Final Boer Commando

This will probably be the last Boer unit that I paint for this project as I can’t see that I’ll ever be able to use more than four Commandos on my 6’ x 4’ table given the way my rules play.

The figures are mostly from the excellent range by Raventhorpe Miniatures with a couple from Newline Designs thrown in to make up the numbers. The Raventhorpe Boers are lovely little sculpts full of character and movement and a joy to paint.

The unit will nominally be known as the Raventhorpe Commando in my OOB.

British Reinforcements

As is common to all commanders who have just lost a battle I have called for reinforcements to my British army. I felt during the test game that if only I had one more infantry unit, I would have swept the Boers from the field!

I have completed the first batch of figures for the next unit; these are more from the superb Raventhorpe Miniatures range. The British ‘standing at ready’ are BO19 and the officer is BO21. At the same time, I couldn’t resist painting the very nice Boer Commandant figure BO08.

When finished the unit will be nominally designated as the 1st Devonshire Regiment who fought at Elandslaagte.

Another Commando

Commando made up of the last of  the Scruby's that Ross sent me together
with Jacklex, Newline and Raventhorpe figures. I think they blend together
remarkably well.

I’ve just finished another Commando bringing the total in my Boer army up to three plus a mounted one. This means I have enough Boers now to have a stab at playing a game based on the Battle of Elandslaagte. This is something I’ve wanted to do since I was 14 when I was given a copy of “History of the British Army” (edited by Peter Young and J P Lawford) which contains a chapter on the battle that sparked my interest in the Boer War.

I’m still short of British though as I need a Highland regiment (which I’ve just started to paint), two British field guns, some lancers and a unit of dismounted Imperial Light Horse. This is likely to take me some time to paint up but it’s good to have a goal.

I’ll also need some scenic items including Elandslaagte Station, some farm buildings and a few barbed wire fences. Oh, and I need to finish writing the rules!

Scruby Commando

Commandant Ross leads out the newly refurbished Scruby Commando. These are more of the figures I received from Ross last year that have now been touched up, re-varnished and rebased to my own system.

These figures by Jack Scruby are slender and look a bit small compared to the Boer figures by Jacklex and Newline Designs but they have a charm of their own. I particularly like the figure representing Commandant Ross with his rifle cradled in his arm.

Each of my Commando’s will be comprised of 12 men plus a Commandant based in such a way as to allow casualty removal. The initial phase of this project will require me to have three such Commando’s and I’m well on the way to this now.

Boer Reinforcements

I have just received some rather splendid Boer reinforcements that in one fell swoop have trebled the size of my commandos. The figures are a mixture of Scruby and Jacklex ones that were previously in the collection of Ross and appeared on his blog here.

A complete 12 figure mounted commando. This will save me
a lot time as I'm always slow to paint cavalry. My idea is to
have just one mounted Boer unit which can be used to
represent any of the foot commandos when required. These
are nearly all Scruby figures (JC54 & 55) with a couple
of Jackex (I think all the horses are Scruby).

This is a full commando on foot made up entirely of Scruby
figures (J50, J51, J52). They are charming slender little figures
full of character. That's Commandant Ross out front
leading them.

I believe this is Jacklex C6 Colonial Field Gun although it is
bigger than some I bought recently. The Boer gunners are
mostly Scruby J53 but I'm not sure where the gunner with
field glasses came from - great figure though.

This is Jacklex C5 Colonial horse drawn maxim gun and crew.
The maxim is a particularly nice model and just what the
Suffolks will need as back up against all those Boers.

I was really excited to receive this because it is the 'must have'
item for any Boer War British force. This is Jacklex N15 Naval
Gun. I will have to get some naval gunners to crew this.

Last but not least Ross included these Boers painted I believe
for action along the Canadian border but can be trasferred to
South African duty with a dab or two of paint.

Thanks to Ross for being noble enough to part with these lovely figures. I hope they will do him proud in my planned Boer War battles.

1st Commando

Having said that I wouldn’t be mixing different manufacturers figures within the same unit I’ve gone ahead and done exactly that in my 1st Commando.

This unit is comprised of  5 x Newline Designs, 6 x Jacklex and one odd Raventhorpe Miniatures thrown in for good measure. To be honest I don’t think there’s actually that much difference between the figures once they’re based up. It would probably be much more noticeable if I did the same thing with the British.

Next I’ll be turning my attention to my first British battalion which will be a Jacklex one.

Rebasing already

Here I go rebasing again! This is a group of 3 Jacklex Boers lurking near a Kopje no doubt waiting to give fire on some poor Tommy Atkins.

On discussion (with Roy) I’ve decided on a more traditional approach to basing my Boer War armies. A standard infantry base will be 60mm x 20mm and will hold 3 Boers or 4 British. Each unit will have one base split to allow for casualty removal and officers and commandants will be individually mounted on 20mm circular bases.

A Boer Commando will be 12 figures plus 1 commandant and British units will be 24 figures with 3 officers. I’m going a bit heavy on officers because my rules will have a strong rallying element for the British with officers trying to prevent their unit from getting pinned by Boer fire. I’ve got a half fleshed out set of rules now but more on that in another post.

Figure comparisons

Thanks to some super sleuthing by Roy in tracking down the UK distributor for Raventhorpe Miniatures, I took delivery of some samples this week from their Boer War range. The figures are really excellent (as was the service) and this now opens up a whole load of new options for units. Most importantly it gives me access to some decent British infantry that match in perfectly with my favoured Newline Designs Boers.

Jacklex BW5, Newline BOE01, Raventhorpe BO02

I thought I would post some comparisons of figures from Jacklex, Newline and Raventhorpe in case anybody else is thinking of dabbling in this period in 20mm as this would have been helpful to me at the start of this project - click on the pictures to take a good look.

Jacklex B5, Newline SUD04, Raventhorpe BO13 (uncovered helmet)

The Raventhorpe British infantry come with separate heads (there are covered and uncovered helmets available) which gives the potential for a great deal of variation and they have some lovely poses. They also make a very nice model of a Boer pom-pom gun and British Maxim but more on those in a future post.

Basing bore

I do have a bit of a thing about basing and I’ve been scratching my head trying to work out the best way to base figures for this project. I’m currently thinking that I will go with the system shown here with two figures on a 40mm x 30mm base. Groups of bases will then represent a commando for the Boers and companies/battalions for the British. The Boers will be allowed to space out into extended order but the British will have to stay in base to base contact.

I did think about taking a more old school approach by putting the British in close order (perhaps on bases similar to my Hinton Hunt Napoleonic’s) and having the Boers on individual round bases but I quite like what I’ve come up with – for now anyway. The bases will also have some scenic additions with rocks etc. and the size chosen will enable me to place a few lying down firing figures (Jacklex do a nice one).

The Boers shown here are Jacklex and they actually look quite good now based up. I’m not sure if I will lose the gloss finish or not, probably but I’ll see. As you know I’ve been in two minds about which figures to use for this project but it occurred to me that there’s no reason why I can’t use both Newline and Jacklex as long as I select figures of compatible size and don’t mix them within units. That way I get the best of both worlds.

Great Boers

I finally received my packet of Jacklex samples this week and set about painting a few up. The first thing I noticed was that, as Matt had warned me, they had quite a lot of flash metal and it took about 45 minutes just to de-flash them and file the bases. However that said they are surprisingly charming little figures although sadly they suffer from the same problem as the Newline range – they’re not to a constant scale. The marching highlander for instance is a good few millimetres taller than his advancing friend.

Jacklex BW4 Boer running with separate rifle - simple but charming

This is a shame as I could have been tempted and I particularly like the running figures with separate rifles. It’s a bit fiddly gluing the rifles to the hands of the figures but it’s well worth the effort, the regular British infantryman is the best of these. So far I have only painted one Boer but I will post the rest here in due course.

Newline Designs BOE02 - Boer cavalry

I’m glad I got these samples but in the end in it just reinforced my original decision to use the Newline Designs colonial range for this project. This decision was also helped along by the recent release of Highlanders by Newline (see my last post). The one remaining problem is artillery as I can’t find anybody who makes 20mm Boer artillery and of course I must have a pom-pom! Jacklex do a decent range of British artillery including a very grand looking 4.7” naval gun and a deadly maxim gun. I may possibly be able to convert or scratch-build some Boer guns, I’ll have to see.

Test Figures

Having decided that I wanted to do this project in 20mm I was pretty much limited to a choice of three manufacturers. Firstly the range in plastic by Srelets (the figures look ok but plastic isn’t really my thing), secondly the comprehensive range by Jacklex (perhaps the most logical choice but I wasn’t sure if I wanted another ‘old school’ project), and thirdly the colonial range by Newline Designs (limited range but the Boers in particular are very nice). In the end it was the picture of the Boers on their website that swung it for me and I plumped for Newline.

Newline Designs Boer from pack BOE01 - very nice figures

I put in a mixed order for the Boers and various packs of the British infantry from the Sudan War range as I felt these would be near enough to pass as Boer War British. It was slightly annoying that the website doesn’t show any pictures of the British infantry which is a bit inexcusable in this day and age. However, order done I settled down to wait for the troops to arrive which they did a few days later.

Sudan War British from pack SUD02 'Standing at Ready'

As this is a side project to my main Napoleonic one I decided that I didn’t want to spend hours painting these figures or I’d never get anywhere. Fortunately the uniforms are all quite drab and the figures lend themselves well to block painting followed by a wash of GW Ogryn Flesh. I still found myself trying to include too much detail and had to go back several times to simplify the paint job but I’m quite happy with the result.

Next I need to decide on the organisation and OOB of my armies and then put in a proper order to swell the ranks.