Warrior Ancient and Medieval Rules

[David Sullivan]

...what color would I be?

I'm painting some Roman bolt shooters and I'd like to get some educated opinions about what color to paint them. The obvious choice is wood brown, but I would imaging that they painted them for the same reason that armies of every era painted their gun carriages, i.e., it's a protective measure.

Any ideas?

Regards,

David

[David Smith]

Hi Dave;

I've done some carroballistas for my EIR army. You can see some painted examples here:

http://www.miniwars.com

Dave

[David Smith]

Hi Dave;

I've done some carroballistas for my EIR army. You can see some painted examples here:

http://www.miniwars.com

Dave

[Mike Turner]

Dave thanks for the response!

Dave's Site is always a good one to go to, it will either challenge you to great things or question your abilities with a paintbrush!

Mike

[scott holder]

One possibility for painting them as wood color is that engines/artillery and such were transported as parts. When arriving at wherever, the engineers/pioneers (or wtf they might have been called in a Roman context) would simply chop down some trees and shape the wooden parts accordingly, then attach the metal parts and presto, artillery. When the legion/cohort/whatever moved on to the next Gallic/German/Parthian village to attack, they only took the metal parts with them, thus, they didn't have to schlep the big bulky wooden parts.

Now, how this plays into something like a lite bolt shooter, I don't honestly know. It might have been small enough that the benefit of having one around all the time might have been worth the effort of having some legionary or camp follower also hauling the wood. Obviously the local geography (no trees) would have been a factor.

Also, how prevalent was paint? Obviously in an urban environment where it was used for decoration it was used but I don't know about it's cost, ease of manufacture (which would also be dependent on the color desired) and availability of materials for a marching legion to whip up some "latex" to splatter on wood.

All musings on my part, I don't know the answer to any of this. I paint my artillery as wood, fwiw. But that's what makes this interesting and more dynamic, there's no "one" way to paint the stuff. I feel that's one reason why Warrior 25mm armies offer a better spectacle and that's because we don't have any template from which we paint our troops.

scott

[David Sullivan]

[David Sullivan]

[Adrian Williams]

I have done mine a combination of wood with painted features - not sure of historical accuracy but it looks quite ok

Adrian

[chrisbump]

Scott's point makes perfect sense for Rome's artillery, at least mobile artillery. I suspect that if the bolt shooter were part of a garrison or mounted on a wall it would be painted to protect it from the weather.

My curiosity goes beyond the very efficient imperial Romans.

In the late Imperial Roman army when the legionairres were less Roman, less well trained and less diverse than their predecessors, would they have been so efficient? Or would they have built them and transported them with the baggage while on campaign?

The light bolt shooters I see mounted on single axle carts with a horse acting as the steadying and leveling element to the whole fixture seem counter intuitive to me.

These were engineers extrodinaire, would they really have mounted and presumed to accurately fire their artillery on something so unstable?

I have seen several pictures with bolt shooters mounted on something akin to a hand cart and the "handle(s)" to the rear of the cart act as the trail and stabilizing force for the contraption.

This would be more mobile, more easily moved for changing direction of fire and perhaps even capable of being pulled by a horse or mule.

In any case as I have been painting the Nike army I am working on it is with this idea that I have modeled my light bolt shooters and as such have assumed them to be built prior to the campaign and so painted.

Chris

[Bill Chriss]

The comments about portable artillery are correct. Polybius, in Book 11 mentions the Spartan tyrant Machanidas, at the 207 BC battle of Mantinea, drawing up his army to face Philopoemen's Achaeans as follows: "He led the right wing of the phalanx himself; his mercenaries marched in two parallel columns on each side of his front; and behind them were carts carrying quantities of field artillery and bolts for the catapults."

In a couple of other places also this is mentioned. Both the Greeks and Romans transported catapults and ballistae in pieces in crude transport and assembled them rather quickly in the field with or without the addition of pieces of local timber. They could then be disassembled to join the baggage train for the remainder of the campaign until the next use.

Therefore, my view is that they were most probably not painted and should be represented as natural wood with basic metal connecting pieces and mechanisms.

[OGS-Vintage]

I used a best guess for wood colour

Not having been alive during that period or knowing anyone who was, I had to take a poke at appropriate wood colour - and for flavour decorate fittings with bronze, brass or iron (no steel of course)