All Done, just about!

I'm slowing down on the 54mm gladiators... why? Simple. I've painted everything I own, almost. There's a couple of the pseudo-African gladiator figures left in plastic that I might get around to, might not. In any event, as the photo shows,I have enough to get started.



Where to go next? Well, the idea of using 54mm Fantasy figures mixed in with historicals sounds amusing to me. A pity that some of the figures are so expensive in 54mm. I recently started a thread about the availbility of fantasy figures in 54
mm scale on TMP, and got some decent leads. The DFC (Dimensions for Children) 54mm plastics looks like its an interesting avenue to pursue for very little investment.

Conversely, I had planned on getting some more 54mm historicals from Irregular's 54mm Gladiator line (not all of them, but a few figures I don't have). I also plan on getting a couple of 54mm tigers and maybe a few accessories like swords and shields.



I have also found a company called "furuta" which makes 54mm gladiators, but they are incredibly expensive (70 dollars for 6, sold as a set, clearly for display only).. so unless I find 'em in a garage sale, that's a pipe dream. Sure are pretty, though!






I also had completely zoned on Chris Van Fahenstock's line of 54mm gladiators from Outland Games. It's a crapshoot if he's in country at the moment (with Iraq going on), but I will follow up on it. He has a Samnite, a Thracian, two really good Retiarii and another Diomachian.

I'm still pretty much stuck on a simple set of gladiator rules that a friend of mine, Steve Gibson, wrote. They don't concentrate on classes so much as generic mechanics (it doesn't matter what class the gladiator is, he has an armor belt HERE and a small shield THERE and leg armor THERE, you see). Most gladiator or man to man games work this way, but I like Steve's approach-- 3-4 pages of pertinent material and two pages of charts. He also writes rules for fantasy monsters and such. The only thing I might add to it would be magical combat of some sort.