Painting Challenge Submission #11 - More Afghan Regulars for Second Anglo-Afghan War

Another unit of 28mm Afghan regulars for the late 19th century - metal castings from Perry Miniatures.

My eleventh and final submission to the 14th edition of Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge is shown here - one more unit of 28mm Afghan Regulars for my Second Anglo-Afghan War project. These are metal castings from Perry Miniatures, sporting different head coverings from the last group. As with the previous such entry, this group is meant to represent a unit of infantry in the Osprey game "The Men Who Would Be Kings".

Opted for Khaki colours on these lads...

Some different head wear to capture the variety to be found among the Afghan forces of the period.

I opted for more of khaki look for this unit - still a bit of colour on the red facings and straps, but on balance not as bright as the previous unit of regulars. This choice was made in part to create some variety, but I also wanted to practice painting khaki tones so I could come up with a paint "recipe" that I like when the time comes to paint some of the British units.

Officer and musician to rally the troops!

So that makes four units for the Afghan side of this project - still not a complete force, but getting close. Not bad for a new project started from scratch!

A couple of the riflemen.

Afghan regulars ready to resist the British!

That's all for me from AHPC XIV, but won't be it for the painting...after the end of every painting Challenge, there are always a few projects that were "almost" finished by didn't get done in time. Watch for those to appear in the days ahead. Thanks for reading!

Painting Challenge Submission #10 - Afghan Regulars for Second Anglo-Afghan War

Afghan Regulars in 28mm for the Second Anglo-Afghan War; 28mm figures from Perry Miniatures.

The 14th edition of the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge has concluded. This edition of the Challenge was not a great one for me in terms of painting output. Moving to a new house during the Challenge period completely blew up my plans, and in the end I barely made it past the half-way point of the goals I had set forth at the outset. In particular, my plans to paint a Dogs of War army for Warhammer Fantasy were a complete fail - my brushes never touched them, and the models remain ensconced in a storage container of the basement at my new house. Oh well. I still got some stuff painted, and I'll have the last couple of submissions posted over the next few days. Here is one of them.

My tenth submission to the Challenge saw me going back to a historical subject - more troops for my Second Anglo-Afghan War project. Here we have a unit of Afghan Regulars for the period. These are 28mm metal figures from Perry Miniatures. They will join with the Tribal warriors painted earlier in this edition of the Challenge to represent an infantry unit for the Osprey game "The Men Who Would Be Kings". 

Making ready for a firefight!

Information about the uniforms of Afghan regulars in this setting is kind of spotty, and to the extent it is available, the consistent theme is a certain inconsistency in the reports...so I took some basics and just sort of improvised. I thought the red coats with yellow facings would make for a nice splash of colour, and an ideal combo to engage with the troops of the British Empire.

Officer and musician...had no idea what colours to use for the drum, so I just improvised with some green!

As always, the Perry Miniatures sculpts are top shelf, and it is a joy to paint proper metal figures. Trimming the flash is always a chore, and can be a particular issue with these Perry castings, but in general these are just a treat to work with.

These fellows are ready to skirmish!

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for a few more posts from the other Challenge participants, and I hope everyone can keep up the happy painting!

Painting Challenge Submission #8 - 28mm Afghan Tribal Warriors

28mm Afghan tribal warriors from Perry Miniatures, ready to close in on the British columns...

For my eighth submission to Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge I switched gears to debut a completely different setting and a new project for me - the Second Anglo-Afghan War. These are 28mm Afghan tribal warriors, multi-part plastic figures from Perry Miniatures. There are 32 figures, enough for two units/groups of tribal warriors for the Osprey skirmish game "The Men Who Would Be Kings". 

An assortment of rifle-armed tribal warriors.

This setting seems to be popular among colonial wargamers, including several fellow Painting Challenge participants. Their various efforts through the years have intrigued me, and between looking at those blog posts, and a couple of "just browsing" sort of visits to the Perry Miniatures web site, I was intrigued enough to take the plunge myself. Reading through the "The Men Who Would Be Kings" rules sealed the deal for me...

Very basic hand-painted flag.

This project has been under way for quite some time. I had started the majority of these figures right around Christmas last year. But owing to the disruption caused by moving to a new house, I was not able to complete the basing and the (very basic) hand-painted flags until a couple weeks ago. So here they are at last!

I love the guy loading the jezzail!

These multi-part plastic from Perry Miniatures are fantastic. The metal castings are still better (because obviously) but the plastic boxes are very well done and have been an excellent way to accumulate a relatively large number of tribal warriors. I plan to add units of cavalry and regular infantry from the Afghan army, but the tribal elements would be core to any Afghan force and I wanted to start with them. 

There are lots of swords and shields in the mix too!

I tried to mix up the colours a bit, and sought out different bits of inspiration in the hopes of not completely f*cking everything up, which is always a risk when one comes to a new period/setting. The warriors are equipped with a broad mix of muskets, rifles, jezzails, swords and knives of various sizes, and even shields! It all gets abstracted in the rules, allowing for a nice and motley appearance for the tribal warriors.

This lot is ready for battle!

One area that still needs a ton of practice is the skin tones. I wanted to get some different skin tones, and it was quite hit-and-miss, owning in large part to the fact that GW paints I use have tended to be out of stock, leading to improvisation, and combined also with the fact that, in the chaos of moving, I haven't really kept careful track of what worked and what didn't...maybe this will improve when I get to the next round of Afghan units for this project...

A 16-figure unit of Tribal infantry for "The Men Who Would Be Kings", ready for action on the table

There are 32 figures in the photos, but there are a couple of pre-Challenge test paint jobs in there, so this only "counted" as 30 figures in 28mm scale for the scoring aspects of the Challeng. Not very much by the standards of current AHPC participation (Frederick would have finished this in a day!) but it still felt like a "points bomb" for me, which was. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more as the Challengers enter the final frantic week!