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.
Before I committed anything to paper, I thought I'd shoot Nick Skinner an email to ask if the Toofatlardies would be interested in a set of scenarios for Algernon Pulls It Off! (or not?). I was very pleased to have a swift reply giving a full on thumbs up for the idea, which means that I can crack on and start researching, drafting and play testing the first of the scenarios. I've already got some useful nuts and bolts for this - a really well-balanced but challenging dogfight in May 1918 - so I'm going to start writing it up in the holidays next week, ready for some solo play testing at home before I take it to the club for some punishment. Tally Ho!
It was my day off yesterday so I painted the base coat of PC10 on the 1/600th scale Camels and DH4's, giving them two coats to make sure they were completely covered. I also hoped to get the decals done on the Jasta 18 scouts but time ran out in the end. I'll crack on with these next week when I have some holiday time to get them finished, ready for some 1918 scenario games.
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
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| Albatros DV |
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| SE5a |
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| Fokker DVII |
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| Fokker Dr1 |
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| SPAD XIII |
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| Sopwith Camel |
Although it's not at all my thing, I've signed up to take part in a multiplayer club game day in a few weeks time, based on the Battle of Waterloo. This will be a massive set up using the Epic scale miniatures and Black Powder rules from Warlord Games. I will be commanding three divisions for the French but, apart from that, I have no idea what I'm doing, having only played a couple of Black Powder games in the past. They're still short of one player so, if you are local, you might want to get in touch via the Wessex Wargamers Winchester website?
This afternoon I sat down in a freezing garage to assemble and magnet base six 1/600th scale Airco DH4 bombers for the Jasta 18 scenario project. These are required for one of the scenarios set in June 1918, featuring a flight of six DH4's of No.55 Squadron RAF, in which all but one were shot down. A good day for Jasta 18 but a disaster for the Independent Air Force!
They will also double up as the Airco DH9's of No.104 Squadron for a similar bombing sortie earlier in the month, when five aircraft successfully completed a raid for the loss of a sixth on the approach run to the target. I may have a go at converting some Tumbling Dice DH4 models into DH9's for this scenario, but for play testing I'll think they'll be fine.
We had some friends from Belfast visiting yesterday and they wanted to check out the second hand charity bookshop at the cathedral. I hadn't been there for ages and so I was very pleased to find that it had a much better range of military history titles than the last time I popped in. Here are two of the books I bought for little more than a tenner, both in excellent condition. I'm particularly chuffed with the English Civil War one, as it is directly relevant for the 2mm project.
After some due thought and number crunching, I've decided to follow in Alex Southeran's footsteps and take the plunge into 3D printed 1/300th scale WW1 models. The logic (yeah, right!) behind this is that I will eventually want to take the Jasta 18 scenarios to the club for play testing, where 1/600th scale would do the job but has far less visual impact.
It also allows me to actually paint the aircraft in something approaching the correct insignia, which I can't do in the smaller scale as it's just way too fiddly. I'm thinking of asking Dan at Flight Deck Decals if he could make a custom sheet for the Jasta 18 fuselage markings, or I may just try to paint them on myself or possibly even print my own decals if I can work out how to do it.
The 1/600th scale planes I've painted will, in the meantime, still be ideal for my own solo play testing at home and for other rules including Spandau and Lewis and Duel of Aces. I've sent of an enquiry to Paul Edwards at Sabotage3D and an order for most of the single seaters I need is about to be sorted out. I'll add a later order for the two seaters once I've written up the scenarios.
Tally Ho!
