2mm Colonial: Mini Mahdists!

"Our orders was to break you, an' of course we went an' did.

We sloshed you with Martinis, an' it wasn't 'ardly fair;

But for all the odds agin' you, Fuzzy-Wuz, you broke the square...."

[Rudyard Kipling.]

In typical fashion, perhaps, the VSF-based Colonial forces I had planned working on have turned into something more traditional, and the chief architects of this temptation have been the few bases that I had originally intended as native levies. These have become the basis of a growing Mahdist Army, some shots of which you can see throughout this post.

Below we have some Camelry, which are an easy job with Irregular's ABG23 from the Ancients range - the detail on the riders is perhaps none too clever, although the camels themselves are nice and chunky, which divides them visually from the horses on the cavalry stands. Five blocks to a 40x30mm base here:

Next some Ansar Cavalry - I went for a mix of strips here, mainly to use up some spares I had floating around. The first line on each base is formed from two blocks of I think Horse and Musket era sabre cavalry, whilst the rearmost are Ancients ABG9 Light Horse Archers. I thought this would represent the better armed, and more motivated richer warriors to the front, followed by their retainers to the rear, six blocks on a 40x30mm base:

As seen in a previous post, the ever-useful BG23 blocks stand in as irregular types, here as Ansar, six placed randomly on a 40x30mm once more:

Lacking discernible weapons or standards, these blocks can stand in as many different types, but are sometimes a little bit ill-defined:

The Hadendowah make it even harder to be seen with their brown palette, so the palm trees mark the rear of each base - I was kicking myself when I realised, however, that I had placed these in the same place on each base, making the irregular seem much too 'samey' - at least this motivates me to produce more bases, if only in order to randomise the placement!

I think some flags and banners would also lift these bases somewhat, although I don't know if my printer will be up to reducing stuff to a size that will be feasible...

I'm keen to expand on the bases done so far, with some captured artillery pieces for the Mahdists , and maybe the odd dhow or felucca to sail down the Nile - this will of course mean scratch-building a 1/900th British gunboat in reply, of course!

Details of a fascinating project to restore an original Nile Gunboat can be seen here:

http://www.melik.org.uk/

and there are some characterful Wargaming versions on view at this always useful site:

http://www.wfhgs.com/gunboat.html