Gladiator: Gaetulian

Returned to Gladiator painting a couple of days ago - just preparing the models is extremely time consuming. I trim down the bases of each model to make them as flat and as close to the ground as possible. Prepping 8 models resulted in a rather large pile of metal flakes and dust. But now when that's done there will be some very cool additions to my arena and fleshing out the teams with more specialists and ranged weapons.

Since ranged weapons have not yet been fully represented in the game, I decided to paint up the 3 ranged weapon Gladiators first. Here's the funny looking but extremely dangerous Gaetulian - or "dart thrower". The special rules for this odd weapon that works like a smaller throwing spear are that you use the Gladiators strength x8 which in my case pretty much ends up covering the size of the arena pretty good. The darts are light enough to carry and easy enough to throw to not inflict any movement penalty upon this Gladiator making him both very fast moving and lethal. The weapon a fletched lead tipped javelin has the impressive strength of 7, making it easy highly probable that whatever is hit - will also be wounded (or if you want to make a Rocky IV reference "Whatever he hits he destroyes").

The clever thing about all the ranged weapon specialists in this game is beside the fact that you can miss your target and the projectile keeps moving along a straight path until it hits the arena wall - that you are also limited to a few arrows/javelins/darts. So no sitting back and camping for the entire battle, but you rather have to pick your targets and not waste anything on low level arena trash. This gladiator is for instance limited to 5 darts, he carries  a small knife as a backup weapon for when he gets attacked close up or runs out of ammunition - but being completely unarmored, safe for some leather strapping’s on the legs and his helmet - he will most likely end up dead real fast against a close combat oriented gladiator.

And here is a little "we that are about to get painted salute you!" picture of what you can expect in the near future.