Sudan - more Civvies



I've been successful at keeping up my regime of getting at least an hour's hobby time each day over the last week, but have really little to show for all my efforts. With very few figures to paint up for the Sudan, or Jimland, for that matter I've been digging out anything I can find to paint.

On the paint-queue I have another dozen figures, four for the Sudan and the remainder destined for Jimland,
The figures hsown above and on the left, I bought sometime around twenty years ago, the herder is a Redoubt figure (iirc) whilst the five ladies are all from Irregular Minis.

Pretty boring huh ?

Obligatory blurry photo

'Whip boy' in stealth mode

Whilst still painting, the majority of my time this week has been used assembling and preparing market stalls, three are the excellent Irongate stalls, four I'm making for the Fronline (iirc) tables and I'm also scratch-building a further two. I have a dozen or so animals ready to prime and paint. The only flaw in all my plans is that I'm wearing out all my usable brushes and will have to order more soon, very soon..

Not much of a post this week I know, but truthfully the Covid19 thing has had little effect on my situation and I'm still plodding on at my usual snail's pace. The Sudan output has come to a mere trickle as I doubt I have more than a dozen figures left to finish and all the others have now been safely stored away.

As usual I spend little time on my computer over the weekend and I'll be playing catch-up on all the blogs I normally comment on, over the next few days.

That's it then for another week, thanks for taking the time to visit and of course your comments are always welcomed and appreciated.

Sudan British

Just over a week ago I had finished the last of my British Infantry for the Sudan
Unfortunately du to some problem with Blogger I was unable to post last week, hopefully this post will work and you'll be able to see photographs this time around.

The Cleveland Light Infantry

I've finished three new units to join my previous one from last year !
I'll be using The Sword and the Flame ruleset for this game, using twenty figure units with an Officer and NCO to each unit of a regular army.

Rear view of the above

The Hexhamshire Fusiliers

The units are all based on real-life units, but I'll be using them with fictitious designations.
My "Hexhamshire Fusiliers", shown left, for example are based on the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers .

Red "V" barely visible

They may have served in the Sudan for a single campaign and battle (Omdurman), but they do have a more distinctive uniform feature, namely the red "V" just shown above their 'puggarees' (the white piece of cloth around their helmets) The RNF saw rather more action, with the same uniform in the Boer  War.
In TSaTF two unit make a 'company' and two such companies make a 'battalion' , with an additional two officers and a CO respectively.

A SaTF 'company' (obligatory blurry photograph)

 The top photograph shows the addtional CO on foot, but he'll almost certainly be replaced with one of my mounted officers.

In Other News:

Dancer  (obviously)...

After last week's debacle with Blogger, my depression and anxiety set in and it wasn't until the week-end I picked up my brushed once more, managing to finish a single figure from a group of six, all of which had been started last year.
It also meant that I was even less inclined to do anything blog-related , but still managed to reply to some very helpful and re-assuring comments on my own blog.
Unlike all the British figures above, that are Old Glory, this is an Irregular Miniature

...and for those that like the rear view 

 This week's blog has been (hopefully) brought to you by "Explorer" rather than "Firefox" and that;s it then for another week from a slightly  happier Blogger.

As always your comments are both welcomed and truly appreciated and I will get around to looking at all the blogs I've missed.


Damn I miss the spellchecking function.

Blogger Problems

I have no success in uploading photos to my blog and after an hour os of trying, I've given up !
I'm not that techy-knowledgeable  and unless there is a simple 'fix' them I'm stuck !
I was going to post about my latest Jimland adventure, played solo (it was great) and my "In other News" would relate that I've finally finished my Briish for the Sudan.
I'm not the only one that has had problems with this issue (it may be that I've reached the maxmimum photo-spac allowed, or maybe something else, someone probably knows, but not I.

So, bottom line, no post this week of any substance.

Sudan Odds and Sods

Over the last week I've been painting away furiously (from my pov) averaging two, one and a half hour sessions a day, on my 65 British Infantry for the Sudan. By Friday evening I realised that I would never get them done in time for this post, having discovered they still needed a multitude of minor details to paint (such as the discovery that some, but not all, had bayonet sheaths).

Rear view (obviously) for those who like this sort of thing (all Redoubt)

To enable me to show some progress I dug out some odds and sods that I 'd started and never finished, all in various stages of completion and here they are.
What they are is fairly obvious, save possibly for the chap on the right imho - Infantryman or Sailor - who knows ?

Obligatory blurry pic

Ivor Biggun

Omar and his beautiful girlfriend (or so he's been told)

 I've also re-visited other 'nearly finished' models, destined for Jimland thinking I could finish these off too (I couldn't), so heres some more wips:

Pack animals (needed for my imminent Jimland expedition)

Some lovely asses (from Warlord maybe ?)

 Finally a shot of my "Oh so close to being finished Brits":

Still no faces, straps on their mess tins, bayonet sheaths...

I'm a bit disappointed that despite my best efforts (and a worrying slight cold) I still pleased with my efforts and I'm now off to set up my next adventure into the wild of Jimland (where anything can happen - and often does).

That's it then from me for this week thanks for taking the time to vist and of course your comments are welcomed and appreciated.




Please stay safe, keep calm and carry on painting.

(Can you tell I;m still trying to get used to this new camera ?)

(I still miss the spellchecker too)

Onwards ! (another Jimland Expedition)

Earlier this month saw the last expedition of my Friend "K's" last expedition into Jimland, probabl for some time. (you know why).
Sorry about the inevitable, obligatory blurry , photograph on the right showing his expedition in all its glory !
Undetered by his poor showing in his last two expeditions, he was keen on testing himself once more in Jimland.
The Expedition consisted of just the two surviving Explorers from the previous expedition, but included a good number of soldiers and Askari to boost firepower and ten bearers (all carrying food of course).

Once more then :

From the Journal of Fredercik Cartington at Jim's landing,

 "The Royal British Museum of Archaeology Expedition's"
leader Angus McDoughty led yet another expedition into Jimland despite being low on numbers and the recent loss of both his wife and sister in law.
"I was of a mind that I wouldn;t be seeing him or his scout Raymond Grylls ever again"
"Here though, is their exploits as related to me by one of the survivours"

 "By day three we were reduced to six bearers, thanks to them being scared off by native drums in the night, but still plenty of food was available. It did seem that no matter the problems the terrain threw at us, whether mountains or swamp  Ray, our scout never failed to find a way through. perhaps our luck was chnaging for the good.
"Near the end of the first week though, once more a solitary female emerged from where she had been hiding in the mountaiss. 
"I just knew that this spelled doom for the expedition, give Angus' recent record with women.
Our expedition's size was further increased as a soldier also joined us and he had a gun !
"Our luck seemed to have changed as we entered yet more mountains and a way out coudn't be found. Our food, started to cause conern, but due to the discovery of edible rations being found, our hoped were lifted, soon afterwards of course, they were dashed once more by the food turning out to be unedible.
"All our endeavours to survive came to a climax as we were ambushed in a swamp midway through the second week.

Natives with guns to the rear draw first blood

Natives in front close in using cover

The column's bearers break for safety, whilst the expedition returns fire.

A huge snake appears...

...and attacks one of our Askari

The expedition claims its first kill...

...and the Natives' fronttal attack goes in, losing a man.

With the loss of another man, the Native's morale is broken and they flee.

A combination of rifle fire and an Askari rifle-butt, the snake is beaten.

 "With the ambushing Natives seen off, we set off once more Jim's Landing and safety, arrving there with grumbling stomachs and no rations."
"Strangely Angus was in good spirits and looking forward to his next expedition."

"I found out later that the women was Freya Johnsdotter, a huntress who willingly joined Angus' expedition"
F. Cartington. 

Route of the RBMAe's thrid expedtion.

It was a strange game, lasted a mere hour or so as the expedition hit bad terrain and managed to get out, the Natives and Tribals encountered were either Neutral or friendly, food was either abundant or in short supply, but the whole expedition  (save for a single soldier) survived !
"K" had followed my advice and headed North, avoiding crossing any river and following a river that was already known of.  His point score was well over $300, which considering his relatively short expedition was exceptional.
Here's the map of his expedtion's journey:
 

In other News:
 After this game I was wondering whether or not it was worth the effor of fighting in a swamp (from the natives' point of view and I'm now considering abandoning the idea as it makes little to no sense from the natives' pov, plus the fights are not that enjoyable as figures 'get stuck' half the time and movement is halfspeed when they can move !

Strangely this self-isolation thing hasn't had much effect on me, the major changes being I sadly no longer collect my granddaughter from school each day and neither do I go grocery shopping - which I did two or three times a week. It does mean though I have added to my painting sessions, now having two sessions a day each of about an hour or so. It's just as well, as painting the British for the Sudan is becoming tiresome and tedious, but I'm getting there!

The chap on the left is not significanlty taller than the others...

The Great photo Mystery:
I had to dig out the explorers I'd recently finished, as I couldn't remeber one figure being particularly larger than the others. Of course he wasn't !  It's an illusion caused by the camerman getting used to the new camera . The photo has been foreshortened as can be seen by the sizes of their bases seemingly getting smaller.
 (They're all 20mm square)

...but it appears that he is when taken from an angle

 So the mystery is solved, the camera is probably too good at close range !

That's it then for this week, I'm going to try and finish the Brits and also have an expedition of my own (Von Sackville's) into Jimland over the next week, which should give me something to write about in the weeks to come. 

Thanks for taking the time to visit and as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated, but above all stay safe!

(I really still miss having a spellchecker on Blogger)

More Explorers

These six explorers were finished well before last week's post, but as I had it in mind to publish an adventure, here they are now !
Four of the figures are from "Copplestone" (Amazon Adventurers - or something similar) and the remaining two are from "Ironclad".

Rear view for those that like this sort of thing (we know who you are)

The chap on the left in the photograph above looks like he would be more at home in a western setting rather than a jungle one and is the most didsppointing of all of them, (not just because of my rubbish painting either) - maybe he's a bit on the big side too.

These two are the Ironclad castings iirc

Two "speccies" - I love these two !

A left-handed gunfighter  ?

Poundland Spray (£1 - obviously)

I took advantage of the sunshine and lack of wind this last week to experiment with my newly bought spray-tin of varnish. After an initial successful trial with some surplus Brits, now not destined for the Sudan, the six explorers were also used as guinea pigs.
You can judge the results for yourself -  the sprayed figures are not completely matt finished, but they have a rather satin (or vinyl if you prefer) finish - which suits me fine too.

In cas you don't recognise this product, the spraycame from "Poundland", as I'd thought it was worth trying - for £1 !!!!
If I'm ever allowed out again I'll be purchasng more .

With more daylight hours and no afternoon tasks to disprupt my day my painting output has incresed to at least two one-hour sessions each day.

If I keep painting at this rate, I could have all my unpainted minis finished by 2030  (just about), but I'll settle for finishing off my British Infantry for the Sudan


The new restrictions on my movements won't have a great effect on my hobby but it was sad to have to tell my mate "K" that our Saturday Jimland session was cancelled until futrther notice !
Yep, I'm in the bracket of the vulnerable, hitting about three or four of the criteria and will therefore be in self-isolation for a minimum of twelve weeks - so nothing much changed in my lifestyle tbh.

It seems we'll all have a bit of extra time on our hands, I'll be doing a few solo adventures in Jimland, painting what few Sudan figures I have left and returning to modelling "Gordon's Palace", all of which I'd have been doing anyway!

Take care everyone, keep washing your hands, keep your distance and stay safe.

That's it then for this week, next week I'll be posting "K's" third adventure into Jimland, to give me a little more time in which to finish off my Brits (just the 65 of them).

Of course, as always, your commetns are welcomed and appreciated - more than ever in this time of need for social interaction.

JImland - The Rescue

As an experiment I decided to try out a slightly different experiment in Jimland, givng the chance of for an expedition tohave a specific task, I have several of these in mind as "quests or jobs", imagining them to be on a notice board for adventurers to take up (or not) with a specific reward in mind - a bit like side-quests in a lot of computer rpgs.
The objective of this game was therefore to explore a specific area of seven hexes, two days' march from Jim's landing, to see if there were any survivours of the second Molyneux Expedition.
Once in the designated area, the rescuers had two chances of finding any survivours each time they explored a designated hex. If there was a village there then that would be a success (a 1 in 6 chance) and if there was a hostile encounter with Slavers then this would automatically be a success, as it was slavers that did for the Molyneux Expedition.  This however didn't mean automatically that there were any survivours as I assumed that a slaver would have tried to revive the three fallen adventurers (with a chance of 11/20), but ONLY after they had defeated any hostiles.

So once more, :
From the Journal of Frederick Cartington

"Even as the news of the Molneux Expedition's disater was filtering through camp, the Royal British Museum's expedition had returned from their own exploits. Immediately upon hearing the news and despite my own and others' protestations (and his own grief at the loss of his wife's life) with a day or two, Angus McDoughty had set out on a "rescue" mission taking along his erstwhile sister in law (again, against the advice of many). [The expedition is shown above - Ed.].
On their return a mere week later I gleaned what had happened, once more from one of the soldiers present."

"

"The very first day we were set upon by hostiles"

"We entered into a fire-fight, whilst trying to get the bearers away"

"Our shooting quickly took its toll on the natives..."

"...we did take a casualty and consternation arose from the assasilants in the rear"

"We readied ourselves for their assault on our rear"

"Our hunter was cut down in vicious hand to hand fighting..."

"...but we drove them off without further loss,"

 "Over the next three days Anne (Johnstone)  managed to save the lives of two of our bearers; one from  a spider bite and another after swalllowing large amounts of dirt from his encounter with quicksand. - not bad for a "Midwife"."
 "On day five we encountered Slavers ...

"With four riflemen behind and four spearmen in front...

"...we set up for a frontal attack."

"...that didn't come... for now."

"so we made a dash for cover..."

"with the enemy hot our our heels..."

"The natives were much surprised after distrubing an elephant in the trees..."

"The elephant would leave the area soon after goring one of the slavers ...

"Our rifle fire was beginning to take a toll on the Slavers too...

"Poor Anne was shot dead, even as we got into cover."

"With their casualties mounting and our position seemingly unassailable,n the Slavers left the area. We quickly looked for their camp and found two Europeas still barely alive,  one a Doctor Minden, the other an Interpreter named Hubert. (as an aside - I'd met both of these on  a oevious occassion.)
"The two day return journey home saw three of our bearers lose their lives and full packs of foood, whilst crossing a rapid moving stream, but the very next day we arrived back at Jim's Landing ".
There had been no sign of George Molyneux with the Slavers, but he had been thought by Doctor Minden to have been mortally wounded"

The route and area to be explored shown in red

With the small force available and the large area to be searched I didn't think that there was much chance of success, but it turned out to be a great game. "K",  my friend lead the rescue attempt with his usual bravado and although successful still managed to lose a woman from the party!
(He must have enjoyed the game as he's asked for a cop of the rules, the mastermap and we've since had another game !)
As reward, in keeping with the usal 'Jimland' reward system (a fixed amount and a random amount) I had to think on the fly for a suitable reward. I settled on the 'value' of the Explorers rescued (their points value) plus 1D20  each. So although few points had been scored for explorartion more than a hundred was scored for the two explorers - a success imho.

In other news:
My Egyptians have all been packed away in bubble wrap and stored (still needing varnishing) and despite another hospital visit (routine and boring) I'm painting another six explorers for Jimland !
In addition, as mentioned above,  I've managed yet another adventure into the wilds of Jimland with "K" - a very enjoyable game.

I've no more (known) Hospital/Clinic appointments until June/July - happy days ! (I'll just self-isolate/hibernate until then).

That's it then for this week, thanks for taking the time to visit , hopefully there was something here of interest and as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.