Return to Darkest Africa: Ruga-Ruga

Wednesday, 13 February 2008

Ruga-Ruga

I started a bunch of Ruga-Ruga some years ago but never finished them. I've decided to build a force for the warlord, Mirambo, so I will need a mix of Ngoni, Watuta and Ruga-Ruga. I opened a new pot of varnish for these and, as often with Humbrol varnish, the first coat was very shiny. I tried two more coats but it stayed shiny so I went for another tim which was much better. If there is one thing I hate it's shiny figures!

The bases are pinker than I usually do for hot climate figures because, as Sir Richard Burton said, "Africa is a red land". Actually I looked up some pictures of Tanzania and tried to paint the bases that colour but they looked far too red!

1 comment:

Giles said...: Very nice. And interesting pics re the Tanzanian landscape - I think choosing a colour scheme for basing African figures is the hardest part!; 18 February 2008 at 09:23

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Wargaming Darkest Africa

I had never collected metal wargames figures having always been a 20mm plastics man. I had maybe five metal Hinchliffe Napoleonics when I was about twelve but couldn't see the point of saving my precious pocket money when you could get so many Airfix plastics for the same amount.

So I didn't start buying metal figures until about fifteen years ago and the very first metal 28s I bought were some of Mark Copplestone's Foundry Darkest Africa figures. I had pictures of them in the magazines but it was only when I actually saw some figures at Salute that I decided to take the plunge and buy some explorers. For a long time all I bought was Darkest Africa so now I am in the unusual (for me) position of having more figures painted than unpainted. Unfortunately, most of them are painted to a very poor standard. Latterly, I have repainted a few characters and they are much improved but I can't really bear repainting all my tribesmen! Having said that my more recent Zambezi campaign has seen me repainting quite a few figures.

I have read, and continue to read, extensively on nineteenth century African explorers and several scenarios have sprung to mind based on my recent reading of Tim Jeal's book about Stanley.

I use Chris Peers Darkest Africa rules but find them (like all of his rules) relentlessly bloody and am really more interested in gaming a campaign which follows an expedition over a number of encounters and scenarios. For this I have been thinking of modifying Games Workshop's Lord of the Rings rules. Their Battle Companies add-on handles campaign type scenarios well and you can weight the abilities of your heroes to make them more or less indestructible. I don't want a set of rules where my heroes are killed in the first game!

Apart from the classic eras of exploration and colonisation I am also interested in World War 1 in East Africa and will continue to gradually collect the excellent Brigade Games figures for that conflict.

This site will look at the period from 1855 until 1918 and I will try to list useful books and other sources as well.