A good couple of months.

I am pretty pleased with myself, with the exception of three German explorers and three Belgian officers which are only half done, I have managed to complete the Darkest Africa figures that I wanted to finish by the end of this month. Thats 39 figures finished off which I had started painting a year or more back , mainly the bases needed completing , and 81 figures finished from scratch since the begining of December. I know a lot people paint far quicker but by my standards its positively lightening , the Christmas break and a few snow days certainly helped.

Some Foundry tribal musketeers , the images have come out quite shiny due to the flash.... I hope.

Close up of  the musketeers.

The other group.

These tribal musketeers will probably be some of the most useful miniatures I have got. They appear in the majority of the army lists for Chris Peers Heart of Darkest Africa , henceforth on this blog to be known HoDA.

Bearers , 14 Foundry and 4 Dixon Dahomey range. These were painted some time ago.

DOAG askaris by Copplestone Castings being attacked by a Foundry Lion , also painted some time ago. I will use these 10 askaris as the basis for my Carl Peters expedition.

A group of Askaris including a lone FP who missed the previous photo shoot.

A few more askaris and gun bearers,  all by Foundry. The guy in the middle is my favourite miniature I have painted for Africa so far.

So there we have it, if I can get the 6 white guys done next week I have now got enough for a game , in fact more than enough to play HoDA , the Belgians in particular are very expensive points wise.

I will probably have a break from painting Africa miniatures for a bit, once I have got the 6 mentioned above done. I have 80 odd Azande , about 60 Masai the Dixon Dahomey range and a few bits and pieces including animals in a unpainted state , but I will be going back to VSF for a short while.

Notalot Weekend

Well, I was not able to get much painting done this weekend, about an hour or so on the Darkest Africa Askaris and Musketeers. This has put me a bit behind schedule, I was hoping to have them finished by Saturday night at the latest then get a game in on sunday with Mors Junior which would allow me to finish off the Japanese during this week and play a game of  G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T  next weekend or the weekend after. However it was Mors Minors birthday party today so obviously that had to take preference!!
I did manage to watch Kordas 1938 The Drum on telly though this afternoon , its a bit of North West Passage foolishness but I quite enjoyed it  - Pathans, British troops in kahki and Wolseley helmets , loyal Sikhs  and a hero called Carruthers ,got to be good !

I also recorded a series about the American Civil War that was being shown on one of the satellite channels all four episode were braodcast back to back.  Not normally a period I am interested in but I have a hankering to do a couple of small VSF forces in the future.

A thread on TMP got me thinking again about West Africa, ever since I bought the African Knights book from Foundry I have had a small interest, not particularly piqued because I believed no miniature manufactuer did the armoured knights and I certainly am not up to converting them from anything. Much to my surprise I found out that Irregular do them , the figure on the right is light cavalry and on the left the famous quilted heavy cavalry

Here is the Foundry book cover

Castaway Arts down under do a range for the Western Sudan too , appareantly they mix ok with the Irregular miniatures so a small force is now feasible. The city states of the West Sudan were cavalry based , mainly light cavalry in flowng robes but  with some heavy cavalry as above. The composition of the forces varied from state to state but often allied under a dominate state as well, I need to do a lot more research before I start but at least I know that by combining the above two manufacturers and adding in a few mahdist sudanese that may be suitable I can do a force with sufficient variation of figures that I would find acceptable. Interestingly in 2002 Mark Copplestone was going to release a range, pity that never came off!

Force Publique Based

After much less time painting yesterday than I had hoped for I had a good day today , managed to finish the FP native forces bases and get them varnished and got quite a lot done on various other Darkest Africa miniatures , including a couple of coats on all the bases which I always find a bit of a drag! I have taken some photos but they are not brilliant, I cannot seem to get the settings right on my camera when taking pictures indoors.

Group picture

Musicians , standard bearer and scout.

First unit

Second (straw hat) unit

Third unit

So now I have to get some officers finished off. I have three very close to being finished and as this is the maximum you are allowed in the Heart of Darkest Africa rules I will probably leave the others in an undercoated state until I feel the urge to finish them....sometime in 2012 I expect.

I recieved an order from Foundry this week of Azande which will be the normal opposition for  the FP (and sometimes allies) , although historically you can use the FP against Zanzibaris , Pygmies,other tribes of the Congo including jungle cannibals and even late  Mahdists. As the Congo Free State  bordered territories of Britain France and Germany there are plentiful 'what if' scenarios also available. At a pinch they could also be used as early WW1 up against the Germans in East Africa.

Force Publique

Although I have not posted anything recently , I have been quite active on the miniatures front. Early December was taken up with tidying my games room.....still not finished. I started painting my Force Publique in mid December , here is a pic of them all finished bar the bases. I currently have about 30 tribal musketeers and some Belgian officers at various levels of paintng. Hope to post some more pics next week.