BoB and Colonial Crossover

[Sun Tzu]

Hi together!

As I would like to play both Back of Beyond and Colonial I am looking for parties that can be used in both setting.
The main reason is I would like to start fast and I am a slow painter.

Is it for example possible to play Germans. I am not so sure about BoB or Chinese in Afrika.

Please include what miniature companies you would suggest.

Thanks
Sun Tzu

[argsilverson]

Try the following ranges:

http://www.copplestonecastings.co.uk/range.php?range=BOB   &
http://www.copplestonecastings.co.uk/range.php?range=DA
[Copplestone's BoB and DA ranges]

http://www.brigadegames.com/
[Brigade games: lots of ranges]

http://www.wargamesfoundry.com/collections/DA/index.asp
[Foundry's famous Darkest Africa]

just for start!


For a more comprehensive list of links, see the sticky on WW1 miniatures :
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=5677.0


 

[traveller]

I guess it´s a tough combination. However, I read somewhere about White Russians ending up in East Africa somewhere after the Bolshevik victory. Could be worth searching. Another avenue might be British in sunhelmets that could work both in Africa and in the Caucasus. Turks can be found both in North Africa and in the Caucasus. Apart from the companies mentioned Woodbine design do a nice WW1 range. Good luck!

[Sterling Moose]

I read somewhere about White Russians ending up in East Africa somewhere after the Bolshevik victory

I like that idea!  A bit like 'The Devils Guard' but earlier.......and in Africa.   

[Mr.J]

I'm working on the same thing using a Foundry's Baluchis and Zanzibaris from their Darkest Africa ranges. They work well for pretty generic Arabs/Indians/Afghans so I use them across North/East Africa, the Middle East and India.

[traveller]

I think I found the "Africa connection":

...following their defeat at Bolshevik hands between 1917 and 1922, White Russian émigrés, including doctors, engineers, lawyers, and military men, began arriving in Addis Ababa.  Fearing Bolshevik agents, Ethiopian authorities initially refused entry to many, but, with time allowed more and more exiles a new home in the capital....

http://users.ju.edu/jclarke/redandwhite.htm

[warrenpeace]

Sun Tzu, many people treat the Boxer "Rebellion" of 1900 as a colonial conflict, seeing that as an indigenous war against colonizing foreign powers.  There is also Chinese conflict in the 1850's and 1860's Taiping War (second bloodiest war in history according to some sources) which triggered British and French invasion in 1860.  There is also a war or two between the French and the Chinese over Tonkin in the mid 1880's.  The conflicts inside the Chinese Republic after WW1, with some outside intervention by foreign powers such as the gunboat patrols on the Yangtze, were probably being treated as colonial conflicts by miniatures wargamers before the term "Back of Beyond" came into general use and embraced those interwar conflicts.

The key choice is terrain.  If you prefer desert and arid lands to model, along with characteristic desert style buildings, then a zone of colonial and BoB conflicts including Afganistan, Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and maybe even Mexico and South Africa can be covered with some of the same terrain pieces.  If you prefer woods and Chinese style buildings, then you can merge imperialistic foreign interventions in China with Chinese BoB.  It's often more of a challenge to build up a collection of terrain pieces and buildings and find the room to store it all than it is to paint a few figures and store those.  So pick the type of terrain you want to collect first.

Fortunately, modern pulp type rules and great individual figures allow a person to start small with a few painted figures and small playing surfaces, while later building up bigger collections of figures and larger playing surfaces for those much bigger battles.

[tsar1701]

As my English is not very goor, I hope I'll not be irrelevant.

For crossing BoB and Colonial, you can play English troops in colonial unifroms, comming from Iran going to Transcapia to prevent the petrol of Baku stolen by the bolcheviks.
From memory, bolcheviks in this region have a lot of austro-hungarian war prisoners recruits (in exchange of freedom) in the red army.

An other way can be the allied troops present in Crimea. A part of the french troops were comming from the colonies, wearing the colonial uniform.

[Stecal]

May want to look at Indian Soldiers of the British Empire.  Their equipment tended to be obsolete and uniforms old style and they always wore turbans so they can stretch the period a bit.  Indian troops did get sent to Africa frequently and there was a lot of saber rattling about a threatened invasion of Western China from India if the Warlord banditry & kidnapping was not bought under control in the 1920s