I've been dabbling in 54mm Gladiators for a long time, almost two years. I really like the scale of 54mm-- it's easy to paint and easy to play with. For as long as I've been involved in this scale, I've enjoyed the spectacle of big figures, but there's never really been a decent solution for a coliseum.

Sure, I could have gone with the Ben Hur Coliseum playset. You can still get this in recast plastic-- but it doesn't look like a Coliseum to me, and it costs an arm and a leg to find one in any decent shape.

Then I noticed the following "Roman Coliseum Playset" on MichToy.



The figures are kind of playmobil like, but I gave them to Gar (with the chariot), keeping the shields and weapons for gladiator games as missing weapon tokens. The coliseum itself is made of a semi-soft plastic (not rigid), with lots of fine detailing in the statuary and tiling and mosaics. The scale is just perfect for 54mm. At this moment, I have primed it with Kryolan Fusion plastic paint, and I'm tempted to leave it be, or give it another coat-- the kryolan gives it a sort of marble finish. I'll have to paint the door and fixture details, of course, to give it some contrasts. I am pleased with the investment, which was fairly minimal compared to picking up an entire Ben Hur playset, and frankly I think this looks better.

Gladiator Fighting with Curt and Grant Daniels

I ran RUDIS: THE WOODEN SWORD at TriaDCon a couple weekends back. I got three players initially, but the fourth player wimped on us when his buddies set up a boardgame two tables away (and I was happy to see him go!). So I took the third slot.

The rules were MUNERA SINE MISSIONE rules for gladiatorial combat, by Mr. Alan Saunders. These are very simple rules to run, easy to classify gladiators and easy to conduct combat. I will use them again.

The scale was 54mm, the miniatures were Italieri, Alpha Miniatures, and a few Outland Minis.



Curt managed to wipe us all out and he had the obligatory gloating moment. Fun times!

Gladiator Fight Club at TriaDCon

Of the three events I wanted to run at TriaDCon I ended up running postponing one until Fall-IN! and cancelling another because the "tempo of operations" got a little heavy at TriaDCon.


George

The event I DID run, 54mm Gladiators ("The Wooden Sword") was a lot of fun. Somewhat whimsically, a movie parallel came to mind.



Mitch Osborne, George Callanan from Baltimore, and myself sat down for a quick Free For All set that featured deadly dwarven tag teams, 2 retiarri, two hoplomachus, 2 secutors, 1 thracian, one horribly outmatched pugile, and TWO barely trained savage fighting bears. You can see where this is going, already, can't you?


Some disreputable character

Our game end condition was at second blood. Mostly because we were all hungry and wanted to go get dinner.



That's Mitch's Hoplo at the top of the page... We used 54mm mixed Italeria and Alpha miniatures. We used highly modified BLOOD AND SWASH rules with a very detailed variant written for gladiators by Steve Gibson, a friend of mine. I modified it somewhat further for 54mm and the grid pattern terrain map.



Early on in the game, Mitch's bear, Smokey, is under control. We made a saving throw for bears-- if they get wounded, the roll versus SAVE to see if they stay controlled. Alas, Smokey went berserk pretty quickly. Fortuntely for Mitch, they were pointed at George's dwarven tag team at the time!



Surprisingly, the dwarf did open up a minor can of whup-ass on the bear. Then he left in a big, big hurry the next time his initiative card was drawn.



Over at my end of the table, things are hotting up quick as the two closer forces smash together. That's MY Retiarus up top and George's Retiarus 2 below, his Secutor, my Pugile, and his Tracian. Nobody, but NOBODY could net anything in this game. The Retiarii were easy meat!!



Bill Frye, former Atlanticon Director, Former HMGS East Cold Wars director, dropped by and puts a dollar down on first kill. Now that we're playing for the big money, things get ugly...



MY bear, "Not Very Gentle Ben", mauls George's Thracian, and he cuts Ben in the vitals. Meanwhile, my hapless Pugile maneuvers around him for a Kidney Punch. There is no honor at Gladiator Fight Club.



Meanwhile, I add my own simoleon into the pot, but my colleagues wuss out. Since my Samnite is hammering his Retiarus into meat goo, it looks as if that sweet, sweet two dollars will soon be MINE!!!!



At this point George's Retiarus is down to something like 5 points remaining.



Over on the other side of the Arena, Mitch is having his own difficulties. The dwarves, who had enraged Smokey, had made him all berserk so he could no longer be controlled. That means he went after the nearest living thing, which was Mitch's big barbarian berserker. Alas, Smokey could run as fast as the fighter could!



It's looking like curtains for George's Retiarus as I get in a couple more hits.



Mitch tries to lead Smokey over to us to share the loving... he finally turns on Smokey and engages him. Anything beats getting clawed to death from behind...

AN UPSET!!!!

George's Thracian downs Not So Gentle Ben and kills him. Then he turns on my hapless, totally outmatched Pugile and chops him into chutney!!! All in about as much time as it takes to tell!!!!!!



And here's the result.

I had a great time at TriaDCon, which was in its first year out. I am really looking forward to next year!!!

(Attribution: Photos by Kaarin Englemann and Mitch Osborne, which is why Mitch isn't in any of the photos above)

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.

Progress

Since Drey and the kids have been gone for the most part of the last couple weeks, I've managed to get a lot of small projects done. One is to paint the plastic Italeri 54mm gladiators (most of one sprue's worth) and some of the Alpha miniatures I bought to supplement them.



These are unfinished, so I'm embarassed to show them in full color.

Left to right: one of the two man dwarf tag team, figure from Alpha Miniatures. Retiarus from Italeri (plastic), Thracian from Alpha Miniatures (now fully painted), a Secutor from Italeri (plastic, and I'm guessing here. Italeri takes liberties), Dimachaeri (two sword fighter) from Alpha Miniatures, and possibly a Hoplomochus (spear fighter in Greek style) from Italeri.

As you can see, they are matching up together very well.

More on 54mm Gladiators

I got my Alpha Miniatures order in over the weekend, and did a little clean
up and assembly last night after getting back from TNGG. I bought one of everything
they had left, which wasn't much. As I've reported earlier, they are going out
of business. I went to see if the Alpha page was still up and running to see
what classes of gladiators I managed to get, and lo and behold it was. There's
some great information on gladiators on the site, and just in case it goes down
I'm going to reference SOME of it here. The following information is copyright
Alpha miniatures and is presented for my own personal reference. Where there
is a picture, I have purchased that gladiator. Click on the picture to see it
full sized.

Heavy Gladiators

Thracian (Thraex)- This gladiator was armoured very similarly to the Hoplomachus.
He wore full greaves on both legs, padding on his left arm and a full helmet,
commonly adorned with a griffin. His other equipment included a small square
or round shield, which he carried in his left hand, and a sword, which could
be either a scimitar (sica), or a "bent" sword peculiar to the Thraex

Murmillo - The Murmillo derived his name from a Greek word for fish. His main
opponents were the other heavy gladiators, the Thraex and the Hoplomachus. He
wore a helmet, had padding on his right arm, a metal greave on his left leg and
a large shield. He was armed with a sword.



Hoplomachus - The Hoplomachus was a heavy gladiator. He was named after the small
round shield he carried which was small version of the classic Greek shield -
hoplon. He wore a helmet, large greaves (metal leg guards) on both legs and padding
on his right arm. His weapons were a short sword and a spear.

Medium Gladiators

Secutor (chaser) - The Secutor was a variety of the Murmillo specially designed
to fight the Retiarius. He carried a large rectangular shield and a high-visored
helmet with very small eyeholes, which restricted his hearing and sight. He
also had a small greave on his left leg and padding on his right arm. His weapon
was a short sword.

Provocator - Provocators were medium gladiators and usually fought each other.
They were armoured with a visored helmet, a breastplate, and a half-length greave
on their left leg and padding on their right arm. They were armed with a large
rectangular shield and a sword.

Andabates - This gladiator wore full body armour and was unusual in that his
helmet had no eyeholes in it. He only fought other Andabates.

Light Gladiators

Retiarius (net man) - This gladiator fought with a trident (a three pronged
spear), a dagger and a net, which he used to entangle his opponent. He had no
helmet or shield with his only protection being a metal guard on his left shoulder
(galerus) and cloth padding on his left arm. His usual opponent was a Secutor.

Essedarius - These gladiators get their name from the light two-wheeled chariot
of the Celts. Whether they fought from war chariots or just made their entry
in them is unknown. They fought against other Essedarius.

Equites - (Being the plural of eques) means horsemen. These Gladiators were
lightly armoured, wearing sleeveless tunics, a helmet and a small round shield.
On Mosaics they are shown fighting both mounted and on foot.

Dimachaeri - This lightly armoured gladiator fought with two swords or daggers.

And the dwarf version (I got two of these)

Laquerarius - This gladiator was a variety of Retiarius but fought with a lasso
and spear instead of a net and trident.

Paegniarius - This fighter entertained the audience during intervals and fought
with blunt weapons.

And the following guys I ordered but aren't referenced on the main information
page: "Medium Gladiator".. this is a poor sap (probably a slave or convict thrown
in the ring as a jail sentence).

And the two Boxers, the Pugalisti:





The medium gladiator guy and the boxers might be of limited use, but what the
heck, they were on sale.

Clever

The trend in games I've been following lately is to reduce the huge logistical "tail" games like Le Grand Cirque and Balloonacy require so that I can show up with (hopefully) just one or two boxes and get right to playing.

IanH has taken this idea to a whole new level, and I applaud his ingenuity. He has created a gladiator game that comes in a biscuit tin decorated like an old Roman arena.



This really is a wonderful idea. Check out his website for the specific details. This is an idea good enough to steal! I found (at some point) a paper template for an arena that would work with a larger biscuit tin. I'll keep an eye out for them at Christmas time.

IanH's idea is good for 6 to 8 25mm gladiators at once. I actually have a ton of old Museum Miniatures 15mm gladiators that would benefit from a scale reduction of sorts. In general, the concept applies to the smaller scale.

For more details, read the original article on IANH's gaming website.

54mm Gladiators

Remember me picking up the Italeri 54mm plastic gladiators at HISTORICON? I started painting them last night. Italeri basically either starts with big figures and scales them down, or vice versa, because the 1/32 (54mm) kit is basically two identical sprues from their 1/72 (20mm) release, "made all big and stuff".


Italeri 1/72 scale gladiators, couldn't find a picture of the larger figs. The poses are identical

Italeri released their 1/72 gladiators in a big box that included a chariot, a "death stroke" vignette, and one other retiarus pose (the figure on the right above), combined with the rest of the figures on the sprues above and below. Apparently they have released the remaining figures as a follow on to the 1/32 scale release. I don't know as I'll buy the second box; all I would be getting that I could use would be the other Retiaurus figure. On the other hand, I am very pleased with the 1/32 gladiator set they did release. The repetition of sprues gives me two of everything, but that can be handled with a paint job. Besides, that gives me TWO lions and TWO bears. It wouldn't take much to find a tiger in 54mm scale, and then my gladiators will be singing "Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh MY!" With that said, I do have to take issue with the poses on some of these figures.


Second part of Italeri 1/72 scale gladiators, couldn't find a picture of the larger figs. The poses are identical

The Retiaurus (net and trident guy, second from left) has his trident on the ground at rest, with no net is in sight. The axe wielder (left of him) looks even MORE at rest, almost like he is having a coffee break.. Otherwise, I love this set.

I didn't know this before doing a Google on the subject, but Irregular Miniatures makes a small line of 54mm Gladiators. I have no experience with them but I already prefer their Retiarus to the plastic ones I have. So I will at least get that, and maybe one of their myrmillos.



The contra-Retiarus, Samnite and Secutor all appear to be interesting choices. I certainly may find my interest piqued by Irregulars one of these days.

NOTE: if you know of a good loose netting or mesh, roughly in scale, that would make a good net for a 54mm Retiarus, please let me know.

Last, and sadly, Alpha Miniatures has given up the ghost and will no longer be operating as a company. This New Zealand company made some quirky gladiator figures. One thing I like about them is that they truly covered the waterfront in terms of choices and they usually offered up more than one figure in each category. On the down side, some of their sculpts are decidedly... er.. unheroic looking, I guess. Like flabby, balding gladiators.

This may be just my perception. There certainly are some heroic sculpts, as this effort on the Miniatures Page Painting Studio attests to. On the plus side, I managed to scoop up as much as I could get in Alpha's going out of business sale (including two dwarf gladiators) and I can attest that they fit in very well with the Italeri plastics.

Pegoso Models (from Italy) has four beautiful g;ladiator sculpts in 54mm, a Secutor, a Myrmillion, a Laequarius (spearman), and "Spartacus". Simply gorgeous. Check out this detail!



These are great models and Pegoso makes other Ancients that will certainly do for gladiators. Alas, they are priced far to high for me to afford.

Bronze Age Miniatures has a small and growing 54mm line, nothing period specific yet, but they are promising "Greeks and Romans" and they appear to have some fantasy figures in the works, too!

Rosedale has some cool Gladiator figs, but really, these are 100mm so you would have to buy all of them and just game with them.

Verlinden has a sweet Gladiator vignette that is wonderful and in scale, but essentially useless for gaming.

If you want to go in a more, er, "whimsical" direction, there's always STIKFAS, which makes a dandy ROMAN LEGIONAIRE FIGURE that can be customized with gladiator gear. At 19.99 each, this might be an expensive game, but since gladiator fighters are usually small scale affairs, you don't need that many to get started.

That's all I have for review at the moment. I haven't ordered the Irregulars yet. I won't order them until I finish painting what I have in the hopper now.

Rules

There's a bunch of small cottage industry rule sets for Gladiator combat. I have RUDIS by Tabletop Games, which I have always liked. I also have Gladiator by Fantasy Games Unlimited which I thought was cumbersome and headache inducing. There are some big professional efforts, like the confusingly named Gladiator Wars from Westwind (which I have not heard many good things about) and em4's own gladiator in a box game, Ludus Gladiatorus. Likely, however, I will use Steve Gibson's homemade Gibsonsystem Gladiator rules for this game, they do a fine job of depicting "blood on the sand..."

Note: "Zgeist" has collected a lot of the same information on gladiator figures and rules on his blog, HERE