The things you find....

Uh-oh. Serious trouble.

I was messing about in the car-port this evening after work (as you do) when I found what I thought was a box of Castaway Arts Indian Army figures. Now, it contained just that, but imagine also my surprise to find:

4 early Ansar;
15 Hadendowah and;
10 late Jiadiyyah riflemen.

Is this synchronicity?

Just one small order and I can add two more TSatF units to my Mahadist collection...

This is how new projects start for me. I already have the bones of a Mahdist army - about 7 TSatF units. Oh, and I also just found about 5-6 Conoisseur Fuzzies, to boot.

This means trouble.

And a new blog label.

"Sudan".

Bits and Bobs

Getting pretty close top finishing the block-houses at the moment. Just the details to paint in now. Then I need to ge on to making the barbed wire entanglements.
An interesting sub-plot might be how much space these things take up on the table. The block-house is about 80mm in diameter. The earthworks blow the foot-print out to about 300mm. By the time I have added barbed wire, I think the diameter of one blockhouse would be in the region of 370mm or so. Food for thought! Add another and you are taking up quite a substantial portion of your avarage 6' x 4' war-games table.

In other news, and prompted by the perfidious Jeff, I have been reading on the Sudan.
Let me please share with you some OOB and scaling thoughts that i have prepared in an anally-retentive half-hour.

The Desert Column before Abu Klea (13.01.1885).
Guards Camel Regiment - 414 all ranks
Heavy Camel Regiment - 400
Mounted Infantry Camel Regiment - 383
1st/35th (Royal Sussex) - 258
19th Hussars - 135
25th Coy, RE - 27
1/2 Battery RA - 38 (3 x 2.5" Screw Guns)
Naval Brigade - 58 (1 Gardiner Gun)

Ths totals out at 1653 men whaich at a suitably Old School 1:10 is close enough to 165 figure. Now, lets take that scaling and apply unit organisations from The Sword and the Flame and apply them:

The Desert Column before Abu Klea for TSatF
Guards Camel Regiment - 2 units (40 figures)
Heavy Camel Regiment - 2 units (40 figures)
Mounted Infantry Camel Regiment - 2 units (40 figures)
1st/35th (Royal Sussex) - 1 unit (20 figures)
19th Hussars - 1 unit (12 figures)
1/2 Battery RA - 1 x 2.5" Screw Gun - (four figures)
Naval Brigade - 1 Gardiner Gun - (three figures)

Which comes to 159 figures. A pretty fair approximation, I think.

Of course, you'd need heaps of Mahdists. But there are tried and true ways of dealing with that.

What do you think?

Earthworks

My trusty hot-wire cutter comes through with the goods again.

I've opted to paint the block-houses in GW "Boltgun Metal" washed over with some burned sienna as a light tarnish and to add some definition on the corrugations.

I decided on this approach as there was no information really on whether the blockhouses had been painted or no. Besides, I squinted at some poor quality, black-and-white internet images for long enough to convince myself they were bare metal!

Block-house work in progress

Just a quickie to show you what's on here.

The idea here is to build a block-house in stand-alone form that I can drop into a terrain piece. The circular part is an industrial-scale toilet-paper roll cut in half with a saw, whlie the gable-ends and ceiling are of that perennial favourite, foam-core board.

The the roof and all the rest of the "corrugated iron cladding are a roll of finely corrugated cardboard I found a few years back in a stationers. It has a flat backing so it takes an even skim of glue well for when I have to laminate it onto a thicker card for stability. It's just been cut as a square and scored to fold for the roof.

The miniatures are Hinchcliffe in the Slade Wallace personal equipment. Very nice figures that I'd never really considered before.

Classic Wargamer's Journal

The latest issue (#1) of the CWJ is out now.

Take a look at Phil Olley's Classic Wargaming blog for details and take out a subscription while you're at it!

Getting out of the doldrums

You know how it is, you get into the project doldrums and you need a break. That's about where I'm at with my ACW project, I'd say.

I've long been interested in the Boer War, but not really wanting to commit too deeply.

Thus I'm going to do a little mini-project - a couple of Boer War Block-houses and a pair of TSaTF-sized infantry units. Not too much, just enough to slake that little thirst.

However, there are dangers; now I'm eyeing-off my Sudan collection.

Uh-oh...