Friday, November 8, 2013

Taking a shine to some new Boers

After a week with no time or place to play or paint. it was a relief to get my new downstairs painting station at least partially set up. I had already painted the 4.7" and earlier today had prepared  and primed the figures so an hour later, a crew to man the gun and the first mounted rifle unit.
Jacklex 20mm/1/72nd Boers

Yes I know the Boers didn't use the 4.7" but if you were refighting the Boer War in 1913, your Britain's Boers would have needed one for a proper Little Wars game really.

The figures have better  detail than I expected and I was tempted to highlight and shade the figures or at least apply a burnt umber wash but decided to go with block painting and gloss varnish as an homage of sorts.

I also decided not to up-size the horses after all, as I was putting the figures together it occurred to me that there could be some synchronicity with WWI Africa and other early 20thC settings. However, I did use some plastic horses to give more variety of pose, unfortunately one of the standing horses turned out to have draft harness on but oh well.

Looking forward to the arrival of my Scruby's now but I really like these Jacklex. There will be another order.

14 comments:

  1. Wonderful stuff Ross - they look fantastic. Will you be adding an AJ Raffles to your British forces?

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    1. I confess I had to look up who he was and no, no gentleman rapscallions here, Imperial types will appear but gallant volunteers like Strathcona Horse are what's wanted.

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  2. Ross, I'm sure that the "draft horse" is for moving the limbered up gun . . . why else would you have him, eh?


    -- Jeff

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    1. Luckily they aren't fixed to multi-figure bases so I may be able to slide him off somewhere if he sticks out too much. The Boers mostly used oxen to haul guns and wagons but he could be a captured British horse artillery horse. The only harness seems to be over the saddle and I expect I'll just ignore it.

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  3. Figures look great.
    I particuarly like the running chap...

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    1. Me too, look for some of the British version of this pose to appear eventually.

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  4. Wonderful job on the Boers and I think you were right to go with the old school look. I've often thought of buying some of these myself and am now even more tempted...

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    1. Go for it! Give Peter another reason to keep casting & selling them!

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  5. Oh, very fine, indeed! These chaps and gun look just the, bearded, part.

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    1. I had to resist the temptation to make them all Greybeards.

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  6. They've come up well Ross. Good-looking troops.

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    1. Yeah, you never know what you can make from an old bunch of Greeks and Persians, with a bit of help.

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  7. Reading through this post - excellent figures and pictures - reminded me of a song my old late Nan used to sing to me as a child "The Boers have got my Daddy". I can still remember the words of the chorus! Funny how the mind works. The last two lines of the chorus was sung with great gusto and went
    "So I'm going to fight the Boers I am, and bring my Daddy home again" I think she would have been a young girl around the time of the campaign.

    Wonderful stuff as always Ross :-)

    Lee.

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  8. Coming along very nicely, Ross. Love the 4.7", splendid beast of a gun. Berliner Zinnfiguren has some Boer War sets up on their site, (including gunners and the 4.7), I'm quite possibly going to use some for the quasi-British nation in my project.

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