Saturday 23 October 2010

Adcantuannus




I knew when I saw this vignette on Foundry's website (GL15) a few months back that I had to buy it to represent Adcantuannus, my Gallic chieftain, despite it’s completely outrageous price. It’s very cartoon-comic like and the sculptor (the same one who did Foundry’s SYW French and British) has certain traits that I recognized when the pack arrived – like, for example, sausage fingers. But, besides these minor things, I like the overall effect and the story it tells. Clearly our chieftain is fond of his capon as well as wine from the Republic (the aristocracy of Gaul had developed a taste for Roman wine by this time) and his four exhausted shield bearers are groaning under their portly load.

Nobody knows what Adcantuannus looked like and I have chosen to make him an old man beyond his prime and quite possibly too old to mount a horse which accounts for this method of transportation. The question is, on the wargames table, should he be stationary or allowed to move? I suspect that if a cohort charged in their direction the shield bearers would very unceremoniously dump their august passenger and grab weapons or run for it.
But on the other hand, if the old boy stood up (perhaps not an easy thing to do) he’d have a better view of the battlefield than on a horse. A minus for mobility and a plus for the improved view?

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