Khartoum Fort

My Khartoum Fort with my Egyptian counter soldiers manning the walls. Could easily use for miniatures too but the counters are easier for now, especially set up and clean up. The fort is obviously not on the hex map I posted awhile back since I just finished it. Little fort Omdurman is in the background and a couple of the steamers are on the left toward the back. The Egyptian reserves are in the center of the fort. I have the leader counters finished but forgot to put them in the picture.

More Khartoum

Here are some more Khartoum game pieces and a revised map. I print out the boats at 1" x 2". The British and Egyptians are potential reinforcements, 2 groups, some on some steamers and the camel troops and mg by land. The Dervish are some camel troops I added. I expanded the map some to include Fort Omdurman and give a little more strategy and options for the game. The Dervish army will now likely try to capture Fort Omdurman first so it can bring some artillery (likely the Krupps) to bear to keep back the steamers and bring up their ships to land in the rear of Khartoum!

Here are some leader counters for the Battle of Khartoum game. Next up, the steamers and possible British reinforcements. Then to finish my Peking map and counters, then back to 10mm or whatever strikes my fancy. Being fickle permeates this hobby.

The Hereros. Print 3 of the troop sheets out. The Herero troops are more diversified having less rifle armed troops and many not up to speed with captured rifles.

Here are the Germans. The leader counters look big compared to the troop counters because blogger sized the entire box the same. I print these out 2.5 x 1.25 inches for the leader counters and 3.75 x 2.50 inches for the troop counters and glue them to wooden pieces painted the same color. You can use a vector graphic program and size them any way you want. There is a stray Herero Livestock piece on the two German counters to use up the dead space and avoid a fourth Herero sheet. I will post the Hereros next. The game uses 3 of the Herero troop sheets.

THE HERERO WAR (Battle of Waterberg) 1904

I got distracted for awhile to finish up my battle of Waterberg game for the Herero War of 1904 in Southwest Africa. Southwest Africa was a colony of Germany at the time. The Herero tribe revolted and made a last stand at Waterberg. Many escaped into the Kalahari desert despite the German attempt at envelopment but many died from thirst and starvation in the desert. The greenish hex borders are the thorn bush defenses the Hereros used which the Germans compared to barbed wire. I will post the counters and eventually some rules. However, the counter number is #die for close combat/number of die for ranged combat with range in hexes in parentheticals/movement points.

Above are some examples of the front of the counters. The numbering system is still up in the air. I originally envisioned a modified "Ancients" game with the back side being the disrupted side. I am starting to lean toward a more stream lined system that would not have a disrupted side with combat results being a simple kill, retreat or no effect; range differences for muskets, rifles and different types of artillery; but have not really given it a tremendous amount of thought.

Since I am on a colonial kick, I thought I would add one of the many maps I have made for both miniatures and mounted paper counters I made to look like miniatures (to some degree). I blow up the maps so the hexes are two inches for the mounted paper counters and 3 inches for 10mm miniatures. I have many maps for all periods. The 19th Century/Colonial include Waterberg, Peking, Mukden, Plevna and Sedan to name a few with others in various stages of preparation. The units per side range from 15 to 35 depending on the battle. For the mounted counter games, I wanted a map that could fit on a 30" wide table and fit counters that were rectangular that look more like units. I will try to post some of the counter art later.

Switched to some Colonial Sudan figures for some variety and while I waited for some more WWI Austrians and Russians from Dave at Pendraken. I am working on a Khartoum game with what I normally use, a hex battlefield with 3 inch hexes. The steamer was designed to fit that size. The Dervish figures painted up nicely though the pictures do not reflect it. I used a earth colored undercoat and two drybrush coats of white (for the Ansar) and bleach bone (for the Beja/Fuzzies). I used the NW Afghans for cavalry with a few mixed in Arabs from the Dark Age range (all Pendraken). I am working on some Egyptian cavalry lancers which will need to be a conversion since Pendraken does not make them. Fortunately, I only need one unit for my Khartoum game. Currently, working on the Khartoum fort and some Dervish vessels for ferrying troops to land in the rear of Khartoum. Lots of fun and great 10mm figures from Dave make this any easy range to work with in this scale. I wish the Dervishes had a few more poses and some Fuzzy rifles but maybe I can get more creative with some conversions. The standard bearer was an easy conversion to a Fuzzy, just a head swap.

A couple of more pics of my Austrians. A completed machine gun unit and a GHQ unit. The GHQ unit combines the pendraken Austrian command with some Pendraken Wurtemberg command converted to Austrians. I have run out of Austrians to paint so I will probably return to the Russians.

Some Variant and Modified Austrian Figures

Some pictures of Wurtemburgers painted to be WWI Early Austrians. I like the way the mounted and foot officers turned out. The other picture did not turn out as well as I would have liked but it shows the shrunken heads of the Austrian machine gunner. I swapped his head out with a regular sized head from the infantry troops and the modified machine gun is on the stand. Obviously, I have not finished the base.

Reply On Using Pendraken EW British For Additional Russians

I will hopefully try them soon but I am on an Austrian kick at the moment and I ran out of Russians except for a few Cossacks. Painted up the Wurtemburgers to see how they would look as Austrians. The mounted generals are great for Austrian mounted officers. Need to clip off the feathers on the general with binoculars. The infantry are kind of a mixed bag. I like the way the trumpeter turned out and will use him on an Austrian command stand though I clipped the kind of funky too large bar on the top of the trumpet. I have not painted the drummer yet but the drum looks awfully small and way out of scale. The running troops aren't really any better than the standard Austrian running pose and the rifle is too long and needs to be clipped. I like the infantry officers with drawn sword and will definitely use them. The infantry firing pose is good but not sure it fits in real well with the two standard poses which predominate my infantry stands. Need to add a little glue or green stuff to the end of his trousers so it conforms with the long trousers of the Austrian infantry. Now for the shocker. I pulled out the Austrian machine guns units. WHAT is up with the heads? Did the Russians have a voodoo doctor because they all suffer from a bad, bad case of shrunken heads. Clipped off those heads and did a head swap with the normal infantry. Since they will get some handling, I drilled a small hole for the green stuff to get it better anchored. Then some supper glue and add the head. After drying a watered down dose of tacky glue on the seams and waiting for painting. Looks like it was a successful operation. I will try to post some of these this weekend unless the wife has other plans for me.

Ideas to expand the variety of poses

I ordered some Wurtemburgers and early WWI British for some possible variety for my Austrians and Russians. The Wurtemburgers will hopefully expand my Austrians and they already have back packs. I may need to add a little tacky glue around the shins so the pants look right. The early WWI British will hopelfully expand my Russians. I accidently ordered them with packs which I will need to clip away. Then add a thin band of green stuff for the blanket roll. We see how they work out.

Here are some pictures of painted up and mounted Austrians. The online blue color is a lot more true blue than they really appear. The grey blue does not seem to show up well. I added back packs to the infantry except the officer and artillerymen. The officer on the infantry base is a head swap and so is artilleryman looking at a map. Anyway, this gives some idea of the Pendraken Austrians at least how I choose to paint them. The coloring is dark blue base, then dry brush GW shadow grey they a final dry brush of slightly lighter shadow grey.

Here is a picture from a different angle.

Some test 10mm WW1 Austrians. I added backpacks to the two infantry figures and did a head swap for the Austrian officer. Not the best picture, but gives some idea of what I am doing.

Uploaded some pictures of my 10mm Russians.

I undercoated olive green and applied a heavy dry brushh of vallejo stone grey. Figures are all Pendraken. I use a thin balsa strip to aid picking up the units and to more easily identify the nationality.

First Blog Entry

Well this is all new to me. I guess I will figure it out in time and learn to post some pictures. Deadbee, BTW, comes from one of my favorite movies, "To Have and Have Not," with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall where one of the characters asks repeatedly in the movie, "Have you ever been stung by a dead bee? You know they can sting you too!" I has some personal issues in my life which caused me to drop miniature painting which I have recently picked back up.