I have, I think, almost succumbed to the temptation to do Pyrrhus and Republican Rome next. I say almost because I haven't actually bought any figures yet - so far I just have the 15 assorted samples Keith from Aventine Miniatures has given me - so I could still change my mind...
Not that that seems very likely now! I am into full-on thinking mode, whilst still painting 3rd century AD stuff - the Roman camels are coming along quite nicely today.
In terms of terrain and basing, I think I am probably going to go for the temperate colours, but do the basing with a slightly different emphasis. The appearance of the bases for my Early Imperial Romans and Britons is very much 'greenery with a few patches of bare earth and stones'. I think I might turn that around for the 3rd century BC stuff and have large patches of bare earth with small 'tufts' of grass. I can still use the same terrain boards, and will make a few patches of 'rough ground' which will be mostly bare earth and rocks so the basing looks more 'at home'. That's my best idea so far anyway.
I've been thinking about Republican legions and how to distinguish bertween Hastati, Principes and Triarii at a glance on the table. First thought was diffferent shields - i.e. using different ones from the Little Big Men Studios range (as marketed by LBMS or Aventine), but then I thought that that would result in the different classes from the same legion looking as though they didn't belong together. Steve says that he will make me some custom designs if I really want - using the same designs but different colours, so I can have, say, a legion with Romulus and Remus as the design, but on backgrounds of (say) red, yellow and blue. And then I thought that perhaps I could just distinguish the classes by the colour of their feather plumes, and give them all the same colour shields. It's a work in progress - but fun - I love deciding on all this sort of stuff, it's what gives an army its character in the end.
I can't get over the weather we're having at the moment. Usually at this time of year it's cold and grey, wet and windy. but we're on our tenth day of 'wall-to-wall' sunshine. Okay, it's fairly cold (except in the afternoons), but it's bright and pleasant. I just hope this isn't what we're getting this year instead of a decent summer... We're owing a decent summer - the last few have been wash-outs (literally!).