Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders

We had a trip to Stirling castle today, never been before and I highly recommend it - it's a much bigger site than I thought and you could easily lose four or so hours there. The castle is the home of the Regimental Museum of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders and this monument to the men who fell in the Boer War is right by the entrance.

No Boer wargaming going on at the moment but I hope to return to it in the autumn.

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!

The Gordon Highlanders

I’m quite shocked to see that it’s been a year and a half since I painted the first 6 figures of the Gordons but here at last is the completed unit. All the figures used are by Jacklex.

The main reason for the delay is that I painted a lot of Napoleonic figures last year but now that I have a permanent wargames table it has given me the incentive to finish the Boer War armies.

I’m very close to having the forces I need to refight the battle of Elandslaagte which was the initial aim for this project. The Boers are all finished but the British still need some more artillery and a unit of dismounted Imperial Light Horse. I hope to get these done soon but we’ll see!

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.

Gordon Highlander

After the last post I couldn’t resist painting up this Jacklex marching highlander B16. As my reference I have of course used the illustration of a Gordon Highlander Private (1900) from my Blandford “Military Uniforms of the World”, the same source I used for the illustration in the previous post.

My thoughts on this project are slipping more and more towards Old School and as such I will be using this same figure to make up a full 24 figure unit at some point. I think I will probably be opting for simple plain green bases as well in a similar fashion to my Napoleonic forces.

I have kept the painting detail deliberately basic which is also in tune with the Old School theme and will enable me to build up my forces relatively quickly - once I can find some time to pick up a paint brush again that is.

Boer War Project

I was very lucky all through my school years to having some very inspiring history teachers. In junior school my teacher got us making a model of a Norman Keep out of balsa wood and papier-mâché, so much better than just looking at pictures in a book. He also read us stories from the Greek Myths, not history as such I suppose but those stories of Jason and Odysseus really grabbed my childhood imagination.

Later at Secondary School I had another great teacher who really brought everything to life from the royal progresses of Elizabeth I right through to the implementation of the Schlieffen Plan in 1914. I loved history lessons and I’m sure they were largely responsible for my continued interest in the subject right through to this day.

A few years back I discovered in my parent’s house a dusty project folder entitled “The Second Boer War”. It was quite impressive really with 35 pages all written in my own fair hand probably at about age 14 and this rediscovery became one of the motivating factors in my starting this blog. One of the pages contained this illustration of a Gordon Highlander from 1900 shamelessly copied from my Blandford uniform book but still possibly the best drawing I have ever done (click on the image to expand).

Is it a sign?

Newline Designs SUD32 Highlanders Firing

I was idly checking the Newline Designs website yesterday only to discover that they have just released some Highlanders. The figures look nice and I wonder if being a new release they may be a bit larger than the other British infantry figures and fit in better with the Boers? There are also some figures listed as York & Lancasters which may be passable for Boer War British although they have blanket rolls.

So as you can imagine this has brought the Newline range back into the running. I’m still waiting for my Jacklex samples to arrive and then I will finally have to decide which figures I'm going to use.