Sudan 1880s & '90s: Dervish Army

My Dervish army for the Sudan is nearly finished, and could certainly be fielded already on the table as it is in some form of action.

I intend to use the 'Sword and the Flame' rules for Colonial warfare as my main set, which are a kind of large skirmish set with a lot of character. But there is no reason when they can't be used with other rule sets, such as 'Black Powder' for larger scale actions. I acquired a set of rules called 'Patrols in the Sudan', by Peter Pig who manufacture 15mm figures. I couldn't really get into them, and they require figures to be element based, but that can be worked around, and I might give them a spin at some stage.

'Sword and the Flame' requires figures to be individually based, and these are all mounted on 1p coins. I've been a bit concerned about the 'look' of them on the tabletop, and been thinking of different solutions for movement trays (drilling holes, magnetic etc) but putting them on this sanded base for a terrain feature to photo them I may well have discovered the answer to both problems!

Certainly it improves the look and there wasn't too much 'wobbling', so I might make up some more to kit the whole force out with unit bases/trays.

First up is a unit of Ansar tribesmen. Figures are Esci Muslim Warriors (since re-issued by Italeri). They are simply painted in white, with coloured patches painted on. Looking at some actual contemporary photos I noticed that patches worn tend to be quite large and often regularly placed, and apparently were mainly blue and red. I found this worked better painting them than the smaller multi-coloured patches on the Esci 'box art' for the set and in various other artwork I've seen. The photo below shows the whole unit. The photo is at the top of the page is a close up. In the light of my success with using the flags from 'Warflag' on my ACW army, I'll probably replace the flag bearers flag and pole, with a much bigger paper one, which should make the whole unit look more impressive.

Next up is a unit of riflemen. 'Sword and Flame' specifies the ratios of rifles to sword/spearmen you can field in tribal armies. It is fairly low for the Dervish army, from memory I think you must field three spear/sword to every one rifle, but you can field 'half units' like this.

I have not painted up all my Muslim Warrior figures with coloured patches. The following are the same figures with a slightly different paint job. I had in mind when I painted these to be able to use them as Zanzibari slavers in a 'Darkest Africa' style game. I've since decided to go for the proper 28mm Foundry 'Darkest Africa' range, but there might be a reason that I want to fight a bigger action with more figures, and as eventually I'll have Zulus, Sudanese 'askaris' and all sorts of British painted up in 20mm, so they might get used as Zanzibaris some day. In any case, many Sudanese warriors and tribes were dark skinned, and not all the Sudanese tribes or individual that fought in the Sudan sewed patches on their garments, so they will fit right into the 'Dervish' force, either as a separate unit or as mixed in. The same goes for the figures I've painted as NW Frontier tribesmen.

This shows the whole force in their storage boxes.

Next up is a unit of Beja warriors, aka 'Fuzzy Wuzzies'. I bought the most of the figures last year, and they are mainly Waterloo 1815 figures, with a few figures from the Esci Muslim Warrior set thrown in. I've not stuck the flag on yet and will probably replace the flag pole with something longer and possibly a bigger flag.

Here's a close up...

And here's the whole lot, two boxes worth, plus the Esci figures.

Hat Industrie are planning to produce their own set of Dervish infantry imminently. Given the excellent quality of some of their recent production they might well be worth waiting for. I certainly thought their Beja camel men better than the Waterloo 1815 Beja, where the sculptor seemed to have lost his nerve on going for 'big hair'. Preview shots show them to be a mixture of Arab and Beja dress. Because of the ratios laid down in 'Sword & the Flame' rules for natives versus Anglo-Egyptian (2.5: 1 I think), the size of the overall action you can stage is limited mainly by the number of natives that you have. So with my Anglo-Egyptian force swelling, you can never have enough dervishes!

Here are a couple of preview shots from the Hat website:

Finally I've been giving my Dervish army some mounted troops. There are sadly not cavalry sets that really work. The old Airfix 'Bedouin' set (re-issued by Hat but now OOP) has some horsemen, but just a measly three, which makes it an expensive proposition to buy enough for a decent sized unit. I have a couple of boxes giving me a handful of figures, and I've made up a unit using a mounted figure from the 'Waterloo 1815' set , which is supplied with an 'ass' to ride, but I've mounted them on some horses from a Napoleonic set, and pins for spears and drawing pins for shields added to some. I'll probably use the asses as pack mules, and might make up a mountain gun set for the British -or any army that need them. Together this should give me a unit, which I've started painting up.

Otherwise, I've got a box of each of Hat's recent releases of Dervishes on Camels, one box featuring Beja the other arabs. I've nearly finished both of these. I'm just puzzling over the Beja to see if I can improve them with any extra detail - I might break with my normal habit of never attempting eyes on 20mm- before varnishing and terraining the bases. I kind of ran out of steam on the arab riders (all camels are painted) and they are half finished, and I'll probably add some flags to tart them up a bit.

Here are some shots of the some of the Beja set painted up:

WW2 Japanese

Bashing through several WW2 armies for Rapid Fire late 2009/early 2010 meglomania took over in the Cavalier wargames show in 2010, and I acquired a couple of boxes of Waterloo 1815 Japanese and a bag of old Airfix Japanese too from the Harfield's stand. Having finally finished the Eastern front forces in March of that year, WW2 fatigue overcame me, but by the end of the year, I was able to get the Japs out of the cupboard. After the enormous headache of trying to assemble all the vehicles to fill a Rapid Fire order of battle for a German, Russian, American or late war British army, I was quite looking forward to tackling an army with mainly infantry, which could borrow trucks from there German allies, and where a few light tanks and artillery pieces, and perhaps a plane or two would be 'the icing on the cake' rather than essential.

The main task was researching uniforms, which mainly revealed lack of much consensus on uniform colours. The basic colour was pea green, which often faded badly, and was apparently substituted for a light khaki in 'tropical' areas. All of this research led me to conclude: go for a colour that looks nice! I ended up mixing some green paint I used for basing with some buff paint I use for WW2 German tanks and washing the figure at the end with a brown wash. Seemed to work. You can judge for yourself from the pics.

I finished painting well over a hundred figures last winter. The pleasant surprise was how good the Airfix figs looked when painted properly. These must have had a thousand bad paint jobs and lain around unpainted or with chipped paint in thousands of play boxes, which is how a lot of us think of them, but this figure set sculpted back in the early 1970s actually stands the test of time and painted up they looked as good as the Waterloo 1815 figures released a year or so ago. The Waterloo 1815 box is crammed with goodies like HMGs, knee mortars, radio operators and flame throwers, so many in fact, I was glad of the Airfix to make sure I had enough riflemen. I've not including any of the Heavy Weapons in the shots, but barring a few extra 'ammunition carriers' I make up by trimming off weapons, so that under Rapid Fire rules I have enough weapons crew, virtually everything is painted up, if not varnished and based.

My chief innovation for this project was basing. As I'm sure I have bored Steve to death about already, basing for me has become something of a minor obscession, having completely ignored its importance for most of the time I've been painting figures. If you collect 20mm plastics in wargaming circles you develop something of an 'inferiority complex'. 15mm gamers smile and tell you big figures and vehicles like that are 'oversized for the table', while 28mm 'metal snobs' say, "gosh aren't they small, how do you paint those?" So to counter this, I am always striving to make 20mm plastics look as good as I can on the table. You can only go so far, by painting, and when I ran my online shop and took a professional interest in painted figures, I started to notice a 'well-painted' figure was usually a 'well-based figure', and a pretty averagely painted figure can look great with good basing. I started to notice the difference when I worked a bit harder on the look of the bases for my DBA elements. When I switched back to painting WW2 figures, I had based them on 5 peseta coins I had from when I lived in Spain. Smaller than 1p coins, they 'did the job' but I noticed that they seemed to 'diminish' the figure. I have variously experimented with 2p coins, but for WW2 I initially fielded by German and Russian armies on 5 peseta coins. I decided that it didn't do them justice, so started to study the brillantly well painted figures in the Rapid Fire books, noting the common convention of basing quite a few two-to-a-base on generously sized and well-terrained bases. I therefore, left my figures on peseta coins, for extra weight, but stuck them on larger card bases, which I then terrained with rough sand and also normal static grass.

For the Japs, I've gone one step further and to a further extreme. I want to make up some Jungle Terrain, for these boys, and bought a bunch of acquarium plastic ferns etc. and having so much, put a few sprigs on the base of the figures.

Although I principally intend to use Rapid Fire rules, I really used to enjoy 'Crossfire' rules too at my last club, which is a particularly good simulation of 'company level' infantry combat across dense terrain. This works especially well for jungle fighting. Most 'Crossfire' players I've come across use 15mm figures, but there is not as such any reason that 20mm figures don't work. Crossfire, does, however, mainly use 'element' basing, the size of an element not being fixed, and it can represent a squad/section or a platoon or even a company. After playing around I thought it would do no harm to base a few dozen figures on three figure bases, which could still be used for Rapid Fire, but looked the part as a 'Crossfire' element.

These looked particularly good with 'heavy terrain', but judge for yourself....assuming you can find the figure in all that foliage, of course! I haven't ruled out adding more 'tufts' and such 'high-end' basing accessories to these bases, despite my cheapskate nature.

Unfortunately one of the 'downsides' of using such generous basing, is that the army rapidly grew to require more storage boxes, which I had by this stage just run out of! The final pic is the full force, half based for now, until I have somewhere to store them all.

WW2 Australian/Commonwealth/Brits

Towards the end of 2010, I cracked out most of my WW2 Japanese army. Although I have plenty of US troops painted up, including some marines, although there is not actually much difference, I really wanted to get them up against some British/Commonwealth opponents. I was inspired both by a Rapid Fire scenario that I found based on a battle by Australian troops to defend the Kokoda trail in New Guinea (which can be found here http://www.worldoptions.com.au/fourpipers/rapid/scenario.html -see 'Isurava' under 1942 scenarios and follow up scenario here- http://www.worldoptions.com.au/fourpipers/rapid/efogirf2.pdf ) and the exploits of the Chindits, a force in which my wife's uncle, a colourful chap, was a captain. So in February my birthday order from Model Hobbies included a couple of boxes of Airfix Australians, and Hat's WW1 Anzac heavy weapons set, to supply HMGs and mortars and crews otherwise lacking. Having got to see the Ozzie film 'Kokoda', I also plan to use some Aifix 8th army figures too, as some troops clearly wore helmets and shorts, too.

As far as I can tell at this scale the Chindit uniform was identical to the Australian, and I also have 3/4 of a box of Gurka's for a Chindit force. Caesar Miniatures not long ago brought out some Chinese troops for WW2, who aided the Chindits and also fought the Japanese in Burma. Not a priority purchase, but could be a set with a lot of potential.

I've tried to find out what uniforms I'd need for the attack on Malaya and Singapore, and the retreat into Burma. Most units were drawn from the Indian army, so I could use my Colonial Sikhs and the WW1 Indian Infantry that are in the pipeline from Hat, plus 8th Army and ordinary WW2 British infantry (as long trousers and khaki certainly seems to have been normal in Burma), and possibly my recnetly acquired late WW1 British, once painted, too. Although I've found references to some unit dying their uniforms green for jungle fighting prior to the issue of 'jungle greens'-and some pictures on the Singapore wargaming clubs site, and they are the people most likely to know, seems to bear it out-, as far as I can see the basic uniform was 'khaki drill', ie. same as Eighth Army. I'm not planning on doing armies for North Africa, but if I invested at some stage in a unit or two of Eighth Army in 'Khaki Drill', I could also use them for places like Crete.

I cracked out most of the Australian infantry over a weekend back in March, while working on other things. I've got the heavy weapons and some figures lying down left to do, plus the 8th Army & Gurka figs, but its not a big job. One of the main things holding me up, though, is lack of storage boxes.

As the pics how, I've for basing I followed what I tried out on the Japanese. I have really carried to extremes testing the view, that especially where 20mm plastics are concerned, the basing is more important than the painting. The figures I've based up so far I've done 3 to a base, with some sprigs of 'fish tank' plastic foliage added as well. This base would look good for 'Crossfire', not my intended main ruleset for these figures, but a ruleset which works well at simulating 'company' level infantry fighting on a tabletop covered in terrain. And you don't get denser terrain than in jungle-fighting! I'll also be basing some up in pairs and singly for both 'brigade level' Rapid Fire, and 'platoon level' Disposable Heroes.

This shows the three bases I have done so far.

An the final pic shows all the figures so far painted, plus the storage problem of the relative space taken up by the 9 figs on fancy bases taking up a quarter of the box, and the other 60 fitting happily in the remaining space!

I've been putting off ordering new storage boxes, but with other things spilling over I'll have to soon. This will also hopefully mean I'll have somewhere to store the jungle terrain I plan to knock up for these guys, the Japs, Vietnam and Darkest Africa.

WW1 Late War German Army

Steve started me off on this period, and the prospect of a game encouraged me to paint up a box of WW1 Airfix Germans and Yanks I have had lying at the back of the cupboard for absolutely ages. In fact in my infant years I had all the Airfix WW1 sets, which never saw a lick of paint, so it was to see what they looked like painted after all these years . The experience, coming after a few weeks of plowing through rank after rank of Napoleonics, which I never ever seem to finish, made me realise a WW1 army could be a 'quick win'. It shares with WW2 the much easier uniforms to paint, but without all the 'kit' ie.vehicles, which at times can make filling a WW2 order of battle quite a difficult and expensive task. I turned out each box of WW1 Airfix in about an evening each, so WW1 armies looked a 'quick win' and a potentially knocking out another WW1 army from time to time will be a bit of light relief from bigger projects.

So enthused was I with the period after a brilliant game with GW's 'Great War', mainly with Steve's Airfix WW1 Germans and Brits painted as Russians, that my next purchase was enough figures for 4 WW1 armies.

As Steve had early war, I thought I'd concentrate on painting late war first, though I my purchases included figs to expand on my Airfix Huns, too. I bought Brits and Germans to match up for the late war period. But I also snapped up some Hat (re-issues of Airfix) WW1 French which are now OOP and selling out and a lot cheaper than Airfix which have started manufacturing them again themselves. The French dropped their early war uniforms earlier than the other armies, and so when painted would give me a post-1914 French army to fight both early and late war Germans (in fact for Verdun and other 1915 battles you can use both early and late German figures, as units new arrivals had the new steel helmets, where as older units had the original 'picklehaubs').

I initially based up my early war Germans on 1p pieces, but changed my mind with these and went for 2p coins instead. Despite needing more storage space, I'm glad I did. They look much better on the tabletop, and I'll probably stick the Early War Germans I've based already straight on top of 2p coins and terrain with sand, too. The extra height won't do any harm. For my Napoleonic skirmish set that I started on 2p coins, but switched back to 1p coins for line infantry- so I could get them in close formation- but these WW1 figs look fine on 2p coins as infantry were increasingly fighting in looser formations by this period.

The figures are Revell, and I'm not sure my snaps do justice to them. They are nice figures, towards the larger end of 20mm figures, size-wise, with a lot of good poses. The key feature is the steel helmet first issued in 1915. To aid unit identification I have painted some helmets in grey, some in camo as shown below, and some in brown which was also a common colour that they were issued in.

Close-up of a couple with 'camo' helmets:
Close-up of a trio in brown helmets:

Two boxes of Revell gave me 70 riflemen, and ideally I'll add another box, but there's no rush as their first outing will most likely against the French and I have the box of Early War figs painted earlier to supplement them. I need to paint up the MGs, but having also finished a bigger French force, I'm taking a little break from WW1 again.

The officers in the set look like junior officers leading the attack, but as senior officers/generals often retained the 'picklehaub', the command figures from the Airfix set are fine to use for the battalion commanders you need for GW's great war rules, or the 'staff officers' you use in 'Contemptible Little Armies'.

I would also in future like to add some artillery, probably the Hat set, and at some stage some aircraft and maybe an AV7 tank! Either way a good start for now, and expandable over time.

To finish here's a snap of the whole lot, barring a handful I discovered had flaked before varnishing, and are back on the workbench to touch up.

Early Imperial Roman Army for DBA and Impetus

When I finally joined a wargames club 3/4 years ago, after over a decade collecting and painting without playing,I had to actually get myself into gear and finish an army properly. The Early Imperial Roman Army was not the first army I started, but it was the first that I finished to get on the table.

The core of the army is obviously Roman legionaries, and the figures that I used were the excellent Esci figures (since re-issued by Italeri). The following shot shows a unit in close up.

All told I painted up about 32 elements (over 120 figures) of legionaries. This gives me full flexibility on the sort of army that I can field. The Early Imperial Roman army actually only has four compulsory elements of legionaries (the general can also be fielded as 'Baldes' but the rest are auxiliaries and cavalry etc.) in the DBA army list. So not only did I have enough elements for no less than EIGHT basic DBA armies, I can field, two three command 'Big Battle' DBA armies, or two of my special 'Double-based' DBA armies with 16 figure heavy infantry units (on magnetic movement trays), which are also perfect for Impetus.

The DBA Army list is as follows:

Early Imperial Roman 25BC-107AD

1 x 3 Cavalry or 4 Blade (Gen), 1 x 3 Cavalry or 2 Light Horse or 4 Bow or 2 Psiloi, 4 x 4 Blade, 4 x 4 Auxiliaries, 1 x Artillery

For the uninitiated the number before the troop type (eg. 3 Cavalry) is the recommended number of figures per standard element, something that is just cosmetic and does not affect the game.

This shows a 'basic' standard 12 element Early Imperial Roman Army for DBA. DBA players tend to think in terms of playing 'historic opponents' for their armies, often in mini-campaigns, but the most common historic opponent for an Early Imperial Roman army was in fact, another EIR army, as there were several civil wars in the period, often with several contenders for the Imperial throne meaning you could deploy several basic EIR armies in a mini-campaign! I've made sure I have plenty of general elements for exactly that reason.

The following shot contrasts the 'mini' army of a conventional DBA game with what a 'Double-Based DBA (or Impetus ) EIR army looks like on the table. Clearly much more impressive!

(Best viewed full size - which you can do with any pic on here by double-clicking).

Finally I include a shot of the same army from a different angle to give a bit more idea of what it looks like on the tabletop.

Finally this is the 'Basic Impetus' army list. It only has 8 units/elements, of which only 3 are legionaries, so it is smaller than a 'Double-based' DBA army. The only hassle in fielding a couple would be that it included a bow unit (not sure if I have two), but I'm sure this can be fudged and you could use slingers, for example.

EARLY IMPERIAL ROMAN (VDT=18/9)

Nr	Type	M	VBU	I	VD	Notes
1	CM(*)	10	5	2	3
3	FP(*)	5	6	1	3	legionaries - pilum
2	FL	8	5	1	2	auxilia
1	T	6	3	0	1	short bow A
1	ART	3(6)	1	0	1	Movement is 6U is on cart art B

Special rules. Impetuous foot charging auxilia don't get Impetus Bonus.
If on cart, Roman artillery is considered as a "mounted target", but still benifit -2 malus for shooting vs artillery

CGP= Heavy Chariots; CGL= Light Chariots; CF= Schyted Chariots; CP= Heavy Cavalry; CM= Medium Cavalry; CL= Light Cavalry; FP= Heavy Infantry; FL= Light Infantry; S= Skirmishers; T= Missile Troops, EL= Elephants ; ART= Artillery

M= Movement; VBU= Basic Unit Value; I= Impetus Bonus, VD= Demoralization Value; VDT= Total Demoralization Value

(*) Unit that can include general

Latest unit to be painted for LOTR -Rangers!

I acquired these very recently from eBay, and last week having arrayed my Gondorian force to have a look at them, felt the figures, all in black undercoat, were standing in the way of a good-looking army! So I got the paint brush out and whipped through them in a couple of days.

These plastic figures can basically be used for Rangers of the North (aka. ' the Dunedain') or Faramir's Ithilien Rangers.

In the first role they can be headed up by Aragorn, and teamed up with Elves from Rivendale, especially Elrond's sons, or Gandalf or even Shire hobbits in their mission to stop the encroachment of wargs, trolls, marauding bands of orcs and even barrowwraiths into the more civilised parts of the Northern Lands. Or they could provide a light infantry element for the army of Arnor in their fateful struggle with the Witch Kingdom of Angmar. Last but not least they form the core of the 'Grey Company' at the Battle of Peleannor Fields.

As Ithilien rangers, they can be deployed as a stand alone guerilla force against the encroachments of orcs from Mordor or Haradrim from the south. Or they could be teamed up with some warriors of Minas Tirith to help defend Osgiliath.

All around a pretty versatile set.

Unlike some other forces, where there is a 'standard' GW colour scheme, there seem to be several variations out there, and it is tempting to get some more to try some different ones out, including one I saw for Haradrim intruders. I've kept one back to try a 'Night Stalker' colour scheme, I've seen, which could be generally useful for a thief/assassin, even a Ninja, type figure for a variety of games, not just LOTR.

I got 26 in my purchase for some reason (I think there are only 24 in a box), so taking one out does not mess up any plans for WoR companies of 8 figures, especially as I've got a Faramir and various Aragorn figures which can be added as heroes/captains. Some had broken weapons which I should have fixed before painting, but I haven't so I till have do a bit of supergluing, then just varnishing and basing.

Mordor Orcs nearly finished!

The first shot is one of the whole force, angled 'down the battleline'. Yes, you can almost hear the tramp of iron shod feet, grunts and growls, and smell the bad breath and BO, from these monsters!

The next shot is a more sedate overhead one. They are groups into 8s, as per WoR company size, and it gives you an idea of what 64 Mordor Orcs looks like on the tabletop. It is enough for a game, not least as I have warg riders, Haradrim and Easterlings to support them if necessary (or Misty Mountain Goblins if you were doing a game like the 'Last Alliance'), although I have to say, it would probably look more impressive as an army core with at least double the number of figures, which would be possible combining my and Steve's forces.

With a force like this it is always difficult to know when to top painting. They are not in uniform, I've varied the paint job for an 'irregular' appearance, so any highlighting and shading of colours can be a bit tedious, especially as they already look good 'en masse' and most look good individually. I'll probably pick out those I'm really happy with and start varnishing and basing, and keep working through them, touching up a colour here and there until their finished.

To close here's a closer shot of a unit with two-handed weapons with archers to their front and a unit of spearmen just getting in the shot.