More Highlanders

After a herculean effort I have managed to complete a second Highlander unit for the British forces. Highlanders do look great, but painting tartan is something of a chore. They don’t represent a specific regiment and can stand in for any unit from the Highland Brigade depending on the scenario.

The figures are all by Jacklex* and this time I have used the 'flappy seagull' running figure which is one of my favourite poses in the range.

*A big shout out to Mark of Jacklex for his superb service and support for this project!

1st Devonshire Regiment (again)

I’ve just completed this unit of Jacklex British infantry which has prompted me to carry out a small reorganisation of the British forces. This unit will now be designated as the 1st Devonshire Regiment and my previous unit to carry this name (click here) has been promoted to the Guards.

It seemed like a good idea to use my two Raventhorpe units as Guards because the figures are slightly bigger and chunkier than Jacklex figures.

The Battle of Belmont will be along shortly.

1st Devonshire Regiment

The Devons are finished and based ready for action. There are 24 riflemen plus the usual 3 officer figures to make my standard British infantry unit establishment. This brings the total number of British infantry regiments to four which must surely be enough to beat the Boers?

That’s probably it for the British forces now but I will add another Commando to the Boers at some point just to be fair.

I’m hoping to play a solo game of Talana Hill soon but just need to complete some scenic items first.

EDIT***updated photo***

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.

A Coy Gordon Highlanders

This is the first company of my Battalion of Gordon Highlanders (although they’ll be able to stand in for any of the Highland Regiments as my tartan is rather vague to say the least) I’ll need to paint another three companies to complete the unit.

I settled on using Jacklex for this unit as there are no other suitable 20mm Highlander figures available for the Boer War. I’m actually growing more and more fond of the Jacklex range and I enjoyed painting these figures, they have a certain dash about them.

I’m not sure when I’ll get time to finish this unit as I’m concentrating on my Napoleonic’s at the moment and painting time is always thin on the ground during the summer. Hopefully it will be within the next month or two.

Coldstream Guards

The 1st battalion Coldstream Guards formed part of 1st Guards brigade under major General Colvile and also contained the 2nd Coldstream, 3rd Grenadier Guards and 1st Scots Guards. The 1st battalion Coldstreams were engaged at Belmont, Modder River and Magesfontein where they suffered heavy casualties.

Although I have called these the Coldstream Guards they will be able to stand in for any Guards units on the wargame table. These wonderful figures by Raventhorpe Miniatures are on the chunky side of 20mm and certainly dwarf my Jacklex figures but I guess Guardsmen were suppose to be tall and I really wanted to use them.

27 Raventhorpe figures painted for me by the talented Matt Golding.

Suffolk’s on parade

The 1st battalion the Suffolk regiment is complete and are now being put through their drill prior to embarking for South Africa. The Suffolk’s didn’t actually take part in any of the battles in 1899 so I may have to stretch reality a bit to let them take part in my planned campaigns.

The battalion in close column, officers to the front. Roy's right, they
do look a bit like flapping seagulls!

Deployed in line and ready to advance.

Extended order - this new fangled formation is frowned
upon by the senior NCO's.

A half battalion - some scenarios will call for smaller British units.

The sergeant major on the right is sensibly carrying a rifle to
make himself a less conspicuous target. The officers however
may not last long once the mausers start firing.

I’m really pleased to have finished one British unit and hope to start on the next one soon. In the meantime I need to return to the Napoleonic figures on my painting desk who are feeling a little bit neglected.

First British unit done – almost!

My first unit of British infantry is now varnished and based and only requires some base texturing to complete it. Overall I’m really pleased with the way these look and I think my final decision to go with 24 figure units has paid off. These are all Jacklex with the exception of one of the officers and the sergeant who are from Newline Designs.

I’ve gone through quite a few changes of direction since I started this project but these are now my final thoughts on things:

1. The British and Boers will be based to the same spec with 3 figures per infantry stand measuring 60 x 20mm. Cavalry will be mounted in 2's on a 40 x 40mm stand (some stands will be broken down to enable casualty removal).
2. Painting style – simple block colours. The figures will be matt/satin varnished – I had a go with gloss but it just doesn’t seem right for the look I’m after.
3. Bases will be textured and painted – I tried the plain green ‘old school’ style but again this didn’t seem right for this project.
4. The rules will be ‘traditional’ wargame ones but I may at some point try a Commands & Colors type secondary set.
5. I’m keeping this small, my aim will be – 4 British infantry units plus 1 cavalry unit and a couple of guns, 5 Boer commandos plus 1 mounted commando and a couple of pom-poms.

This all seems quite achievable but we will see.

First of the Guards

I couldn’t resist painting up this test figure for what will be my Guard battalion – no particular one in mind but possibly they’ll represent the Coldstream Guards who took part in the actions at Modder River and Magersfontein.

The figure is from Raventhorpe Miniatures ref BO13 British standing firing. I really like this range as they are amongst the few 20mm models available specifically designed with the Boer War in mind. There is a lot of character in this pose that somehow conjures up that Boer War feel.

I’m going to need more British troops because I’m hoping to receive some Boer reinforcements shortly and we can’t have the Boers outnumbering the British as that just wouldn’t be cricket.

Tommies - thousands of ‘em!

Maybe not thousands but a lot for me and representing a rare attempt at mass production. I normally paint in very small batches to fend off boredom and also because my Napoleonics required a lot of fiddly detail. However in an attempt to get this project properly off the ground I decided I have to make a bit more effort.

I’ve impressed myself because I have managed to de-flash, glue on rifles, undercoat and completely paint these in 5 evenings. They still need touching up, especially the white straps but the hard work is done. I’ve even ordered some laser cut bases to speed up the basing process and try and get them off the painting desk in super quick time.

Once these are finished I will be able to give my rules a proper test albeit on a very small scale of one British unit attacking one Boer Commando.

British Infantry – test base

I found some time to work on my first base of British Infantry. The figure is Jacklex B7 British infantry running with separate rifle. The painting style is deliberately basic to facility speed of production but I still might give these lads a brown wash for a bit more realism.

Following my first ever game of Commands & Colours (click here) I’ve been thinking a lot about how I might develop my own Boer War rules using similar mechanisms. I could even be tempted to use hexes (there, I’ve said it) as I think this might give me just the sort of solo game I’m looking for.

My current idea is to have units of 6 figures (2 bases) for British infantry and a single base of 3 figures for the Boers. These units could represent anything from a company to a full battalion depending on the scale of the battle being fought. This has the advantage that I could refight some of the large scale battles of the war using less than 100 figures - surely even I could achieve that?.

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.

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.