Painting for February

I'm a little late getting these guys up but it just got nice enough to get them varnished.  Colorado, being the weather whore that it is, gave us a little bit of everything this week.  We had a blizzard last weekend.  I drove to work in white out conditions on Tuesday.  Today it was 70 degrees and perfect.

Of course the first thing I thought of was, "I can finally get some stuff primed!".  As soon as I got home I rushed out and primed about half of what was on my work bench.  It turned out that I was out of brown primer for the horses, thus only half.

Half of one Auxiliary Cohort.

I'm still plugging away at my Roman army for Hail Caesar.  Jonathan has such a high standard of painting, not to mention the speed he's finishing units off at, that I'm struggling to keep up.  These lads have fought in two battles now, but unpainted.  Their shame has obviously affected their battlefield performance, especially last time when they spent most of the battle hiding behind some trees.

This Optio is my favorite model in the entire army.  He comes as part of the command of the Warlord Games plastic Auxiliaries.

The box comes with 24 models, 20 on sprues and four command.  My normal sized infantry units are 16 models so that give me one and a half units per box.  I have a second box, un-assembled, to finish these lads off and add a third cohort of auxiliary infantry.

The full cohort.  The standard bearer model is not my favorite.  

The second unit is at full strength.  The standard bearer that comes with this set is aweful.  his standard is in two pieces and is too small to pin.  For the second unit I'll use a plastic standard left over from the praetorians.

The command.

The centurion in this set is very nice.  He's dynamic and different than the legionary centurion.  I also like the horn blower in this set, though they don't include a transfer for his small round shield.  I'll have to free hand that one of these days, but I'm not feeling up to it now.

Another view.

This is a good set of models over all.  I wish that Warlord included bases with their minis, but other than that they are good value for money and a quick way to build an army.  I'm looking forward to painting the other box of these guys, but there are several other units in the queue in front of them.