Wargaming the Exploration and Colonisation of Tropical Africa by European powers from 1850 until 1918.


Saturday 19 July 2014

Zambezi Campaign 27: Wasimba musketmen




I found a pack of these Foundry Native Musketmen on my floor a week or so ago (yes, it is that untidy) and so set out to get them painted as the start of the Wasimba villagers force that is the third out of five forces that the Gary Chalk scenarios require.

They are armed with cast off muskets supplied by the British and led by the chief's son, resplendent in his cast off waistcoat given to him by Commissioner Sanders Wallace.

Next I need to paint some spear armed warriors and archers.  In fact, another fifty figures are needed for this force.  I have certainly got most of the tribal figures to form the Wasimbas but as most tribes in this region had Zulu style shields I need to order some from Empress Miniatures, I think.

Thursday 27 February 2014

Zambezi Campaign 26: Margot Muirhead




Although I haven't done anything for the Zambezi project for nearly a year, it is far from forgotten.  While looking for something else, in one of my boxes of unpainted figures, recently, I came across the lady who was always destined to be the wife of the Rev Angus MacSporran.  She didn't take long to do and can also serve as a bystander for In Her Majesty's Names games. 

Margot Muirhead is the daughter of a minister of the Kirk herself. She married the much older Rev MacSporran and now, stuck in a native village up the Zambesi, regrets the fact that if she had stayed at home she could have gone to Edinburgh University, as she had always wanted,  Scottish Universities agreed to accept women shortly after she accompanied MacSporran to Africa.  She consoles herself by preaching to the poor benighted heathens, playing her flute and collecting butterflies.  The latter activity always seems to involve crawling around in the bushes by the river when the young men of the village go there to bathe.  She returns from these aurelian sorties flushed and breathless and usually needs a cold bath herself, afterwards.