Gladiator: Thracian

Another light class gladiator, though similar to the heavier Secutor and Myrmillor he has a tad better starting Disciplina and moves around the arena faster. And also the "light" classification also gives him an edge on the initiative rolls. The only real tradeoff is the small shield which provides a poor defense bonus. The Sica sword has the same strength as the Gladius which is a bit of a shame since they describe that the purpose of the bent design was so that it could get around shields, but there are no rules for that in the "weapons" section of the Gladiator rules.

As a side note I must say I rather enjoy this little project for one particular reason, it allows experimenting with skin color. Since the gladiators are supposed to hail from all corners of the Roman Empire I figured I might as well try to paint their skin somewhat more diverse than the usual tone. As far as I remember I had not painted black skin on any miniature before I painted my Nubian and African province gladiators.
I also tried to paint the Thracian a slight olive tinge to the skin tone to better represent a gladiator from the modern day Balkans region.

It’s projects like this one that don’t require an uniform looking bunch of models that allows for trying out new techniques and recipes that can later be used on a larger army scale for other games.