Well then, what's that? Colonial Adventures, I say, old chap!
Having been bitten by the "Congo" bug or maybe the LeadTse fly, I took a trip to the Lisasi Mountains and recovered a little heap of Darkest Africa stuff which had languished in storage for many a year. This whole "adventuring/exploration" focus of the Congo ruleset somehow got to me, especially since I never quite warmed to large-scale colonial gaming and had the most fun at the 2008 "Through the Dark Continent" game we did in the early days of Triumph and Tragedy. That said, I haven't gotten round to getting a copy of "Congo" yet, and may keep using T&T, but I'll certainly get it at least to check it out and to marvel at the apparently rather fine production values.
Furthermore, I managed to catch the new "Tarzan" movie on its last week - lovely visuals that fired the old painting boiler quite a bit. Better less said about the premise - I held my breath when I saw that they set it in the Congo Free State, but it turned out to be a pretty standard adventure yarn. Lovely animal animations, mind you, and the "Adelaar" was a lovely piece of lifesize prop-making.
Anyway, enough waffle, bring out the maniok. As said, I dug up a bunch of old unpainted figures - I had done some Zanzibaris (which I sold) and Germans plus DOAG Askaris for an abortive East Africa project sometime in 2010 - I'll probably re-base the Germans and Askaris, even though they are a bit unsuitable to Congo's focus.
First up, I painted a bunch of BTD Zulus which I got shifted on me in some trade (I think it was for a Colonial gunboat) in 2005 or 2006. Obviously, no proper Zulus in the Congo (Azande notwithstanding), but I'm not picky and will use them as some generic tribes until I can do some proper forest tribes. They are painted in a bit of a "pulp Africa" vein in that they sport different animal skins to differentiate groups, in this case, Hippo, Zebra and Giraffe hide with some leopardskin for the Chief. Wildly unhistorical, but if we were to do the Congo "historically" then it's going to be no fun at all.
Some Europeans! A Brit pressed into service as a Belgian villain type, Emin Pasha and some porters (all Foundry). Very nucleotic, but I've some others on the workbench, plus the to-be-rebased Germans, but I'll probably just get one or two of the Foundry Congo sets since the figure compositions suit my taste.
African Wildlife - zoologists, look away with regards to biotope authenticity! That elephant in the back (Ral Partha) I bought at Vapnartak '10 or '11 - long time in the running. Cape buffalos by North Star, while the hippos and rhinos are some toy plastic animals straight from the blister - a bit on the small side (would look better next to 20mm figures, I guess), but I can use them as young ones later on.
Aaand we're back on the steamer thing. This is a bit of a dilemma, because for the period of exploration, there probably shouldn't be any ship this size south of the Niger, but what the heck. I loved the steamer they built/used for the "Legend of Tarzan" film and had to have something like it (coincidentally, this is actually the second paddlewheeler I built this year, the other being for a Mountain Men project which is on a bit of hiatus right now). It's almost exclusively plastic (polystyrene and PVC), with the only major wood part, ironically, being a piece of wood dowel used for the upright boiler. Some ship fittings for the railings and the helm. Still need to get some crew for it to go upriver to the outer station.
The sunroof actually sits a bit too loosely (it can be lifted and rotated 360° to facilitate placing figures on the upper deck, but curved a bit too strongly). I'll probably have to add a little magnet of sorts to the front and rear girder.
Still needs a flag and a name, but I'm quite happy with how it turned out and didn't want to rush things.
Thanks for looking! I hope to be adding some odds and ends such as scenario markers and more Europeans plus some scenery. Those crooked jungle trees need some re-working, obviously.
13 April 2009, 04:17:55 PM
