Colonial Wars - The Boers

Life can be cruel - there I was looking forward to heading down to Newbury last weekend for Colours when last Monday I awoke and found my heel of my foot swollen to twice its size.

I didn't need anybody to tell me that I had been afflicted by the rich mans disease - gout. I have in the past suffered from two such attacks (both in my large toe joint) and I can confirm the pain is excruciating. Not too sure what brought this attack on but its probably a combination of anxiety, too much red meat and of course too much red wine. Both of the latter had been consumed quite happily on holiday. Mrs Shed is of course now governing my diet and I am on strict instructions not to imbibe for a whole month !!

I made matters worse by struggling over to Ireland on business on the thursday - so much worse that I had to return home in a wheelchair. So Saturdays trip to the show had to be cancelled.

With mobility somewhat curtailed and under strict instructions from the Doctor to rest my foot I set about painting the next group of troops for the Anglo Zulu War campaign. This time the focus is on the boers.

These guys were ever present in the war and at apush can be used in any future congo setting. Indeed I could even rope them in for VBCW.

A couple of weeks back I took advantage of one of Black Trees sales (35% off - should have waited for the 50% off) and on friday a small box arrived containing 35 foot and 12 cavalry.

The problem of painting irregular (ie not uniformed troops) is that they take twice as long - but a couple of good stints over the weekend soon saw the force come together. These are not the best scuplts in the world but they were cheap and do look the part.

Apologies for the quality of photos - last time I'll be taking pictures of minis in bright sunlight

I reckon I have pretty much used every brown colour in my paintbox to turn these out and I am very pleased with the result.

The cavalry horses were a bit too uniform for my liking (all very static) but I recalled I had some spare horses from my ECW prtoject purchased off ebay. These nags are all moving and create a variety of poses for the fairly similar riders. I ignored the fact they had saddle cloths.

The Black Tree horses will probably be used for unmounted nags being held by a horseholder of some kind.

So here we are folks the Boers for the Anglo Zulu Wars...another 47 figures completed



Up next the Natal Native Contingent