How to make a testudo from plastic legionnaires
The testudo-formation is as instantly recognizable as Roman as a toga or the Colosseum. It’s an iconic formation that is really simple to make thanks to plastic miniatures.
Roman testudos are harassed by Ptolemaic skirmishers as they approach the royal army’s fortified camp along the shores of the Nile. Nile Delta, Ptolemaic Egypt, 47 BC.
I made a Testudo out of Warlord Games plastic Caesarian legionnaires a couple of years ago mainly to use in photos. I got a lot of questions about how I made it then and while the construction is simple enough to explain in a couple of Facebook posts I’ll go into greater depth here.
It’s also a bit of a lazy project since there really isn’t that much painting involved. 90% of the miniatures will be obscured by their shields so it is worthwhile spending the time making them look good. There really isn’t a better way to make them look good than using transfers from Little Big Men Studios. They have ten different designs for the Warlord kit. If you’ve never used transfers before this is a great time to start.
What is a testudo anyway?
Testudo means tortoise and was a formation Roman legionnaires adopted as a protection against missiles. There are a number of descriptions of testudos in classical sources and there seems to be some variation in how the testudo was formed. For example Plutarch write about Mark Antony’s invasion of Parthia:
“…the shield-bearers wheeled about, enclosing the lighter armed troops within their ranks, while they themselves dropped on one knee and held their shields out before them. The second rank held their shields out over the heads of the first and the next rank likewise.”
This sounds more like a static shieldwall to me though. Cassius Dio, also writing about Mark Antony’s invasion of Partia describes a much larger formation, basically the whole army enclosed behind shields. Supposedly this formation was so strong you could drive a horse and wagon on top of it, which seems unlikely and not very useful (Cassius Dio, Roman History, Book XLIX, 30).
What we will try to replicate can be found on Trajans column.
A testudo in action on Trajan’s column. Source: Cassius Ahenobarbus/Wikimedia
It is a much smaller tactical formation consisting of around 25 men. Shields protect them from the front, sides and top but not from the rear. It’s easy to imagine these kind of formations attacking fortified positions or working their way down narrow streets in a cityfight.
Preparing the testudo
Let’s start by taking a look at what the completed testudo looks like behind the shields.
It is four miniatures wide and five miniatures deep with shields all around it except for the rear. On top of this is basically just a lid of shields. In the middle of the square are four miniatures, these four will barely be visible but you still need something there or it will look hollow.
So this gives us a total of 18 miniatures in the testudo. Why not use all 24 from the box or extend the width or depth of the formation? Well we are limited by the number of shields we get in one box, 24. Building like this is tailored to how many shields we have. You could of course make a bigger formation by having more boxes of miniatures.
Warlord Games have two different boxes of Caesarian legionnaires, one armed with swords and one with pilum. I have used the one with pilum for this build and the only reason for that is because it was quite a lot cheaper from my local hobby shop. Since we won’t use a lot of arms anyway I suggest you get the cheapest one you can get and spend the extra money on quality transfers.
Preparing the miniatures is fairly easy, clip off the top knot on the helmets as this will be in the way and glue the heads to the bodies. Then arrange the miniatures in the shape of the testudo so we know where everyone is going. I split my miniatures into the front row, left and right column and middle which included the two miniatures in the back. I then glued these to sticks as you can see below.
Note that I have added shield arms to the left column of miniatures and to the two miniatures in the back. I just clipped off the pilums and glued the arms in a suitable position. With this layout of the miniatures we can easily see what we need to paint. Everything will get a base coat and a wash but I will not bother highlighting the miniatures in the middle or even the right side of the miniatures in the left column because this won’t be visible once we are finished.
Also note that I have trimmed down the bases a fair bit, this is simply so we can have the miniatures closer together on the base.
Painting the legionnaires
The painting was very basic as most of the miniatures won’t be seen behind the shields anyway. First all metal was base coated with Games Workshop Leadbelcher and then all leather parts were painted with Vallejo Model Colour Flat Brown, lastly the tunic was painted with Scale 75 Deep Red. All of this was then washed with Games Workshop Nuln Oil. Then the gold was painted with Vallejo Model Colour Bronze and all skin with Cadian Fleshtone. These two last areas were washed with Games Workshop Reikland Fleshshade. I highlighted the parts of the tunics facing outwards first with the base colour, Deep Red, and then with Blood Red, also from Scale 75. The faces and a few visible hands and arms were highlighted with Cadian Fleshtone. Lastly the helmets were given a light drybrush of Vallejo Model Color Old Gold.
I used transfers from Little Big Men Studios for the shields as mentioned above. For me applying the transfers and painting the gold parts of the shields was probably the most time consuming part of this build. It can be a bit fiddly but well worth the time. If you don’t care for transfers you could just paint the shields in a suitable colour.
Finally I dust the feets of the miniatures and the bases of the shields with Games Workshop Zandri Dust using an airbrush.
Assembling the testudo
The final step is to assemble all the pieces on a suitable base.I just cut a piece of plasti-card 80mm by 80mm and then simply glued the miniatures to it like in the image above. A little bit of thought might be needed so the shields can be easily fitted afterwards, but it’s pretty straight forward. Then the shields were glued onto the arms. I just try to keep them as vertical as possible which isn’t always that easy, but a little bit of randomness is nice too.
Finally the shileds making up the lid are glued together. This is done by first glueing the shields together in pairs. I made mine overlap just a little bit to get a better fit. Then I glue two pairs together to create a row of four shields. Then I turn the shields upside down and make the top of a row of shields just slightly overlap the bottom of another row and simply add glue to where they touch and then repeat this for the last row. This construction isn’t very strong so make sure it dries before picking it up. If the superglue is visible from the front you can always cover it up with a little bit of wash and with a coat of matt varnish it shouldn't be visible at all.
The larger bases I use for these makes them suitable for a little vignette. Like this one where an enemy javelin have found its way through the shield and wounded a legionnaire.
Obviously a unit in a testudo formation is a niche within wargaming. It’s much easier to just use a marker for rules that distinguish between different formations.
But it looks very cool on the tabletop and sometimes that’s just as important as how useful it is.
The Ptolemaic army was only a shadow of its former self in 47 BC but still proved to be a match for Caesars legions in Alexandria.