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Author Topic: Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - Mirambo (Heaps of Corpses) painted.  (Read 66304 times)

Offline Mike1879

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Re: Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - Now with Nkonde/Ngonde warriors
« Reply #285 on: September 13, 2020, 09:18:29 PM »
They look the biz on that gaming mat!! Excellent conversion work

Offline anch_io

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Re: Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - Now with Nkonde/Ngonde warriors
« Reply #286 on: September 13, 2020, 09:48:04 PM »
It always surprises me, not only the quality of your brushwork, but actually how quick you paint them...

Keep them coming, you certainly have more than a few eyes looking your way...  ;)

Offline Diablo Jon

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Re: Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - Now with Nkonde/Ngonde warriors
« Reply #287 on: September 14, 2020, 05:38:00 AM »
It always surprises me, not only the quality of your brushwork, but actually how quick you paint them...

Keep them coming, you certainly have more than a few eyes looking your way...  ;)

funny it always feels like it takes me age to get things finished when I'm painting  lol

They look the biz on that gaming mat!! Excellent conversion work

Thanks Mike

Offline Captain Blood

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Re: Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - Now with Nkonde/Ngonde warriors
« Reply #288 on: September 14, 2020, 07:02:58 PM »
Great conversions. Fascinating too - I didn't know anything about the Nkonde. The shields are really well done.

Offline Diablo Jon

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Re: Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - Now with Nkonde/Ngonde warriors
« Reply #289 on: September 21, 2020, 05:29:01 AM »
So this is a little Darkest Africa side project I’ve been working on. As I’ve been assembling the various factions for my British Central Africa project I found I was slowly filing up a zip lock bag full of surplus miniatures that I didn’t have any use for. A few spare askari here, some tribal musket men there and odd Europeans among other spares. Wondering what to do with them I was struck with the idea of an exploring expedition.

I decided to make the expedition as generic as possible and build it to work with the ” The Men Who Would be Kings” rules. Using the optional “Skirmish King’s” rule (which means using half sized units) would mean I wouldn’t have to buy many extra miniatures. I did purchase a few extra explorers from Copplestone Castings because I wanted to have a number of different European leaders to allow the expedition to represent different nationalities by just changing out the European leader models. Anyway here is what I ended up with.

First the European leaders and there flag bearers we have most of the main players Germany, Great Britain, The international African Association (i.e. Belgians), the French and the independents (i.e. Italian counts, Austrians and Americans). You’ll notice the French are a bit light on numbers I’m planning on painting up the Artizan miniatures Senegalese Command Group, at some stage, to fill that gap. Hopefully I will also add some Portuguese when time allows and I can find out what miniatures would be suitable.











Next up we have the Askari these are the usual Foundry suspects from various packs. I decided to give them a uniform of red and white. Many Askari just wore their own clothes but uniforms certainly weren’t unknown it really depended on the employer. Most of these miniatures have breech loading and repeater rifles so that dates them to the latter years of African exploration if I wanted to represent the earlier 19th century I could draft in some of my Zanzibar Arab miniatures.





Next up we have the armed porters. Every expedition needed a lot of porters to explore country with next to no roads or suitable draft animals. Though they weren’t usual hired as fighting men many porters where equipped with personal weapons in the early years this might be a spear or bow but in latter years a musket was normal. It wasn’t unusual for porters to end up having to fight if the situation got desperate. These are a mixture of Northstar and Foundry.



Speaking of porters no exploring expedition would be complete without a bunch of porters with loads these can act as table dressing or objectives in a game.



So that’s the expedition if it needs reinforcements I can always draft in some allies from my Arab or native armies. I’ll finish off with a few action shots of a German expedition in action.














Offline anch_io

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Is it wrong for a grown man to say “I wanna play with your toys”?  :D

Superb.

Offline Plynkes

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Cool! Loving the Askari in red shirts. I've been toying with the idea of doing a Samuel White Baker force (maybe for Congo or Skirmish Kings or both) . I have had the Foundry Sam and Florence Baker figures sitting around for many years. Was musing about what figures to use for his red-shirted "Forty Thieves" (the elite of his Egyptian infantry). Looking at your guys I'm thinking those Foundry lads will do fine with nice red shirts (seems that in the field uniform regs went out the window apart from the red shirts, so Egyptian Army figures probably aren't all that suitable - though there are illustrations of Baker's men fighting in uniform too, so  it isn't really set in stone).

Anyway, sorry for the rambling diversion and thanks for the inspiration.

With Cat-Like Tread
Upon our prey we steal...

Offline Diablo Jon

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Is it wrong for a grown man to say “I wanna play with your toys”?  :D

 
Superb.

 lol thanks

Offline Diablo Jon

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Cool! Loving the Askari in red shirts. I've been toying with the idea of doing a Samuel White Baker force (maybe for Congo or Skirmish Kings or both) . I have had the Foundry Sam and Florence Baker figures sitting around for many years. Was musing about what figures to use for his red-shirted "Forty Thieves" (the elite of his Egyptian infantry). Looking at your guys I'm thinking those Foundry lads will do fine with nice red shirts (seems that in the field uniform regs went out the window apart from the red shirts, so Egyptian Army figures probably aren't all that suitable - though there are illustrations of Baker's men fighting in uniform too, so  it isn't really set in stone).

Anyway, sorry for the rambling diversion and thanks for the inspiration.

Yes Baker in Equatoria would be great. I had consider this as a project as well . All the illustrations, I've seen show smartly turned out Egyptians in full dress so I'd considered Sudan era Egyptians but the Remington's are all wrong. As you say I doubt that actually looked anything like regulars after a gruelling journey to the back end of no where and at the end of a very long supply line. You could even just about justify converting a small cavalry unit for use against the Bari not something you get to model often in DA games.

I think the Bari might be harder to represent as you really need loads of butt naked archers from what I can tell something oddly missing from any of the current ranges.

Offline Plynkes

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To begin with I was planning to pit him against Sudanese slavers rather than Bari, as they'd require a bit of converting, more than I can be bothered with right now, and to be honest I don't find them all that interesting. I think I will give Sam some Madi allies, though, as they look like fairly easy conversions and they have interesting war paint that it might be fun to have a go at.

I've seen those drawings of Baker's infantry in immaculate uniforms, but our friend Mr. Peers doesn't seem to set much store in them, saying in action they barely wore their uniforms and had a much more ragged filibustering appearance. I'm thinking of using Perry bazingers for the rank and file, mostly because I already have some, but they do kind of fit the description. I might use some Copplestone Zanzibari regulars too, as they look like Egyptians, but they don't have the parade ground appearance of thePerry ones.

Not going to worry too much about getting the rifles exactly right on this, as long as they are roughly the right generation I'll be happy enough. :)


Edit: Just had a peek in my book, and according to Peers they did have Remingtons, but also Sniders and even smoothbore muskets loaded with buckshot issued to sentries at night(!).



« Last Edit: September 21, 2020, 09:00:01 AM by Plynkes »

Offline Captain Blood

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That’s a great assembly of figures and a splendid looking expedition  :-*
The beach scenery is extremely nice too.

Offline Hammers

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Re: Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - Some Random Europeans
« Reply #296 on: September 21, 2020, 09:12:25 AM »
I thought my first teddy bear fur gaming mat had worked quite well but recently I’ve been thinking about steamboats, native canoes, slaver Dhows and Zambezi gun boats all of which saw use during the wars around lake Nyasa in British Central Africa . My current African gaming mat doesn’t really work well in that respect. So I decided to make a new one with one edge representing a large body of water like a lake (or a major river or even the sea) that I could sail a gun boat up and down.

This time around I bought a much shorter haired mat that took a lot less cutting, though at the expense of a much more varied grass height, than my first mat has. Then I shaved one side right down to the mat and caulked it. To make the water I used tissue paper and PVA glue painted it in a blue-green colour and then added several layers of gloss varnish. The beach is just caulk with sand added and painted. My aim was to try and create something that looks like the shore of Lake Nyasa

So here are a few shots of my new mat with a couple of different scenery set ups all I need now is to buy some boats…



What a beautiful and unique piece of gaming board!
« Last Edit: September 21, 2020, 09:16:57 AM by Hammers »

Offline Hammers

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Re: Diablo Jon does Darkest Africa - A New Teddy Bear Fur Gaming Mat
« Reply #297 on: September 21, 2020, 09:13:57 AM »
That is just perfect, Jon. I am green with envy.

I am a sort of deep blue turning to turquoise with envy.
« Last Edit: September 21, 2020, 09:15:31 AM by Hammers »

Offline Mike1879

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Excellent work very impressive indeed  :)

Offline Atheling

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Diabolically good stuff Diablo Jon  :-* :-* :-*


 

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