One Week To Little Wars - Work to do!

 

Play testing my rules. The Dervish didn't do very well in this iteration.

So here we are on a thursday and it is exactly one week to go before the start of the Little Wars convention in Lisle, Illinois. I've got most of the figures that I need for my games, but me being me I'm painting some more figures for the game (more for the fun of painting the figures rather than need).

I've been working on some Camel Corps figures using the Armies In Plastic British Northwest Frontier figures. While some of the equipment is incorrect for 1885 (it being the 1895 Omdurman campaign uniform), I like the figures and the uniform is "close enough". I will be using the plastic figures in my convention games rather than the heavy to carry Britain's Camel Corps figures (shown in the picture above).

The first picture below shows three British officers painted in three different uniform colors. The Camel Corps is on the left, a sort of generic red coat tunic in the center, and a general khaki uniform on the right. I have to say that I rather like the red uniform with the buff color breeches. There was two regiments wearing red coats at the Battle of Kirbekan ( February 10, 1885), the South Staffordshire and the Black Watch and this battle is famous for being the last battle in which the British army wore its distinctive red coats.

Sir Charles Wilson's riverboat dash to Khartoum included a company of the Sussex regiment wearing red coats (to impress the Dervish and possibly scare them away from Khartoum).

I have to say that I rather like the red coated officer. Since my British contingent is based on Herbert Stewart's Camel Corps expedition, my understanding is that all of his troops wore the blue-grey tunic and that none of the troops wore red coats. For my Abu Klea game scenario I will have two regiments (64 figures each) making up a square and I think that I need some way of distinguishing which regiment is which. One thought is to keep everyone in grey tunics, but have one unit with brown stained helmets and the other with white helmets. Another idea is to paint one unit with blue-grey and the other in red or khaki. The latter option is historically incorrect, but it would look really really nice. What to do?

Paint testing several uniform styles on the same figure.
54mm Armies In Plastic figures.

Armies In Plastic 54mm Camel Corps figures on Litko movement trays. I place 8 figures 
in each movement tray with two trays representing one company of soldiers. Eventually this
Camel Corps unit will field 8 trays or 64 figures in total

 

The whole enchilada: the Dervish Army on final inspection.

The third picture above shows my Dervish army arrayed on my game table. I'm working on terraining some of the individual 40mm round bases that are placed on 10-figure skirmish trays that I buy from Litko. I did have 200 bases that need the ground terrain added, but I've slowly whittled the number down to 70 figures. I do a little bit each day because this can be tedious work. You can also see a thin line (on the right - click on the picture to enlarge) of Egyptian and Camel Corps figures. I painted 16 Egyptian soldiers to top up one of their units (48 figures per regiment) and then there are some Camel Corps figures that may or may not appear in my Little Wars convention games. I'm finishing Camel Corps figures at the rate of 8 figures per day.

Other items on my punch list that I have completed include:

- make more Acacia trees out of plastic flower stems

- paint an 80 figure contingent of old Britain's hollow cast Arabs as Dervish in jibbahs.

- paint the afore-mentioned 16 Egyptian figures

- finalize the rules that I will be using in the game

- find boxes for specific buildings in my Khartoum city

The items still open:

- rent a larger SUV vehicle so that I can bring everything to Little Wars in one trip

- make two more wall sections

- base The Mahdi and other Dervish army leaders

- make 16 more ladders for scaling the walls (MOST IMPORTANT)

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