This is the second of nine units for the Death in the Dark Continent Nyamwezi army, a unit of six bases of musket armed skirmishers. The army list for the Generic Villagers allows you to swap out up to two units of spearmen for musketeers, which I opted to do for additional firepower. I will now base up one more unit before moving on to batch painting the figures, as the initial stage of the project, with a third of the whole force sorted in one go.
Here's the first unit for the Nyamwezi generic villager army, a six base skirmisher unit armed with bows. It's a massive twenty four points worth of fire power, with a range of only three inches, but that's what you get for having a generic, low grade army. The next unit I'll be basing is a six base unit of untrained musketeers, so probably not much of an improvement!
I've been thinking about picking up my Death in the Dark Continent project, which is another project recycling job using the figures I originally prepared and based for In the Heart of Africa many years ago. The initial steps of this project were taken last year, when I reorganised my box of figures and did some test basing for a Nyamwezi army, based on the generic villages list from the rule book. As my original force was also based on a generic villagers army list, this makes a lot of sense and would make use of the figures I'd based on 2p coins, rebased onto 60mm x 30mm bases instead. I've had another look at the list I devised for Death in the Dark Continent and have made a couple of tweaks to bring it up to around 250 points, which is near enough for half the scenario set ups in the rules:
Nyamwezi (Generic Villagers)
3 units of spearman skirmishers (6 bases per unit) @ 4 points / 24 x 3 = 72
2 units of archer skirmishers (6 bases per unit) @ 4 points / 24 x 2 = 48
2 units of musketeers (6 bases per unit) @ 5 points / 30 x 2 = 60
Option A
2 unit of warriors (6 bases per unit) @ 6 points / 36 x 2 = 72
Total = 252
or
Option B
1 unit of allied Swahili 'Wangwana' musket armed skirmishers (4 bases per unit) @ 5 points / 20 x 1 = 20
1 unit of Arab Nobles, elite untrained soldiers (4 bases per unit) @ 44 x 1 = 44
Total = 244 points
As always, I started a few things this year that ended up being shelved or shoved aside by other projects, although quite a few of these are definitely not dead in the water. The shelf of shame includes a 28mm Nyamwezi / Tuta army for DITDC, a load of 1/300th Soviet aircraft for Bag the Hun, some 1/2400th Argentinian pre-dreadnoughts extras, a 1/2400th Turkish WW1 fleet and the remaining 1/3000th battleships, cruisers and destroyers for the Norwegian Campaign. Some of these are now slated for 2025, so all is not lost and I just need to get them finished at some point next year, having made a good start on most of them.
Well, not exactly thousands but enough scrounged from eBay to kick start a Death in the Dark Continent army over the summer holidays. I'll be taking this lot to France with me, together with the requisite bases, glue and tools, so that I can start to assemble a small army with which to try out the rules. I've also got a box of the British infantry but that may have to wait until later in the year, as I have other plans to screw up first!
I'm planning ahead for this rate interlude in the joy of parenting, with Plan A being to spend some of the time building an army (or two) in plastic. This has the advantage of being easier to do while away, much cheaper in outlay as compared to metal figures, while being quite a pleasant process at the same time.
The current idea is to assemble a Zulu and possibly a British army for Death in the Dark Continent using the Perry Miniatures boxes. The other option is to assemble a British army for the East African campaign for Chain of Command. These both have the advantage of being compatible with the excellent modular African savannah terrain that I've recently been gifted, so a great way to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.
I picked this up today in a National Trust second hand bookshop. It's one of those travelogue type books that follows quite literally in the footsteps of Stanley's expedition into the Congo. It's actually not bad and the juxtaposition of contemporary illustrations with photographs of the actual locations concerned is really interesting. Anyway, here's the blurb...
John and Julie Batchelor journeyed 3,000 miles in the footsteps of the famous explorer Henry Morton Stanley.They travelled by train,river boat,truck and dug-out from Matadi on the Atlantic coast of Zaire across Central Africa to Zanzibar on the Indian Ocean.Their trip included 900 miles along the Zaire River,where Joseph Conrad was once a river boat captain in the days when it was called the River Congo.They travelled also through the Ruwenzori Mountains,the fabled Mountains of the Moon,first seen and recorded by Stanley.An exciting book of travel and adventure.
All very useful for Darkest Africa!
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| Copplestone / Black Tree / Copplestone |
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| Copplestone/ Black Tree |
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| Test Base Components |
One of the additional options for the Generic Villagers army in Death in the Dark Continent are a couple of units of warriors, hired from a more warlike tribe. I was wondering about a suitable contingent for the Nyamwezi and, after a bit of inspiration from Nick Eyre on the FB group, I opted for a mercenary Ngoni unit.
To kit this out I found a pack of Copplestone Ngoni on eBay for a bargain price but that only gave me ten figures, enough for three bases. I then remembered that I had some old Zulu figures from Black Tree designs in the lead pile, so dug them out. They are actually a very good match for the Copplestone figures and I have enough to expand the Ngoni unit to at least eight bases. I will equip the unit with Foundry Zulu style shields to give them a consistent look, then assemble and base them, ready for test painting.
Inspired by fellow Darkest Africa enthusiast and all round wizard painter Jon, I've decided to expand my test base painting for the Death in the Dark Continent project to three bases, one for each of the main unit types in the Nyamwezi army. As these are all scantily clad skirmishers, there are only two figures per base and painting should be fairly straightforward. I'm working on units of six to eight bases, so it will be useful to see how much time it takes to paint a single base of archers, musketeers or spearmen, using a simple palette of half a dozen colours plus highlights.
I don't actually have any lake coastline for the Death in the Dark Continent project, although various cunning plans are afoot to sort some out that will match Jon's terrain, but I thought I'd do a steam launch regardless, as you can't really not have one for this sort of thing. I would usually scratch build something and may still do so, but the Sarissa Precision MDF kit is cheap, easy to put together and looks pretty good, at least as far as I can tell from various blog posts by other people. I've seen Jon's one up close and it looks excellent, so 'why not?' I thought to myself. I'll get round to building it at some point, possibly as a sectional river launch for an expedition or for the German force I'm thinking of putting together. Jolly good stuff!
A long time ago I planned and bought the lead for a German East Africa army for In the Heart of Africa:
http://jimswargamesworkbench.blogspot.com/2009/12/africa-update.html
I've now excavated the figures from the lead pile and have reorganized them for Death in the Dark Continent, adding another pack of DOAG Askaris to bump up the numbers. I may tackle this after the Nyamwezi and before the Ngoni, as a break from painting lots of tribal figures. The good thing is that it requires far fewer figures than the Nyamwezi or Ngoni and the uniforms are relatively simple to paint too. The Germans also fought just about everyone they bumped into, so plenty of replay value.
An old wargaming pal of mine from years ago very kindly offered to give me a fantastic set of terrain tiles that he no longer needed. These are absolutely superb and will give my Death in the Dark Continent project a massive boot I the right direction, as I now don't have to worry about making any terrain, apart from a few special features. I'm obviously extremely grateful to Jon for his very generous donation, so the tiles will definitely get used and perhaps even added to, although I have more than I could possibly dream of already. Fabulous!
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| Foundry shield (left) Zulu shield (right) |
I thought I'd pulled off a bit of a blinder the other day when I found a seller on eBay with some supposedly 28mm Zulu style shields for sale. These would be great to kit out some Tuta allied spearmen I concluded, so I sent off for a couple of packs. When they arrived, however, they turned out to be more like 15mm or 18mm, so I was a bit miffed to say the least. A quick rethink ensued and I realised they would make excellent disorder markers for Death in the Dark Continent instead! A bit of a result and crisis duly averted, if I say so myself.
I am going to repurpose the Foundry figures I based up for In the Heart of Africa as a Nyamwezi army for Death in the Dark Continent. This army is based on the generic villager list and was originally intended to be an Nkonde army but, after a suggestion from a fellow Africa enthusiast, it will now be a Nyamwezi force, even though the figures aren't quite right for the job. Here's what I'm thinking of:
3 units of spearman skirmishers (6 bases per unit) @ 4 points / 24 x 3 = 72
2 units of archer skirmishers (6 bases per unit) @ 4 points / 24 x 2 = 48
2 units of musketeers (6 bases per unit) @ 5 points / 30 x 2 = 60
1 unit of warriors (6 bases per unit) @ 6 points / 36 x 1 = 36
or
1 unit of allied Swahili 'Wangwana' musket armed skirmishers (4 bases per unit) @ 5 points / 20 x 1 = 20
Total = 216 or 200 points
The top up figures for my Death in the Dark Continent Tuta army arrived today, so after sorting them into units I have come up with this 200 point army list, allowing me to add more bases as and when I want to expand it to 300 points. I have the option of adding a second senior regiment, for example, which will get me quite a long way toward 250 points in one fell swoop.
Ag 1. / Tribal
1 x Senior Regiment: Elite Warriors (4 bases / 8 points) = 32
4 x Junior Regiment: Warriors (4 bases / 6 points) 24 x 4 = 96
2 x Assimilated Tribesmen: Raw Warriors (8 bases / 4 points) 32 x 2 = 64
1 x Tuta women: Skirmishers (4 bases / 4 points) = 16
Total (32 + 96 + 64 + 16) = 208
I have made up my mind about the Death in the Dark Continent army I'm planning to paint this year, picking the Tuta as my first army, a branch of the Ngoni who occupied an area around Lake Tanganyika. I already had a few packs of these Copplestone Watuta warrior figures and have topped them up with some elite Ngoni to create the core units, with three or four bases each. To this I will add some units of raw warriors and skirmishers from the Foundry figures I gave already assembled. It's a really good army with lots of potential enemies including Arab Slavers, expeditions, Zanzibaris, British, Germans and generic villagers. You can also use them as allies for Ruga Rugs, so lots of options.
I'm going to be reading this now, a paperback copy having been left on the bookshelf here and asking to be picked up. I've really neglected my interest in colonial Africa wargaming, so thought this would give me a much needed boot in the right direction. I've looked all the way back to the first posts on the blog and they were about an In the Heart of Africa project believe it or not, so I really should pick it up again but with The Men Who Would Be Kings or even Death in the Dark Continent. It's not like I have a shortage of 28mm Copplestone Darkest Africa lead in the pile!
