The sand of the desert

Lion Rampant author Dan Mersey is working on another ruleset to be published by Osprey for the Colonial era entitled The Men Who Would Be Kings. Being a self-confessed fan-boy of his work, I had been planning to collect forces for the North West Frontier so that I could have some armies ready to go by next year when they are published. I purchased one unit of Artizan British infantry (12 figures) as a beginning. I figured I would use this as my first experiment with the triad recommendations from the Painting Wargames Figures book.

Loading his faithful Martini-Henry

A rear view

And a side shot showing the offending helmet flash.

The colours for the uniform were Russian Uniform WWII, highlight mixed with tan yellow, second highlight with more tan yellow, third highlight with Iraqi Sand added. All white is light grey with white over the top. Flesh is Light Brown, mixed with Sunny Skintone for first highlight, Sunny Skintone for second highlight and Sunny Skintone mixed with white for final highlight. Rifle is Hull Red with the grain painted in Mahogany Brown. Mess tin and metal on rifles are gunmetal grey washed in a black wash.

I'm really happy with how he came out. I've discovered that the helmet flash shouldn't be there for the Second Afghan War or the Sudan campaigns, so I've cut and filed it off the other figures. This chap won't be part of the army, just an experiment.

I've also decided that rather than NW frontier, I'm going to concentrate on the Sudan instead. The reason is that I'm quite taken with the idea of using the Perry figures range and I want some camels! Also, the main enemy come in plastic, which makes them a cheaper proposition than all metal Afghans! 

My plan for the British force is to have an infantry unit in Indian pattern uniform (the Artizan unit that I have), a unit of Sikhs, a unit of Highlanders in grey, a Naval Brigade Gardner gun, a unit of Bengal Lancers and a unit of the camel Corps. Three boxes of plastic Ansar and a couple of units of cavalry and camels will make up the Mahdist forces. I may even add in a unit of Naval Brigade for a bit of blue. There is no historical OOB that matches this, but I'm not particularly perturbed by that.

I'll start to accumulate more of the necessary figures next month. In the meantime, I just made an impulse buy:

Will Austria-Hungary finally win?

I played the first edition of Axis and Allies a lot, and when I saw that local on-line shop Mighty Ape had reduced the  price for this it was a no-brainer. Time to host a board games night methinks!

Nate