1:72 Dacian Army

The kingdom under the Carpathians

The Dacians inhabited the territory of roughly present-day Romania, and their power reached its height under King Decebalus at the turn of the first and second centuries AD. The fortified seats in the Orastie mountains, above all Sarmizegetusa, rested on stone walls built by a technique the Romans called murus Dacicus. The wealth of the kingdom rested on gold and salt.

The weapon that forced Rome to change

The most characteristic piece of armament was the falx, a single-edged blade curved inward, mounted on a short or a long haft. It cut from above over the edge of a shield and could cut through a helmet or bend an arm protected only by mail. It was precisely because of it that the legionaries were given crossed reinforcing bands on the helmet and plate forearm guards, which is one of the few documented cases of an enemy directly changing Roman equipment.

The dragon standard and the course of the wars

Into battle the Dacians were led by the draco, a standard with a wolf's or dragon's head and a cloth body that billowed in the wind and gave out a whistling sound. Two campaigns, in the years 101 to 102 and 105 to 106, ended with the fall of the kingdom and its conversion into a province. Trajan had the whole story carved on the spiral frieze of his column in Rome, which to this day is the main pictorial source for Dacian equipment.

On building

The figures are cast from flexible plastic, and the fine points of the falxes and the standards tend to be bent after they come out of the mold. A brief dip in hot water and cooling in the right position will straighten the shape.