The Molyneux Expedition

Don't  bother looking up the history of this infamous expedition as it's yet another fictional expedition into the wilds of "Jimland". The game was one of the very rare occasions that I had a living participant as #1 son agreed to lead a new expedition into the interior of Jimland.
The Molyneux expedition was a modest affair caused by lack of funds. Led by the expedition's namesake  George ( a Frenchie and a scout) , with Doctor Frederick Minden and Hubert St. Edward interpreting . Three askari and twelve bearers, all laden down with food completed the expedition.
As no-one was available to comment on the expeditions exploits we have to rely on the commentary gleaned from various returning members by Frederick Cartington.
In the meantime, once more:
From the journal of Frederick Cartington:
"As the members of Max's expedition lounged in the humid climate of Jim's Landing a small vessel arrived carrying three Europeans, all obviously explorers, their leader being a very confident (bordering on arrogant) Frenchman that went by the name of Monsieur George Molyneux."
"No sooner had they arrived, they outfitted an expedition ready venture into the wilds the very next day."
"Packing nought but food they headed North along the easily recognisable tracks that were very familiar to us."
"They returned some nine days later full of tales of derring-do, treasure and other escapades, with the help of many of the members of the expedition I have put their story together  and relate it here."

"Day 1 : They headed north encountering a native trader and little else
 Day 2 :  Venturing off the path north-westwards they encountered some pygmies that were engaged in chat by the Interpreter and later discover a hidden cache of medicines.
Day 3 : Rather than risk being lost in the swamp, they retreated back from whence they had journeyed and headed north again along the track and noticed a very large statue they would later cache and retrieve, as all their available bearers still had food and it would take at least four of them to carry the thing.
Day 4 : Heading SW they encountered yet another cache of food - things were just getting better and better for the party.
Day 5 : Things got quickly worse as five loads of food turned bad [probably because of the found food imho - Fred.]. They encountered a small group of Slavers in a village that seemed unconcerned and disinterested by their presence.

Expedition in the centre, pygmy melee weapons to their left and blowpipes to the right.

Day 6. Food was now becoming scarce, an Askari fell into a ravine and they were ambushed by pygmies [All was not as easy as it had first seemed].

Pygmy spearmen start closing in on the left and their blowpipes (deadly) head toward the expedition into range.

The expedition falls back and a gun-line is formed.

The Pygmies get within charge range

Two pygmies go down to rifle fire and one askari succumbs to a blowpipe dart

With another pygmy dead the remainder flee.

"Days 7,8 and 9 : Few incidents on their return leg of  the journey, they encountered no hostiles heard some jungle drums and a bearer ran away, found some gold objects and a wandering unladen pack animal.
  
"Though their journey seem implausible to the casual observer the amount of loot returned was indeed vast for such a short trip. Their hubris knew no bounds as they aimed to set out on another mission immediately, but that is another story..."

Route for George Molyneux's first Expedition

"From what I could make out from their descriptions of their journey, here is their route as best I could make it out.":




 The game took about an hour or so and buoyed by his unparallelled success George Molyneux (in the guise of my #1 son) wished to set off on another expedition immediately.
The second expedition, played on the same day as the first, was also the last (figure) game I played.













So that's it then from the wilds of Cumbria, where the interweb is intermittent, the weather is foul, TV is reduced to 2 channels that work and in the wilder parts it is rumoured that the local populace still eat their first-born.


Next week I'll relate the story of George's second expedition as I'm back in civilisation but won't have managed to completed anything, despite four more hours painting last week !.

Thanks for taking the time to visit, hopefully you found something of interest and as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

WIPs

OK, so not a very exciting title but having failed, once more, to complete anything this last week, despite my best efforts (I blame real life, various illnesses, Isis, Brexit and ageing) . I did stick to my regime of at least one hour's painting each day and even managed two or more on some days,
but horses, bloody horses are a pain and other than camels are the bane of my painting efforts.
So over the Xmas period, I had to 'put away' - (read get out of sight) all the pieces that were on my various paint trays.
I've now remedied this and got all the various models out once more in an effort to complete them over the coming weeks, so for this post, here are my current WIOs' progress.
The Egyptian infantry - all 90 of them (shown above) require their bases to be completed, some shading.

British foot

My British infantry have the least done on them, bases, straps and rifle, shading  all still to be done.

Nearly two dozen effing horse, nearly finished

 The Egyptian Cavalry - horse- just need their tack finished and then the riders finished and mounted on them !

Mahdist effing Camels, still not finished after 20 years ! (but close)

The camels are currently mounted on magnetic paper on credit-card type bases  as an experiment in moving the single figures around more quickly.

Single figure removed from base, showing magnetic paper on both base and figure.

The camels are more of a pain than even horses, despite being great figures. 

So in a week where I made progress, I was still thwarted at the final hurdle !
Next week I'll be holidaying in the wilds of Cumbria, but I have still a "Jimland" adventure in reserve to write-up which I've been keeping up my sleeve for just this type of occasion.

Thanks for taking the time to visit and though there's not much here, maybe there is something you found interesting  ?

That;s it then for this week and as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

A Tale of Two Tails (and a Box!)

OK so over the last week, once more, I haven't managed much, but I have managed to base of fifty models and undercoat them. I tend to take more time that is absolutely necessary when basing as I like to leave a lot of time between 'drying' stages.So after cleaning off what little flash there was I cut bases from plastic credit cards, store cards, phone cards etc. Next step is glueing figures to the plastic bases using either super-glue (Lok-tite gel -from Poundland). Then after a long drying period they were 'gunged up' using Poundland filler (of course) and again left to dry over night. Final stage, before spray -undercoating was to apply PVA glue (undiluted) onto the base and sprinkle them liberally with sand.. The undercoat was applied after yet another fairly lengthy drying time.

I also had a bit of repair work to do as two of my OG horses had lost their tails and being the well-organised person that I;m not I quickly lost one of the tails !
I carved a new tail from a lump of lead acting as a sprue for some Sudanese Dervish.
The result of the drilling and gluing of tails is shown on the photograph to the left, with the 'home-made' tail on the left-hand horse.

The now suitably based, gunged and undercoated now tailed horses

Home-made lances now attached with 'Perry' Mahdist Standard pole for comparison.

Half a dozen adventurers for Jimland were also prepped.

In the "Pulp Figures" 'Amazon Adventurers' pack was a figure with a pistol that I cut 2mm from the barrel of his pistol (he's the figure second from the left in the photograph above), which to scale represented anywhere between 4 and 6 inches and it's still a big pistol too as is evident in the photo !

A "Loom" box with removable and re-positional partitions.

Sometime during one of the many drying periods I decided to have a go at my 'Loom' box, which for the uninitiated is a box intended to keep elastic bands that was a children's fad and consisted a]of elastic bands,. Once used, the boxes found their way  into my hands (I now have three). This particular one I'd earmarked to keep all my "Congo" card, tokens and measuring sticks in, once the various partitions have been glued in place as the tokens tend to slip under the various partitions.
the sticker on the front was a pain in the proverbial to remove. I used  a scape, water and 'White spirit' in copious amounts over several days.

The "loom" box re-purposed with a few sample "Congo"

Even though it was a struggle getting back into the regime of at least an hour a day on productive Hobby time, I did manage it  and although it doesn't appear that I accomplished much, I was pleased with what I did achieve.

That's it then for another week, over the next week I'll hopefully  be daubing paint on a lot of the above (not the box) .

Thanks for taking the time to visit, as always I hope you've found something of interest and of course your comments are both welcomed and truly appreciated.

Filler

No this post isn't about filler,  but is rather a filler, as I haven't done a thing hobby-wise in the last two weeks, or managed to view several blogs (my own included - due to intermittent Interweb problems) this post is a bit of a filler, until and if I get back to posting ! As always, when I break routine, I find it very difficult to get back into the swing of things !
#So for this week's post here's a pack of garden wires I picked up at either "The Range" or "Poundland" before Christmas.
The pack label (shown below) is self- explanatory - 12, plastic coated 1mm thick wire pieces, each 30cm long.
I picked these up specifically to convert into lances for my lance-less Egyptians. I do have 'steel' spear/lances/pikes, but they are very thin (and expensive). For my Mahdists, I converted a lot of paper clips into lances and spears and using the same process made a dozen or so more from this wire stuff.




I use a 2lb hammer (masonry hammer) as an improvised anvil and flattened the end of the wire with another 'normal' hammer, finishing of the point with a quick file job to make a slightly rounded point. (health and safety would be proud). The next step was cutting the piece to length, I used 50mm lengths representing a spear or lance at somewhere around 10 to 12 foot long. IIRC lances were around 14 foot long, so they probably should be a little longer.

Finished 'lances'

Obvious close-up of pointy end.

I'll be trying to get back into my regime of at least an hour's hobby-related work a day over the next week, even if all that happens is that I glue some of my recently purchased to my already cut bases and add gunge, sand etc.

So that;s it then for another week, thanks for taking the time to visit and any comments will of course be both surprising and welcomed.