Any of y'all ever play a little game called Rome Total War (2004)? I spent a lot of my youth playing RTW and my favorite faction was the Thracians, with their really cool hybrid unit roster featuring Greek and Barbarian troop types. And now, all these years later, I've started a tabletop army based on them, using the Dacian kit from Victrix miniatures! These are my first 10:
Irritatingly the kit doesn't let you build everyone on sprue with one weapon type, there are two archer bodies, three or four spear or hand weapon bodies, and two or three falx bodies. Of course you can do some kitbashing and build them as non-standard but I prefer to keep "on-script" for these Victrix kits.
These two guys are from the Command sprue. My first use of army painter speedpaint's Hoplite Bronze. It's not quite as gold or as shiny as I would like but it's not bad, really.
Three Falxmen! Two of them shirtless and one using the body that can be falx or spear armed. These are the real Rome Total War champions, I loved the falxmen in RTW and here they are in all their stripey pants'd glory. Plus Dave in his normal tunic and trousers but we don't talk about him.
Archers! These guys are actually going to be doing a lot of work, I've got a Norman army going as well and these Thracian archers look generic enough to work for them as well, so they're my missile support in both the Classical Era and the Dark Ages. What's a millennium or so between friends?
And last we have my three standard spearsmen! I tried to make the RTW Thracian snake motif work but it kiind of does not, unfortunately. Future shields will be simpler I think. Also: the shield rims on the shields in this kit are a real pain, moreso than on the Norman kit even.
So that's the start of my RTW Thracians! The paint scheme is a little bit simplistic and uniform but I figure that's fine when I'm deliberately calling back to a 20+ year old video game in which each and every man in a unit was represented using an identical 3d model! These guys are probably going to be mostly for Lion/Dragon Rampant, and of course I'll be playing Frostgrave with them as well (hell just these first 10 guys are basically a Frostgrave warband already, minus the wizards). Now only 50 more to go!
