I haven’t posted anything on this website for the last six months. My lovely wife died very unexpectedly in January, having gone into hospital with a chest infection. I have been really busy sorting out all of the funeral arrangements plus all of the legal and financial matters arising from that. We had known each other for 60 years, been a couple for 58 years and married for 56 years. I miss her so much.

As a result I am in the process of moving from my four bedroom house to a two bedroom apartment (one bedroom will be converted to be my study, library and wargames room). I haven’t got time to get back to painting plastic model soldiers during the move, but I thought I would make some more Paperboys ones. I decided to put my Paperboys World War II setup on hold, since having played a few games of Rapid Fire, it didn’t interest me as much as earlier historical periods.

I have often thought about creating a Roman era set up and have now used Paperboys to do that. It is of course incredibly cheap, the A4 Paper version of the book only costs £19.95 and it is really even more convenient to download the electronic version at £9.95. You can then copy the pages as many times as you like and build a complete Roman and Ancient British Army.

Peter Dennis’ website has many other downloads for Armies in this era, German, Parthian, Numidian, Republican Roman, Caesarian Roman, Macedonian, Carthaginian etc. Most additional sheets cost just £1 each.

I have made my first Roman Cohort. The figures in the book are 28mm, but I reduced them to 70%, which makes them 20mm.

Somewhat heretically I have only modelled them as one rank deep, and am assuming that my four figure stand is at a figure ratio of 1:20 to represent a Century of 80 men. The base is quite thick since I have added a strip of heavy tape to give the paper figures more weight and stability. The new Paperboys system is to glue the feet directly to the base, with one foot slightly back, which really animates them.

Here is the first complete Cohort, which I have modelled as II Cohort of the XIV Gemina Martia Victrix Legion (some sources say it was always referred to as XIIII). This Legion was part of the Invasion force in AD43 and played a prominent role in defeating Boudicca’s Rebellion in AD60.

The only modification which I made to the figures in the book was to the Cohort command stands. I wanted to be able to indicate the Cohort, so electronically added one extra phalera (disc) to make five on the Signa shaft. The original ones were silver, but I found gold ones in a download of Caesarian troops. My I Cohort has one gold phalera and four silver, II Cohort (shown here) has two gold and three silver, V Cohort is all gold, VI Cohort has one silver and four gold, continuing on until X Cohort is all silver.

To save wasting paper, rather than print directly from the pages in the book, I copied the images which I wanted onto sheets. This is Cohorts II to V of XIV Legion. A similar sheet is Cohorts VI to IX. Another sheet is Cohorts I and X plus the Legion Command elements. There is one final sheet with the Legion’s Cavalry and Artillery, so the whole Legion is just four sheets of paper.

I have added baggage mules, from a Caesarian sheet, and also mules to transport the Artillery Scorpions (bolt firers).

I have also prepared sheets for six Cohorts of Auxillia (two pages), which will be Cohorts I to VI Batavorum, and two Alae of Auxilliary Cavalry (one page each), which will be I Ala Batavorum and I Ala Thracum, It just takes a few hours to put together all of the the elements for each sheet and then I can model at least one Cohort per day. My plan (over ambitious as always) is to create a Roman Army of four complete Legions plus Auxillia and various opponents (Ancient British, German, Parthian, Numidian, Cleopatran Ptolemaic etc.

The Roman Invasion book contains some useful rules by Andy Callan, which I will use.