Having decided on a battleset to use their Roman and Gaul figures, Italeri might have considered Caesar's famous siege and battle of Alesia, which would have called for stockade elements of various sorts and would have been an interesting choice. However they instead went for a more generic scenario, a pitched battle fought around a small Roman villa.
Without the sort of accessories that tended to appear in much more modern battlesets, the contents of this box are rather simpler. Beginning with the figures, we find:
This gives us 36 foot Romans and 15 mounted (plus a mounted officer) to face 42 foot Gauls and 15 mounted. All these are nice figures, and although some do have accuracy issues, the main problem with these sets is the poses, both some of the choices and the quantity (or lack thereof). They are not Italeri's finest work, but they are all very well sculpted and look appealing if nothing else. All are for the late republican period, which is much less common than the early imperial, and are at least quite energetic.
With no accessories, the only other element in the set is the titular villa. Once again fabricated from laser-cut MDF, this is a lovely model and gives us a villa with two small wings. There was no one set design for villas, but this one is as good as any, and certainly looks good when put together, as shown on the box artwork below.
As usual, the modeller who built this piece has much skill but has also used materials not in the box such as the base and trees, though the paint job is particularly nice (we loved the weathering and the crack in the plasterwork on the villa). However this is not one of our favourites in this range, partly because the villa seems very detached from the action, and is no more than a backdrop to the fight going on in front. Given the figures, they do not lend themselves to defending the villa as if it were a fort, so lovely as the villa is, it does not in itself bring much to this set. It is not a bad set by any means, and the building will clearly appeal to those with an interest in the period, but this was not one of the strongest sets in the range.