Warrior Miniatures "testudo"

A few weeks ago I suggested to John Holt of Warrior Miniatures,in Glasgow,that he should produce a Roman Testudo,because the only decent one I'd seen was made of plastic and cost £25!
Imagine my surprise then, when a parcel arrived last Wednesday,and in it was a 24 man Roman Testudo !!
All othere projects were put on the back burner,and I set to work organising the figures and planning how to paint and base these lovely figures.The basic figure is a Roman Legionary holding his shield above his head,and holding a pilum.John supplies the testudo with 24 extra shields,so you can put some onto a strip for the sides of the formation.
This photo shows the initial undercoating job ( I always undercoat in white) Another view of the undercoated figures.

The photo below shows the front rankers with their shields stuck onto the hand holding the pilum,you can also see in this shot the Centurion which is also supplied with the testudo.At this point everything was going ahead just great-then disaster struck ,in the form of my cat! She decided to see what was going on and jumped up onto my table,figures,bases,glue etc. flew everywhere! ah well back to stage one!!

BAD PUSSY !!!

This shot shows the figs. plus the extra shields I have stuck onto card for the sides of the testudo.I was opting for a formation of 6 front rankers and 4 deep,however the final formation is going to be 8 front rankers and 3 deep,so more of my unit bases,which are 6" by 3",will be covered by the finished testudo,complete with Centurion,"rocks" and lichen.

This is obviously a view from above showing how it will eventually look.

Another frontal view, before I had made up my mind to have 8 figs. in the front rank.

Testudo placed on a base to see how much the finished formation will cover.

This shot shows how cleverly the figs. and shields fit together.

Whenever I get new figures, I always look at them and decide how "few" colours I can get away with when painting them,so I will only use 6 colours on the testudo;Brown,for back of shields,pila shaft,boots and sword scabbards.Flesh, for faces and arms and legs.Red, for tunics and front of shields.Gun Metal,for armour and helmets and pila.Gold,for shield trim and boss.Green for the bases.

Now all I have to do is start painting!!

The next blog will be more photo's as I progress to the finished article.