More British Commanders

I have expanded the British officer corps to give me a Highland Brigadier and a spare mounted officer to use as an ADC or courier. This gives each of my three infantry brigades their own dedicated commander figure.

I have given the Highland Brigadier trews to differentiate him from the other officers. I can't imagine these would actually have been worn on campaign but I think they look nice. The figures are Jacklex.

The Highland Brigadier was the last item I needed to complete the OOB’s for Magersfontein so hopefully I’ll be playing that one in the not-too-distant future.

Long Tom

Nobody makes a 20mm Boer Long Tom gun in metal, so I bought the plastic one from Strelets. I’m glad I did because it is a really superb little model, and the crew figures are useful too. With the Long Tom done I decided to further expand the artillery park for both sides in preparation for the coming campaigning season.

155mm Cresout Long Tom Gun by Strelets, the crew are a mixture of Strelets and Jacklex. The appearance of the Long Tom on the battlefield was something of a surprise to the British as it could out-range anything they possessed (including the 4.7 inch naval guns) and the smokeless powder it used made it very difficult to spot.

75mm Cresout Gun. This model was an Old Glory one given to me by Roy and is actually 25mm scale but by switching the wheels with some by Newline I think it looks just right for 20mm. The crew again are a mixture of Strelets and Jacklex.

With all this Boer heavy ordinance about I thought I should beef up the British line with another maxim gun from Jacklex. Each British infantry battalion had a couple of maxim guns attached however they were difficult to employ in an attack and consequently had little impact in the fighting - but they are nice models!

And of course another field gun seemed like a good idea. The gun and crew are Jacklex. I must say that the quality of the Jacklex castings has improved greatly under the new ownership.

With the larger forces now available to the British I thought I should introduced a couple of Brigadiers to help with command and control. These are from Jacklex.

And finally, another mounted Boer commander (Jacklex) and Commandant on foot (Raventhorpe). The Commandant on foot will eventually get his own Commando.

This gives me a lot of choices to depict artillery in my games and the Long Tom opens up the possibility of gaming the Battle of Ladysmith.

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.

Army commanders

I’ve just completed a couple of army command groups, one for the British and one for the Boers. These are mounted on 6cm MDF discs and I think they look quite smart.

I had a lot of fun selecting the figures and putting these mini ‘dioramas’ together. The British group is composed of a Jacklex mounted officer and figure with field-glasses, the horses and horse holder are by Newline Designs. The Boer commander is by Newline (from the pom-pom crew) and is flanked by two of the remaining Scruby figures Ross sent me. These command bases have no function in my rules, but you can’t have armies without commanders.