Mahdist artillery



I'd completely forgotten about this little piece, which I painted a few months ago.  It's from the

Perries' Sudan range and is a captured Egyptian gun and crew pressed into Mahdist service. As you can see, there are 3 Egyptians and a rather aggressive overseer.  I assumed the Egyptians would be dressed in dirty white or off-white clothes, and I added a bit of variation in the colour of the shirts and trousers.  I also used some brown and yellow pastel powder to suggest sand, dirt and sweat.  Researching the colour of the gun was quite difficult.  Some sources suggested bare metal while others showed painted dark grey.  I've gone for the latter.  

The Sudan is one of those periods that I keep meaning to turn some serious attention to.  I have a mini-leadpile containing British infantry, hussars and naval types and from time to time I get the urge to paint some of them.  I based my Hadendowah, which I painted back in 2007/8 on large Gilder-style bases, which I sort of regret now as most ofthe rules I've looked at (such as "Black Powder") use smaller bases.  So at some stage I'll probably rebase these, which might be tricky given that I think I used greenstuff to glue the figures to the bases.  A couple of photos of the other pieces in my Sudan collection are shown below.  The buildings in the background are by Touching History.  Back in the days when Paul Darnell was still making stuff I bought a load of these Sudanese/Middle Eastern style dwellings together with a Mahdist fort.  

 

4 figures. Painted March 2015.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baluchis (1)

I'm sure that many wargamers sometimes get the urge to set aside their current projects for a time and paint something completely different. This happened to me a couple of weeks ago. I was up in the loft and started looking in the sets of drawers that house my "non-core" leadpile (i.e. all those figures that don't directly fit into the projects I have been working on over the past 2 years). I came across 3 packs of Foundry Baluchis and decided to paint them up over the next couple of weeks. At the back of my mind was the idea that I could use them as mercenaries or volunteers for the Sudan (although these figures are substantially larger and chunkier than those in the Perry Sudan range). I already have 2 packs painted up so eventually I will have a decent sized skirmish force.


I avidly collected the Darkest Africa figures that Mark Copplestone made for Foundry when they first came out, some 10 years ago. This was Foundry's golden age, when every month they released lovely sculpts from the hobby's best sculptors. You could sign up to a standing order system for their new ranges, whereby each month you'd receive a long box with between 6 and 8 packs at a 10% discount. I quickly signed up for the Caesarean Romans, Macedonians and Darkest Africa ranges (back in those days I wasn't the least bit interested in the AWI range, which was being released at the same time!). Of course Foundry then imploded, its sculptors left to start their own businesses and the rest is history. I managed to paint a good few packs of Darkest Africa figures but didn't base any of them. I began doing so a couple of years ago and one of my aims this year is to finish basing the remainder. In the meantime, several of the later packs have not been painted at all and I intend to paint a couple of them every now and then as a change of paint from horse and musket.


These figures form one old pack - nowadays the figures are split over a couple of packs, as Foundry meanly reduced the number of figures in their packs from 8 to 6 a few years ago (which was a disaster for the AWI range as it meant that the British command packs only had 1 standard bearer - useless!). The skin is painted with one of the newish Foundry flesh palettes - "Near Eastern Flesh 123". Painting people from Asia is always tricky; some are almost caucasian in colour whilst others can be quite dark. This palette seems to me to be a good compromise and I've also been using it for my First Crusade arabs. I'm currently painting a second pack of Baluchis so they should appear on the blog next week some time. The main building is a tomb from Hovels, bought ready painted and based at Salute. The walls and other bits are by Paul Darnell of Touching History.


8 figures. Painted May 2010.

Just for fun...

Whilst I'm finishing off basing the AWI stuff I've been painting over the past couple of weeks (4th Foot, Stockbridge Indians, more Royal Artillery and various limbers and ammunition carts), I thought I'd just post some pics of some more Perry Mahdists that I painted over the weekend. These are Nile Arabs, as opposed to Hadendowah tribesmen, although I painted the skin in exactly the same way - base coat of Games Workshop "Negro" followed by a dark brown ink wash and then 3-4 highlights using the Foundry "Dusky Flesh" palette. These are the last Mahdists I will be basing on single pennies. Going forward I will be using bases similar to the size that the late Peter Gilder used for his Sudan project, and which I gather Two Fat Lardies are using for their forthcoming rules: 8-10 figures on a base of 100mm x 50mm. I have lots of Connoisseur Figures Ansar that I bought at my very first Salute in 1986 (on my 13th birthday!) and painted shortly thereafter, which I need to tart up a bit (ok, a lot) and then base on these large bases. The terrain used in these photos is a new TSS tile I bought the other day and which was delivered within 48 working hours!

Next up are Royal Artillery in Southern campaign dress, a British artillery train and thoughts on putting together Knyphausen's division of 1777.