Barbarian Migrations is a game changer - at least if you spend time thinking about Roman and barbarian armies in the late and post-imperial period - and especially if you like to play games with those armies. 

This book is a great read for those interested in the hundred years on either side of the collapse of imperial rule in Western Europe in the late 5th Century. While it does not review the armies mentioned above exclusively, a lot of the political, cultural, and ideological engines that drove the period directly and indirectly impacted the militaristic dynamics of the times. From a gaming point of view, you might find the book challenges you to rethink what really constituted the last imperial Roman armies and their enemies. In some ways, it might be best to think of them in terms of factions instead of the black-and-white Roman v. Barbarian dichotomy. 

There's probably a number of aspects of the period's feel that have no real quantifiable impact on the gaming table. But even those are worth keeping in mind if you play historical games for the sheer enjoyment of playing a game that resonates with your love of actual history.