Here Comes the Summer

I'm planning ahead for the summer with some ideas for projects to add to the ones I already haven't finished! I am still working my way through the What a Tanker! US and British models and also have the Sandbox Skirmish 15mm post-colonial project to be getting on with, but the lure of something new is hard to resist. At the moment, I'm about to start basing up some 28mm late war Germans for squad level skirmish games but the appeal of this has waned a bit after I realised that Chain of Command is just not feasible with what I've got in the lead pile. So, rather than start something that will hit a brick wall in a few weeks time, I think I might switch to a more realistic project for the next couple of months.

The current thinking is to assemble a couple of forces for The Men Who Would Be Kings, either in 15mm or possibly in 28mm using plastics, as they are much more affordable than lead. I have a couple of boxes of Perry Miniatures Mahdist Ansar that I can put together for a 'Fuzzy Wuzzy' army and a box of the plastic Sudan War British infantry that could be the core of a Field Force for the Suakin campaign. Alternatively, I have plenty of Peter Pig 15mm Sudan figures including Egyptians, Naval Brigade, Camel Corps and so on, not to mention lots of Hadendowah, so that's another approach I could take. It would also mean I could use my new 'bespoke' desert terrain for 15mm skirmishes. To add some further choices I have a whole Warlord Games 28mm Zulu starter army in plastic in the loft...but that's another story!

I will do some number crunching for this over the next few days to see if I can stretch what I already have into two 24 point forces for The Men Who Would Be Kings. I like the idea of 15mm, both for cost reasons and for the fact they would be quicker to base and paint, but I still have a hankering for 28mm having seen other people using the excellent Perry Miniatures plastic figures in action. The downside of plastic is that you have to glue the figures together, which can be fiddly and time consuming from my experience. You can't argue with the price tag, however, so it may well be 28mm that wins this particular battle, especially as I can start off with the Skirmish Kings option using half sized units. It does depends on the extras I'd need to buy from the metal figure range and the cost that this would add to any colonial project.