Marching into Zululand

Marching into Zululand

By CommisTzarSmith

On the date of 11^th of May 2018 my first ever debit card purchase arrived. This purchase was the models I needed for an ongoing project made by both me and DaveCo.

Some Jolly good sons of the Isles prepared to police their "beloved"  Empire; What What. One Box of British Infantry, a Gatling Gun with Naval Crew and two boxes of the dashing 17th Lancers

As you can see here, these models, are from the British Model Company Perry Miniatures; which as you are probably already aware provides high quality historical models by two of the greatest miniature sculptors of our time, Michael and Alan Perry. These twins are legends in the wargaming year and it was their models that first got me into the sub-genre of historical miniatures after a long while addicted to only Games Workshop made models (oh what a fool I was in my youth in pre-2016 AD).

As you can see from this British sailor right here (sorry about the blurry photo, this was taken from an old  iPhone), the detail is great. Everything about this model is realistic, with lifelike facial features and a crisp, accurate detailed uniform. While this model is intended for the Sudanese Mahdist wars of 1881-1885, a naval brigade was present in one of the columns that invaded Zululand and to be fair Gatling guns are inheriting an awesome form of weaponry.

 

I already owned a box of British infantry for the Zulu War and an artillery piece (both from Perry). Each box have enough models to make two regiments  however sadly my first regiment ended up being sprayed incorrectly (my first attempt at using upol spray paint failing terribly) and ended up lost in my mother’s move to a new address, leaving me with another regiment that thankfully went much smoothly with painting.

The quality of these models are great, with very little mouldlines that I needed to remove in contrast to the older plastics made by Warlord. The detail is as I have mentioned near unparreled and are easy to paint once you get into the swing of it.

The plastic model boxes comes with long sand colour bases intended to fit up to up to three men on each base, which while great for regimental large scale games does not fit with the skirmish rules me and DaveCo intend to use. Instead we are using square 20x20 bases which can fit one infantry man on each base. The three men at the back of the picture below are intended as the regimental command, carrying the banners of the 24^th regiment of foot proudly into battle against the tribal menace.

I have so far built all of my infantry (three 15 men battalions) in addition to the Gatling Gun and the 9 pounder gun. The two units are at the time of writing (17/05/2018) completely finished (the aforementioned infantry battalion and the artillery piece which I had painted during the snow that came with the “beast of the east”.

What’s next? I am unsure although I do desire some lovely terrain pieces from North Star’s Africa Range such as their wagon models and some African wildlife (I should note my love of animals which will indeed help with my painting efforts).