U.S. National Legion?!

[Robert Vermaat]

The selected time period for reenactment scenearios will be the middle year of the 1st century AD, (Claudian to Flavian), since reenactors of this period far-outnumber the Roman reenactors of every other period. This does not exclude period "units" but for the purposes of the "tactical", must make an effort to conform to the event period.

OK, that excludes all Late Roman from the ‘National Legion’. The guys will be disappointed. Or are you planning a ‘Late Roman NL’ as well?

Combat simulations will be conducted by means of the NFS system, rules, standards of equipment construction, and safety requirements to be determined and published soon. NFS combat is not mandatory.
People choosing not to participate in combat are not penalized

Penalized??? :x

There is no mandatory "tunic color".

This is a positive surprise, and I mean that.

Onced this is rolling, I believe there is the potential to recruit hundreds of Barbarians from the ranks of the tens of thousands of fantasy LARPs, many of which will already have appropriate basic costumes, and familar with the lightweight fighting weapons of their hobby. The SCA is also a potential recruiting ground.

But will any of these recruits be interested in serious drilling, or will they just come for a good piece of whacking?

The whole point of the "National Legion" is to engage true reenactment with realistic appering numbers of partipants to give a true feeling of ancient combat.

I’m sorry, but this is nonsense.
Your definition of true re-enactment seems to restrict itself to non-display events, such as a good march through the woods w. camping out rough, and a realistic battle display. That’ s all very good, and much fun I think.
But the trekking through the woods, when set up as a realistic march, would involve a lot of equipment that would make it much more expensive and no longer attractive for the recruits that you mentioned above.
The ‘realistic battle’ is of course not realistic at all, but an adaptation of every other re-enactment bashing and whacking, slightly adapted for Roman tactics. Any ‘realistic’ battle would litter the field with dead/wounded, and even limited to ‘safe’ fighting would disallow offensive use of the shield, let alone the correct use of the gladius. Roman swords are unusable for ‘realistic’ fighting, even duelling is out of the question (lack of a cross guard).
So what you’re left with is a lot of fun for all participants and spectators, but nothing like a ‘realistic’ battle.

Non "National Legion" Roman and Barbarian units may be invited to "National" events if they are willing to "play the game", and maintain approved sized units. For the "right" to have their own Centurion uniform and carry their own distinctive units, these units must also have a minimum of two, eight man conturbnia/clans under their command.

So each group smaller than 16 men is ‘merged with the NL anyway?