The First Rebels Arise

So the first of my Judeans are completed:

Everything is painted to at least three layers, i.e. base, main and highlight, though some items have a fourth layer to get the right effect.

As to the shields, I entered in to a little debate on TMP about these, but it boils down to a case of you pays your money, and you takes your choice.  Personally I considered the fact that the rebels minted their own coins, with a range of standard decoration on them interesting.  If nothing else these suggested the images that the Jews saw as identifying them selves as opposed to the Romans.  To that end these seemed like good ideas for shield designs:

And so here we have the chaps in close up:

Again the Jewish shields are a three layer colour scheme.  The letters are in the Archaic script, which according to Wikipedia was out of fashion by this date, but is in fact the only script used on the coins, and the script of the Dead Sea Scrolls, so for my money clearly the right one to use.  However I should add in this first group of models, they say only gibberish!

The Roman shields are simply the transfers provided with the Warlord games miniatures, over a green base.  One of the warriors carries his shield upside down; this is intentional, why would a Jewish warrior respect the orientation of his enemies iconography!

Lastly I would add that my attempts to randomise the bases, with one model of every pose on each, and a mix of costume colours, has somehow resulted in the shield designs becoming thematically linked on each base.  Dammit!

At this stage I've not added texture to the bases, just a four layer highlight!  This looks fine for Masada and many other parts of Israel, but I'm considering adding scorched grass and shrubs for a more mountainous look.

Overall, these didn't take too long to complete, and I think the results look pretty good.  Now I need to work on some storage options for them!