Sudan Project part 9 - First British Forces

Good Morning Folks

Part 8 can be found here
http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/sudan-project-part-8-dhows.html

Now that the Mahdist Army is complete I have turned my attention to the British forces.

The current aim is to create a force that will consist of five battalions of infantry (including one highland regiment), one naval brigade, a cavalry regiment and an assortment of artillery and machine guns.

Fortunately most of the lead and plastic for this force has been acquired either direct from Perry Miniatures or via some deals found on ebay.

The first unit painted is from the Perry plastic box set - a unit of British infantry 24 strong. These have been given Khaki uniforms so could also be used in a North West frontier setting.

The figures themselves are very straightforward to assemble and relatively easy to paint. Once again these are based on 25mm washers and then moved on trays from warbases. The tufts were secured on ebay from Warpainter.

Apologies for lighting on the picture but they have come out a little dark

More to come soon

part 10 here
http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/sudan-project-part-10-more-british.html

Star Trek Fans read this...

The other day I was browsing You tube and by chance came across a fan made series of Star Trek called Star Trek Continues. These were made available on Youtube only a few monthsago

This series comprises of 11 episodes and kicks off from the end of the original series through to the launch of the first Star Trek Movie. If you can get past the fact that our beloved heroes of Kirk, McCoy, Spock etc are played by other actors then you are in for a real treat. Scotty's son even reprises his old mans role.

Link Here to First episode
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G-ziTBAkbQ&t=174s

The stories, sets, music and special effects are just like the originals - to be honest I felt like I had gone back in time and was that little 10 year old boy all over again and watching these for the first time. 

Now I appreciate that not all wargamers are Star Trek fans but for me the adventures of the the Enterprises five year mission almost certainly set me on the journey towards role playing and then into miniature wargaming.

Now once you have watched these consider the following video on You Tube. Its called Prelude to Axanar and features none other than Richard Hatch, star of Battlestar Galactica. Thiswas launched two years ago but it is fantastic

Link here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W1_8IV8uhA&t=72s

I understand that this was also a fan made product raising money through crowdfunding. I have to say the video is one of the best renders of the Star Trek universe I have come across - indeed it is so much better than the stuff that they are currently producing in Star Trek Discovery.

Sadly the folks at Paramount and CBS who own the copyright to Star Trek have got all flustered about these fan productions and took the Axanar production to court. The net result is that fan films can continue to be made BUT they cannot last more than fifteen minutes, can consist of no more than 2 episodes and must be non for profit. This is areal shame as these films in my mind can bring in new fans and support the long term viability of the franchise.

Hope you enjoy

Live Long and Prosper

Shed Wars 6th Birthday

Well today is the Shed Wars blog’s 6^th Birthday - 

I for one can't believe that I have been able to keep this going for six years. 

In part that is all down to you my followers for your wonderful comments and ongoing support. As is usual for me on these events I like to look back and summarise the previous year in a short review.

Once again I’ll firstly talk about the stats and then come onto the review proper.

As you can see from the numbers below the page view count continues to rise – I want that million hit marker !

	Number of followers	Number of page views
Dec 2012	80	25000
Dec 2013	180	95000
Dec 2014	285	230000
Dec 2015	373	383000
Dec 2016 Dec 2017	387 424	578000 789500

The plague of the Russian bots seems to have abated and for the moment photobucket seems to be playing ball and honouring my limited price contract. In the event they do pull the plug I have now saved all my images and have these collated in such a way that I could relink the photos (not a job I want to do) but it is possible.

Stats over....................................

So what happened this year?

Starting back in January I decided I wanted to have a crack at 28mm/Grand Scale Napoleonics and embarked on a very arduous task to complete armies for both British and French. Over 1000 minis bought, assembled (the vast majority were plastic) and painted hit the table in September of this year

This was clearly a big investment in both time and money and although these boys have only seen action a few times II am already looking forward to when it gets warmer and more Peninsular action can take place



The painted armies were shortly followed by one of my favourite terrain settings the Peninsular Village - I cant claim to have built the original but the setting of the warbase modular buildings on my boards set these off really well

One of the biggest battles fought this year kicked off in January almost 12 months ago on the anniversary of Isandlwhana and Rorkes Drift. Shed regulars refought these actions over a Sunday. Suffice to say hundreds of zulus and some very brave redcoats

The final Zulu assault..

Mark gets the prize for wearing the Pith Helmet

True to life the British Defenders held back the hordes at Rorkes Drift - just !

The other big battle and perhaps the largest to grace the shed yet was our epic English Civil War siege game

Over 12 foot of walls keeping the Roundheads at bay....

I even managed to build some breach sections for the game...

This year I promised myself that we would try to play more games across the periods I can offer and I think we were quite successful judging from a quick look back over the last few months

for example

English Civil War  -

Frostgrave 

Muskets & Tomahawks -

VBCW 

American Civil War - 

Saga - 

10mm Napoloeonic

The Crusades

and of course who can forget Daleks versus the Afrika Korps

You have probably noticed that there is a trend going on here - the Shed is going for big grand scale 28mm battles at the moment - in the past three years I have now assembled forces for the French Indian Wars, Crusades, Zulu's, English Civil War and Napoleonics. The latest project follows the trend as I foray into the Colonial world once again with my Sudan project.

Last month I finished my Dervish army (approx 450 figures) which means I have probably painted close to 2000 x 28mm figures this year. I doubt my productivity will hit such ceilings again.

Of course these guys need an opponent so the British and Egyptian forces will hit the painting table between now and the New Year. In the meantime I am focusing on the terrain including a Sudanese city, a gun boat, some dhows and of course the river Nile.

By the time you throw in trips to the shows (Salute, Colours and Warfare) and add in the four day extravaganza known as BLAM this has been certainly a very busy year.

Next years plans are currently under wraps (OK still yet to decide)  but as they develop you will be the first to know.

As a final note I'd like to thank all those that frequent the shed for making the games such fun and to wish them and all those in the Blogosphere a Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year - 

Bye for Now

Eric the Shed

  

Sudan Project part 8 - Dhows

Hi Folks

Just a short post today but if you missed the last one in this series head here

One of things that drew me to the Sudan Colonial period was the opportunity to introduce river craft - specifically river gunboats and the more native sailing dhows.

As always google was my best friend here when I started to search for dhows - plenty of pictures out there but nobody to my knowledge was selling 28mm craft in resin. I did however find a russian company that produces cardboard boats and sitting within their range are Arabian dhows.

The link to the company can be found here: -

http://russia-best.com/

The website sells a variety of boats from biremes to carracks and cogs. Their Dhow was described as the following - apologies for screen grab image quality

So I decided to take a risk - with each model costiong $8 and the postage $12 I decided to buy two for a combined cost of $28

I placed the order about four weeks ago and completely forgot about it until yesterday when a parcel was waiting for me when I returned home from work.

Two flat boxes looking like this

Inside are a number of preprinted sheets of card - heavy card and very clear building instructions

Assembly of the first (excluding mast and sails took about 15 minutes with no glue needed ( Ihave since added glue to strengthen the bonds on the tabs)

As you can see from the picture below it is a waterline model - hooray

From a scale size point of view I compared one of the card figures with a 28mm mini - an almost perfect size in height

Here is the sailor on board the boat

The model does come with masts (card) and sails (paper) along with a complete rigging plan. I am going to replace the card with doweling rods (pun not intended)

So the next step is to decide whether these are going to get a repaint (they are a bit shiny) but as a cheap option for river boats for the arabian area and more importantly for all periods I think they will do just fine

more soon