Return to Darkest Africa: June 2012

Friday, 15 June 2012

Zambezi Campaign 23: Arab standard bearer

Here is the standard bearer for the Arab force, carrying the red flag of Zanzibar. Zanzibar was part of the Sultanate of Oman which had flown the red flag since 1698. When the independent Sultanate of Zanzibar was declared in 1856 the red flag was retained and remained the flag of the island state until November 1963.

Tuesday, 5 June 2012

Zambezi Campaign 22: Second unit of Wangwana

Today I finished my second unit of Wangwana for the Arab forces. I now have one more unit of fourteen of these to paint. I'm not sure if I actually have the figures available for this. I found some today but need to have a look in some of my other file boxes. Frankly, my unpainted figures are in a total mess at present so I need to have a sort out and a bit of an inventory. I also need to paint a unit of 12 heavily armed askaris and am not sure if I have these either.

Baluchis ready for undercoating

One thing I do have is the 14 Baluchi swordsmen that are needed for one of the other Arab units. Gary Chalk's scenario is set in 1882 and mine probably ten years later than that. Baluchi swordsmen like this would probably have disappeared from Africa decades before this but perhaps our Arab warlord has held on to his in his isolated inland enclave. One thing is for sure they are not going to be as quick to paint as the Wangwana! I plan to paint them in brighter colours than the Wangwana to reflect their higher status and the saffron coloured clothes that many of them wore.

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.