I've been working on this army for a couple of years, slowly working through it at my typical glacial pace, and constantly deciding that I needed to add more units which just stretched the process even longer, but it is now complete and ready to be deployed onto the big board!
The army is structured to be played with The Men Who Would Be Kings, with everything in units of 12 models. I originally intended to just paint 3 troops of 12 mounted infantrymen each, which is what the rulebook suggests for a Boer Field Force. But as I closed in on finishing the horsemen, I decided I really wanted to paint dismounted figures too, in case I wanted to have them hop down and take cover somewhere. This would also give the army larger scope for rule sets like The Sword and the Flame. So that took a lot more time, and by the time I was finishing those guys, I had decided that I wanted to paint a Commandant for the force, just for kicks, and at that point it seemed like I might as well go ahead and paint up some artillery as well. Still, the army felt a little small to me. I felt like I wanted to paint another squadron of mounted and foot, but was not excited about diving back into painting more of these, so I prevaricated. Until...
...In May I made my annual trip to Enfilade, and on the first afternoon I found these fellows sitting in a little cardboard box at the bring and buy for I think 30 bucks. They were all very nicely painted, in a style which blended right in with the guys I already had, and the numbers added up perfectly with my existing force. A little bit of Serendipity, there. They were mounted on nice rectangular steel bases, so I had to re-base them to get them to fit in, but that was little stuff. These boys, then, became my fourth squadron. My friends saw me paying for them and said "Don't you already have those guys?" I said "Yes, but now I have more of them."
The figures are all Ral Partha Colonials sculpted by Tom Meier in the 1970s. I spent a sizable portion of of my childhood gazing wistfully at Tom's figures in the Old Ral Partha and Wargames West catalogs, and wishing I could afford to purchase mass armies of them. Well now I have a number of those colonial armies and this is my first one to be finished. Total is 48 foot, 48 mounted and 2 guns. None of the Ral Partha Colonial lines had a great deal of depth to them. Tom's entire Boer range included 2 mounted men, 4 advancing on foot poses, 2 firing on foot poses, a mounted commandant and a Staadtsartillerie figure. Above are the 2 mounted trooper poses.
The advancing foot figures: 2 basic poses with slight variations.
The 2 dismounted firers. The only really noticeable difference is the hat.
These 3 figures were all included in the Mounted Volunteers pack in the Zulu War line, but they can just about pass as Boers if we choose to ignore the fact the fellow on the right is a bit more rotund looking than your average Boer fighter. A sprinkling of them does add a bit of variety.
The Commandant/Feldcornet figure.
The State Artilleryman figure, representing a member of the corps of technical specialists created after the first Boer War, and who were all the standing army the Boers had in the second.
Both of the above figures were painted by their previous owner.
Transvaal War British coming next!
