Arab Slavers - a silly question perhaps but i've been wrong before ...

[H.M.Stanley]

Am i correct in thinking that the Perry plastic Ansar will pass as Arab Nile Slavers (with the skull caps or bald)?

I have an untouched box of Perry British Hussars which is begging to be exchanged

Thanks,

James

[Plynkes]

How are they armed? The "Turkish" slavers were pretty much all armed with flintlocks or percussion muskets. If the plastic figures are spearmen they aren't really suitable, to my mind.

I think from the Perry range the Bazingers are the best fit, though if memory serves their guns are perhaps a bit modern. They all wear fezzes, which the slavers tended to, and the Ansar didn't. I would probably use some of the gun-armed Perry Ansar in a slaver unit, but I would mix them in with a few fellows in fezzes, to give them a distinct slaver flavour.

[H.M.Stanley]

Hi.

They have swords/spears with about 8 x Remingtons, which, if used, puts us in Rabeh Zubair territory (i think).

Fezzes eh? Bother! Not in the Perry plastics they're not.

So what about an early "Turkish" Slaver force. Khartoum Arabs? [EDIT: just noticed your comments about the Slavers ALL being armed with muskets]

I will find a use for these plastic Sudanese for DA  

Thanks

James

[H.M.Stanley]

Looking at the latest DitDC list for Turkish Slavers, Tribal Skirmishers with spears/bows [<50% with Throwing Knives or muskets] are a compulsory choice of 1 -4.

Bazingers with Muskets are indeed the unit of choice 1 - 5

Khartoum Arabs before 1883 may have Explorers as Allies

[clutches tentatively at straws ...]

[Plynkes]

In the Chris Peers army lists for his various games, the spear-armed part of any slaver force seems to be made up of local tribal natives. You would probably want the nudie Foundry boys for that, as the tribes of the area weren't big on clothes. I guess generic tribesmen from your collection would do, though.


It wouldn't be hard to put fezzes on a couple of those plastic boys with a bit of green stuff. I'm not good with the stuff and even I can do fezzes. They don't all have to have them, but to have some of them so dressed would be more representative of how the slavers tended to look.


The description of them having muskets comes from the 1860s, but reading descriptions of one of Samuel Baker's encounters suggests they were still using muskets in the 1870s. Baker's men were not in any kind of formation and were taken by surprise by a group of slavers they had assumed to be friendly, until were fired upon from 90 yards away. They rallied, formed into line, fixed bayonets and routed the slavers with a charge before they had time to reload. Even if they were exceptionally bad soldiers (which, granted, they probably were), if they had been using modern weapons they would surely have got another shot in before contact.

[H.M.Stanley]

Thanks Plynkes 

So it still looks like only the rifle armed types would be any use to me out of the plastics. Humph! 

[Plynkes]

The thing is, while they may not be absolutely perfect, they aren't wildly off the mark either. If you can live with them as "Turks" then I suggest you do so and be happy. You could always say the slavers have dressed the spearmen with bolts of cloth so they don't confuse them with the enemy in battle or something.


And anyway, I think in the book it says "almost all" of them had firearms. So some clearly didn't. So even if you decide to go tribal with your spearmen, you don't have to discard every single plastic spear or swordsman. And perhaps you could pick up some muskets from somewhere and convert a few perhaps?

[H.M.Stanley]

The thing is, while they may not be absolutely perfect, they aren't wildly off the mark either. If you can live with them as "Turks" then I suggest you do so and be happy. You could always say the slavers have dressed the spearmen with bolts of cloth so they don't confuse them with the enemy in battle or something.

Well, they were only Turks as they were nominally under the Empire.

So use the torsos with the least clothing. You talked me into it 

[Plynkes]

Well, they were only Turks as they were nominally under the Empire.

Yes, that's why I was using "Turks" in inverted commas. I tend to favour "Turks" over "Arabs" as that's what the locals called them and it distinguishes them from the Zanzibaris. They tended to use the term because they marched under the Ottoman flag, as Sudan belonged to Egypt, and Egypt was nominally a vassal of the Ottoman Empire, as you say. Though they in fact came from all over the place, and they weren't even all Sudanese. There were Circassians, Syrians, Egyptians, even the odd European.

[H.M.Stanley]

Final questions - for today 

They come with straight swords. An issue?

Use the "Beja" type shields or not [i think i can see where this one is going]

[Plynkes]

They are documented as carrying both cross-hilted straight swords and also curved scimitars.

As for the shields... Hmmm, not sure the Beja type would be found all that much so far away from the Red Sea coast, so I'd probably be happier with the wickerwork "curved lozenge" type (for want of a better description) that some of the Perry metal Ansar have. Does the box have any of those? You see ones like that all the way down to Bunyoro. Though the actual tribesmen of the region also used various other shields: some long and sort of rectangular, some smaller, some pretty oddly shaped; and some peoples like the Bari didn't use shields at all.

[H.M.Stanley]

Good man - thanks.

I haven't got the plastics yet but think they're all of the Beja type. I'll leave them off

Cheers

[Stecal]

the perry plastics come with Fez like heads.  They are not proper Fezzes with a tassel, but close enough if a bit shorter.  I mixed plastic Ansar with Perry metal Bazingers.  My only conversion was to greenstuff sleeves & a cartridge box.

the two leftmost & front right figs are plastic Ansar:

[H.M.Stanley]

Interesting - thanks.

Out of interest, did you use the other plastics in your Slaver(?) force?

[Stecal]

Just the ones with shirts.  The Perry Ansar box is designed to go either Nile Arabs or Beja so it has all kinds of  bits for either.  The rest of the box will just become Mahdists.

as far as I can tell Slaver Askari = Jihadyya = Bazingers.  They are all the same clowns with guns serving whichever master has the gold.