September Painting



For my game at the Colonial Barracks convention in November, I needed a number of differently armed figures for the troops in the army of the notoriously unstable warlord.  (See http://jacksongamers.blogspot.com/2014/09/send-in-marines-play-test.html for the play test report.)  So I sorted through my mountain of unpainted figures and came up with two units of poorly armed "native" figures to join the ones I was using that were already painted.



The first batch are eleven Foundry Belgian askari in straw hats.  They are counted as being armed with percussion rifled muskets, even though the game is set in the 1930s.  The white lines on the front designate the forward center for facing during the fire sequence of the rules I am using, "The Sword to Adventure" which is a variant of "The Sword and the Flame."

They are joined in one command by nine musket armed tribal warriors, also from Foundry.  Eventually both of these groups will join my Darkest Africa forces.



The second unit is made up of descendants of escaped slaves, called Maroons in the local vernacular because of the reddish-brown color of their skin (This by the way is historically accurate, the maroons being escaped slaves from Jamaican plantations living in the interior hill country.)  These guys are armed with percussion smoothbore muskets but are also decent hand-to-hand fighters.  Their leader is in the red shirt in the center whose name is Daddee John, an ancestor of P'hat Daddee B'wonah, the President for Life of the Republic of Bongolesia (with apologies to Murphy).



This is the other half of the Maroons.  Although they fight for the notoriously unstable warlord, they really don't like him at all and, given the chance, would shot him in the back.  These figures are from Foundry's Pirates range.  They will join my small collection of pirates figures after the convention.

 

While these figures were fun to paint as I could almost let my imagination run away with me on their clothing, the last batch were more of a staid group, being more "armed civilians" for my Very British Civil War forces.

These armed civilians are from the Artizan Design partisan and guerilla lines that Brigade Games carries.  Their clothing also works for 1930s British.  Their leader is in the center and you can tell from his beret and leather jacket that he is a veteran of the Spanish Civil War.  They'll join the other armed civilians I already have.

September was a very productive painting month with 50 figures painted and two buildings made.  I think that I am finally out of my summer painting slump and I hope that the rest of the year will be just as productive. 



Very British Civil War Mercenary Band

The other day, Very British Civil War Forum member Panzerkaput brought up a topic about the use of mercenaries during the VBCW.  There was some discussion about their use, which you can read at the afore mentioned link.  I realized that I had never posted a picture of the small mercenary band I had created for my VBCW gaming.

These bravos have been hired by the Bishop of Cambridge to augment his forces against the Royalists and British Union of Fascists operating out of Colchester in eastern Essex against his allies in southwestern Suffolk.  Six of the figures are Artizan Design's Cadd's Commandos (pack PLP552 and pack PKP566) that I purchased from Brigade Games and the other five are Pulp Figures' General Cappy Boyd and his Expatriate Mercenaries.

So without further ado, here they are:



 

The band includes the commander (center) with his batman carrying his briefcase and golf clubs, an  executive officer, a sergeant with a submachinegun, two dynamite experts, a Boys antitank rifle gunner, a Browning automatic rifleman, another submachinegunner, a rifleman, and a "grounded" pilot (carrying the reason for his grounding - a bottle of MacCleave's Best Whiskey).  I'll probably add some additional figures as I come across them.