Detail of the 1st Cohort
Cohort Organization
After a year of focusing on 60mm figures, I have determined that the sort of battles I want to fight will require more units and larger numbers of figures. The 60mm figures are great and I still intend to use them for smaller battles, skirmishes and Gangs of Rome style games (I'm getting GoR bases printed in the correct size) however, I've decided to go down in scale for the large battles.
After a tentative stab at 25mm, which didn't work out to well (the figures received actually measuring 30-32mm!!!), I've settled on 15mm. The above EIR miniatures are from Museum Miniatures. I like the poses and I especially like that they have the same helmet crest as my 60mm plastics.
Now that I've decided on a smaller scale figure I've been tinkering with organization and figure ratio. Another thing that has changed is that I know a little more about Roman legion organization than when I started the Lohwand Campaign. Following on Peter Connolly, I now know that the cohortes were organized in six centuries, each of eighty men, and that a common formation was three lines of two centuries each. Each century would be formed in ten files of eight ranks deep. So the whole cohort would be twenty men wide by twenty-four men deep.
Quite a change from my original proposal which had a longer frontage rather than depth. Above you can see what I've more-or-less decided upon using a 1:40 figure ratio so each century is two figures strong. I found some nice bases - via the Big Red Bat (To The Strongest) - that are aligned the way I want them, short edge to the front.
I put the centurion in the front rank, and behind I've made a little command grouping of Optio, Signifer and Cornicen. I'll have to make sure the first cohort gets an Eagle! And for the overall legion I'll have to hunt down a Legate and an Imagifer.
The thing I'm wondering now is whether I should leave it as that, with the cohort the smallest element of maneuver, or should saw the bases so that I can array the centuries all in a single line? I'm thinking if I got a metal plate and then used the magnets with the holes already provided, that would hold the three-part cohort in place if I did cut it up, but still allow me to split the centuries up if required.
The pics below show the whole hypothetical legion arrayed in the triplex acies formation:
The triplex acies
The full legion of ten cohorts
