Auxilia with slings

Now, in the Infamy, Infamy rules, the only slingers that are listed for the Early Imperial Romans are "Tribal Slingers", but because some of us were discussing Roman slingers on the Infamy Facebook page, I cobbled a group of eight together. I used arms with swords from my Victrix Auxilia sprues, cut the hands off and glued on slinger hands from the Gripping Beast "Dark Age Warriors" set, and here they are;

I think that slingers can be justified because the rules state that Roman Auxilia are equipped with Mixed Weapons, which are described as "The weapons of most Foot and Mounted Warriors and include swords, spears and javelins". I am thinking that "include" doesn't preclude the use of other weapons here. However, the rules also talk about Skirmish Troops, saying "These are named depending on the troop type and include slings, bows and javelins. This is their primary weapon". Now, I don't want to have any of my auxilia as "Skirmishing Troops", because that fundamentally goes against how the auxiliary cohorts operated. I just want an opportunity to give some of them the ability to use slings rather than javelins as ranged weapons, taking advantage of their Flexible Drill characteristic.

Of course, the next question is how can these guys be accommodated within the rules? Well one suggestion (made by David Hunter) is to define them as;

Auxilia with slings          Warriors                8 men. 

Medium Armour             Mixed Weapons    Slings

Aggressive Attack 2       Step Out 1             Drilled, Supra Numerum, Flexible Drill

and field them with the following proviso; 

They may only use slings when skirmishing and only half the men fire, because  loading their slings is hampered by the shields they carry.

That seems reasonable to me, but the alternative might just be to mix them in with a group of auxiliaries with javelins and ignore the fact that they have slings. Personally, I prefer the first idea, but I suppose that it is up to my opponents if they are happy to play against auxiliary slingers.

Infamy, Infamy - the Auxilia have got it in for me!

Well, I have been painting away frantically all week to try and get some of my Victrix Romans completed, and now, as we have a dry day, I have managed to varnish the first few completed figures.

I have done two small vignettes to serve as Deployment and Ambush points, and also two Leaders.

First up, here is my Centurio, Julius Magnus Gallus, and his faithful Optio, Lucius Esox.

Note that their plumes are black. This is to represent the famous feathers of the Syldavian Black Pelican, noted by Herodotus as being sought after for helmet plumes, as mentioned in an earlier post.

Next, giving me an opportunity to use the arms with severed heads, flaming torches and heads on spears, I have done a deployment point and an ambush point marker.

The large dog is actually a Warbases 28mm wolf. I see the figures on these bases as being Exploratores returning from a mission into enemy territory, and coming back with trophies to prove that they contacted some barbarian foes.

These are the start of my Cohors Equitata force, the Cohors Primus Syldaviorum Equitata Luperci, raised from the Illyrian Goganii of north-western Syldavia during the imperium of Augustus Caesar. It is believed that this cohort was raised by Tiberius sometime after his campaigns in Pannonia, known as the Bellum Batonianum.