Slavers from Zanzibar

Over the summer I stopped by the Wargames Foundry office and shop in Little Stoke - very much 2nd star on the right and straight on til morning. It was fun, they gave me a cup of tea and I spent £100. Fair exchange I thought.
Since then I've done no painting at all but the challenge in looming and I needed to get my eye back in. Half the packs I bought were Zanzibari slavers and they are excellent figures full of character

I really enjoyed painting these, mojo risin'. These will work well in my very generic Muslim army and especially in Back of Beyond 1920's campaign I am building up. Got the Afghans (inc. these) and the Bolsheviks (in post)

Death in the Dark Continent

So the postman finally came yesterday. I'd joined the Nickstarter for the release of the Death in the Dark Continent rules. These are a revamped version of the old Chris Peers rules and at 176 pages long it is a beautiful book full of eye candy, army lists and general background reading.

I've only had chance for a quick read but the rules are straight forward and all of colonial era massed battles. I will need to sort out basing but I have a cunning plan for that.

I also purchased the white hunter set, at £20(ish) it was a bargain

You get an elephant

While hunter and a couple of lions

Water buffalo

African villagers

If I wasn't snowed under with work this would have been my weekend sorted

Les Cheveaux Rouges (The Red Skulls)

This is my first attempt at a comic strip,Comic Life, and I quite enjoyed it. A party of French adventurers are on safari in West Africa. They are searching for the Elephant's Graveyard and have been searching for 10 weeks under the command of Henri Conte de Nulle Part and the famous explorer Captain Jacques Mercier.

The jungle is thick and then are forced to stick to the trail, only being able to rest in jungle clearings. 

The battle was unexpectedly brief and bloody. The natives were random encounter and threw a 6 - immediate attack and another 6 - appear next to the front of the party. The French were overwhelmed in 3 turns but it did enable the porters, Capt Mercier and a single askari to escape. All the painted Les Cheveaux Rouge were killed but that was less than 1/2 the native force available so Mercier was right to run.

In Jungle the Mighty Jungle

I've still got my terrain head on, I have a battle set up but have been looking at it for a week now and made no moves. The problem is that I really want to fight the follow up battle but not really this one. Hopefully this weekend.
In the mean time I've been plodding on with terrain, specifically jungle pieces. I've started to add those extra touches to make my terrain better. Historically my terrain was something in the way on a battle field and not really adding to the story.

I wanted some massive jungle trees but they will get in the way. Then I remembered an old computer game called jagged Alliance, one of my favourites, and in the wooded areas you could remove the tree tops to aid visibility. So I did the same. The trunks are obviously sticks and the foliage is from a pet shop. The buttress roots are made form lollipop sticks and card.

More trees

Bushes

more bushes

I've also done a little painting for VBCW

18lb howitzer and a 13lb WW1 AT gun from Irregular miniatures

1917 Steam Truck, bought from market for £1 and repainted. The scale is 1:61 so a little small but I think it looks OK.

Good Fences make Good..erm Terrain Features

The Analogue Hobbies Community webchats have been somewhat inspirational, although I couldn't make the connection work today with Paul down under. I could see him and listen to him playing Prince but he couldn't see or hear me - or I'm just not interesting enough.
I have been painting a lot of terrain

1st up some wooden fences for my African village. These are made from sticks in the garden

I added some lichen, again from the garden.

All villages need an entrance and I carved these to massive tusks out of  some more sticks, I appear to love whittling.

The African Tribe are Les Cheveaux Rouge (The Red Skulls) - one of those Boys Own tribes full of terrible rites and cannibalism. The skulls are 10mm resin beads I bought from China on e bay. £1.49 for 40 with free postage. An unbelievable price. Luckily post Brexit we will have free trade with China so that we can export all our manufactured goods to them. No wait that is bollocks, we make nothing they want at the price we would sell it. Sorry for swearing but I'm still in post Brexit shock and it's not getting better. 

Couple of piles of logs, sticks and lichen - notice a theme here

I've painted up the Irregular Miniatures pigs - more like hogs although I don't really know the difference

Steel Railings. I've had these for ages but not got round to painting them. 

There are 2 types, both for railways and they look pretty good.

Have a good weekend 

Marche ou Crève

Over the last three days I've been painting some French Foreign Legion Figures for my Africa Campaign. These are not the usual suspects, all P C Wren and Tuareg campfires, but figures for the Dahomey campaign in West Africa. The figures are all Dixon's as I bought the complete set and have painted and posted the tribesmen earlier.
The figures are excellently sculpted and have that look of men who have been in the field far too long. Accordingly I gave then a heavy wash to make them dirty, I don't normally do this as I prefer the troops to be dressed neatly for battle.

I'm fairly pleased with them, I really like the uniforms with white(ish) trousers, cork brown jackets and beige hats and some of the webbing. They don't quite pop as I imagined but I don't know why. They may need an extra wash with a darker shade.

Hope you like them

British Naval Brigade

It seems ages since I've done any painting but video chatting with Dave Docherty, Stefan, Edwin and others get my juices flowing. I have a couple of file boxes of partially painted figs, mainly faces that I want to clear before the Painting Challenge begins, mainly colonial, so I started with these. I bought them all at Partizan earlier in the year.
First up a Perry Naval command set,guy on left is Marty Feldman

The a Gatling gun, very nice

 And finally some Copplestone ratings

These will "complete" my naval detachment so as a celebration a childhood favourite

Pygmy Hack

With Blaxkleric getting out Lost Patrol I thought I'd have a go myself. The problem is I don't own the game, have no hex terrain tiles and no Sci Fi figs at all, never mind any 40K.
Still not to be deterred I made my own tiles with sides of 6cm, if you don't know how to cut hexes you need a compass. For 6cm sides make the circle 6cm radius. once you've drawn your circle move the compass to the circle edge and make a mark 6cm way on the circumference. move the compass to the new mark and make a new 6cm mark on circumference. Repeat until you have 6 markes and returned to the start Join the dots and cut out. I made my tiles out of thick card from the covers of ring binders.
Once cut out I painted them with Wilko tester pots and some poster paints. Leaf shapes were stamped on using a carved potato, I was channeling my 10 year old self with making shapes and potato printing.

Of course the genius thing is that tiles can have 2 sides so I painted the other side grey and drew rocks with a marker pen. DaDaah a cave system

I then lacquered both sides and left to dry for a couple of hours. This was not long enough and they stuck together, which was very very annoying and a schoolboy error. The tiles are ok but have plucked a little bit.

So the next move was to play. I decided to have a safari of 3 women - Hetty, Hilda and Helga - with a female scout, Hebe trying to find their way out a Pygmy "infested" Jungle.

Tiles would be drawn at random and visibility was a maximum of 2 tiles down a straight path but blocked by curves. Once a tile was out of sight it would be removed and added to the pile.

Everytime a European entered a tile or remained in one a D6 was rolled

1. Nothing

2. D3 arrow shots from Jungle but no visible Pygmies

3. D3 arrow shots from Jungle and the Pygmies appear

4. D3 Pygmies with spears ambush the Europeans

5. D6 Pygmies with spears ambush the Europeans

6. D6 Pygmies with spears ambush the Europeans. If Europeans have entered a new tile and it is not a dead end then roll again and if a 6 then this is the exit tile and if Europeans survive then they have won. Pygmies win if all Europeans are killed.

Order of combat is missle fire (3 to hit for the women and 4 for pygmies, 4 to kill for Europeans and 5 for Pygmies. Melee is simultaneous with +2 for Europeans and 5 to kill

The Europeans started in clearing with 2 exits

They advanced with some ineffective hidden arrow shots whizzing about their ears only to reach a dead end

They returned to the starting clearing only to find it was no longer there, damn jungle. As they advanced around a bend Hilda was faced with a belligerent Pygmy but their fight was a draw and this stalled the advance.

The next 2 turns saw Hilda still unable to kill the Pygmy and 3 archers and a spearman appeared to kill the Europeans. The Pygmies shooting was poor and the fights with Hilda and Hebe were again draws

eventually Hilda killed the Pygmy on the path and the other 3  killed 2 more and advanced past her as she fought the last Pygmy. Helga advanced further and Hilda was faced with 3 more Pygmies. The Europeans were now spread out over the path and were facing Pygmies everywhere. Hilda was in deep trouble out numbered 4 to 1. Helga, Hetty and Hebe killed their opponents and Hebe ran back to aid Hilda,

Hebe was killed but Hilda was still in their swinging.

Helga is downed by an arrow from a hidden archer

Hetty is then speared by a Pygmy and Hilda is finally overcome and falls to her knees with here arms reaching for the sky.

This was very enjoyable but needs tweaking. It was too hard to kill once you had one the combat and I will tweak that so that you can advance to the jungle faster.

Slaves and Bearers

Since the end of the Challenge I've dipped in and out of painting and finished quite a bit but I've started a lot more. My mojo has been somewhat ethereal. I, therefore, have quite a few unfinished figures which I am chipping away at. These are the 1st batch, African slaves and bearers. These will be used in the Africa campaign, which is on pause while I paint some more figs. Arab and African types are pro the slave trade and Europeans, in general, are anti. These will make great objectives.

Bearers, some ropey photography though

Slaves

Slave trader with slave

The figures are Eureka, Trent and Dixon. The Trent ones are a little small, slave with bowl of fruit. Otherwise I still can't fix the shed door which as a broken hinge and 70 years of paint and rust holding it in place, off to buy paint stripper if it ever stops raining