Painting All These F-ing Tartans

Captain George H. Rippington III

Here's the full list of paints I used for the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders and bit of advice on the process. It's for my own benefit as well as everyone else's, so when I inevitably leave off for something else - hopefully not any time soon, but remember the AWI project - and return years later to add to the collection, I'll have some clue as to what I did!

All of the paints are from Games Workshop's Citadel range. A brief note on my shorthand. 'Base Coat' is exactly what it sounds like... a solid layer of color painted as neatly as I can. When this is the same as the 'Primer' color (Zhadri Dust in this case), the area was simply left as is which greatly speeds up the painting process. 'Shade' always utilizes the Citadel range of washes or 'shades' which is painted completely over the base coat. 'Layer' is a color painted on that almost completely covers the color below, leaving the darker tones in recesses. This paint is thinned with a tiny amount of water to add a bit of transparency for a softer transition. If there are two 'Layers' in a sequence, the second is painted only on the upper surfaces (the top of arms, the edge of sleeves, collars, and tunics, etc), again thinned with a tiny amount of water. 'Highlight' refers to edge highlighting where only sharp edges or pinpoint highlights are applied. Don't worry about some variation in tones between models - uniforms would be far less... err... uniform after a few months in the Sudan!

Primer
Zhandri Dust Spray Paint

Helmet, Jacket, and Gaiters
Base Coat: Zhandri Dust
Shade: Agrax Earthshade
Layer: Tallern Sand
Layer: Ushabti Bone
Highlight: Screaming Skull (Helmet Only)

Puggaree
Base Coat: Zhandri Dust
Shade: Agrax Earthshade
Layer: Ushabti Bone
Shade: Reikland Fleshade

Valise Kit, Tassels, and Rifle Sling
Base Coat: Administratum Grey
Shade: Agrax Earthshade
Layer: Pallid Wych Flesh

Sporran, Mess Tin Cover, Scabbard, and Boots
Base Coat: Corvus Black
Shade: Agrax Earthshade
Highlight: Dawnstone

Stockings and Sergeants' Stripes
Base Coat: Mephiston Red
Shade: Agrax Earthshade
Layer: Evil Sunz Scarlet
Stripes: Corvus Black

Musket Stock
Base Coat: Rhinox Hide
Shade: Agrax Earthshade
Highlight: Doombull Brown

Canteen Cover and Pistol Holster
Base Coat: Mournfang Brown
Shade: Agrax Earthshade
Layer: Mournfang Brown
Highlight: Deathclaw Brown

Canteen, Bayonet, Sword Blade, and Rifle Barrel
Base Coat: Iron Warrior
Shade: Agrax Earthshade
Highlight: Stormhost Silver (Bayonet Only)

Buttons, Buckles, Sword Hilt, and Rifle Butt Plate
Bace Coat: Liberator Gold
Shade Agrax Eartshade
Highlight: Liberator Gold

Ok... let's pause here for a moment. If you've read this far (what about the bloody tartan? I'm getting to it...) you've probably seen that ALL of these areas are shaded with Agrax Earthshade. To save yourself a huge amount of time, paint all of the base coats on these areas and then shade the entire model before moving on to anything else. After you've finished all of your layers and highlights, you can go back with Agrax Earthshade if necessary and fix any areas where belts may have strayed into one another, to bring out buttons, etc. This will give you a nice, dark edge around the flesh areas too...

Skin
Base Coat: Bugman's Glow
Shade: Reikland Fleshade
Layer: Cadian Fleshtone
Highlight: Kislev Flesh

Kilt
Ok, here we go.. first of all there is no shading or highlighting required. The pattern is busy and the fact that we've left off this stage won't be noticed and would be an even bigger mess than it already is. Having said this, painting the tartan isn't as difficult as it seems.

First, the diagram...

Don't worry about trying to work out how this falls into folds and such. I start by painting the bottom green stripe above the bottom edge and a parallel one midway between the first and the figure's belt. then paint the vertical stripes as evenly as possible all the way around.

No... Citadel hasn't started making paint in dropper bottles. I made these myself. I'll write a post on it at some point if anyone is interested in the how and why.

Base Coat: Kantor Blue
First Stripes: Waagh Flesh
Intersect Squares: Warboss Green (you can stop here for the Black Watch tartan!)
Red Stripes: Flesh Tearers Red
Yellow Stripes: Averland Sunset

The 'Intersect Squares' will likely end up more as dots than squares, but that's ok. The last two colors should be painted with the finest-tip brush you have. Flesh Tearers Red is a Citadel Contrast paint, which means it is somewhat translucent. This is perfect to mimic the stitching of the real thing. It's also thinner than 'normal' paint, which makes it perfect for painting fine lines. There should be TWO parallel red stripes for each one above, but at 28mm, they are lucky to get one. The yellow stripes seem to fall between every other red, so in the case of my models, there is only one about midway up. There would be vertical yellow stripes in the same manner, but I've chose to pretend they are all hidden in the creases! Since there isn't any shading, you can touch up errant strokes with Kantor Blue or Waagh Flesh as necessary, but you only need to correct egregious mistakes.

Stage by stage photos to better illustrate... looks a bit naff viewed at such size and I shudder to publish such pictures, but no sacrifice on my part is too great for you! The illusion works at normal scale - especially when they are seen from three feet away on the game table.

NOTE: The above figure was painted before I settled on my final khaki recipe so appears a little lighter than the finished versions (see the good captain at the start of the post). I wanted the jacket to be a shade darker to better contrast with the white belts and straps.

Finally, here are recipes for alternate colors you might see on British troops in the Sudan:

Alternate Red Coat
Base Coat: Mephiston Red
Shade: Agrax Earthshade
Layer: Mephiston Red
Highlight: Evil Sunz Scarlet

Alternate Grey Coat
Base Coat: Mechanicus Standard Grey
Shade: Agrax Earthshade
Layer: Mechanicus Standard Grey
Highlight: Dawnstone

Alternate Valise Kit (Bread Bag should still be 'white')
Base Coat: Zhandri Dust
Sade: Agrax Earthshade
Layer: Talleran Sand
Highlight: Ushabti Bone

I would only use the alternate valise kit color with the red or grey coat. Rifle units may still have black valise kits at this time and I would use the same formula as for the mess kit and boots above.

Right! Clear as mud? Hopefully this is useful to someone - at least it will help me later! If you have questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

More soon...

Mahdist Horde

That's about as far as I've gotten with planning for the Madhists... I need a pile of them!

I'm just going to collect forces along the lines of what's given in The Sword and the Flame. Brom recommends 2.25 Dervish units per British, with no more than one in four armed with rifles. For my first goal (two British Platoons would be four and a half native units), I'm going to collect the following force to get in some games ASAP:

One Unit of Dervish with Spears
Two Units of Dervish with Swords
One Unit of Dervish with Rifles
One Unit of Dervish Cavalry

The cavalry will be my 'half-sized' unit and will probably be camels rather than horses because I have NEVER owned nor painted camels. There will be five Sheikhs and a mounted Emir plus one standard bearer. I am planning on one flag per 'Tribe' (three units) and will use the optional rules presented in the 2000 Scenario Folio. Going forward, I will be buying two Dervish units per Imperial and split painting time between the two armies. I'll mix in some Nile Arabs along the way to add some variety to the horde, probably aiming for a tribe and supporting cavalry.

I'm going to make one change to TSATF in that my native units with be 18 models (rather than 19) plus a leader. This is purely for the practical reason that Perry miniatures come six models to a pack and I can place orders in groups of three. I may add musicians to some units (again from the 2000 Scenario Folio) which will bring some to the proper count. I don't expect this unit reduction will have any real effect on game play.

At this level, my leaders will be purely fictional, but I have a fairly detailed list of the historical tribes and chieftans in the area before the Battle of Ginnis and will incorporate some of those as the collection grows.

Up next, we'll look at the campaign map and explore some of the ideas I have for creating a narrative!

A Scrimmage in a Border Station

Colonial gamers are a freewheeling lot as you’ll find if you hang around dedicated forums. Questions about uniforms or orders of battle are often met with, “They are your toys! Paint them however you like!” Now this should be the case in ANY period, but the button counters and fashion police are much quicker to raise the hue and cry in other periods.

That said, when building an army I always try to find a brigade on which to model my collection. Not only does this establish a realistic force composition, it lets me point to at least one circumstance where my units served together. I also set out to find a brigade with a measure of variety (mixed coat colors, allied troops, or supported by an unusual detachment). I knew I wanted my first units for TSATF to be Highlanders, so that helped me narrow my choices (but not by much... there were four or five battalions of these kilted heroes scattered all over the Sudan).

Now, I’m not planning on ever recreating whole battles. My games will be raids, patrols, and other skirmishes. While orbats could be useful, I was more interested in remote garrisons and the like. I found EXACTLY what I was looking for when I stumbled on ‘A Scrimmage in a Border Station’ (taken from Historical Records of the 79th Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders by Captain T A. Mackenzie, which I now have in my possession).

Kosheh was a small brick fort 113 miles to the south of Wadi Halfa, and was the most advanced British post in the Sudan. The garrison of Kosheh now consisted of 1 troop of the 20th Hussars, 1 troop of Mounted Infantry, a few British and Egyptian Artillerymen, the Cameron Highlanders, and 100 men of the 9th Sudan battalion... 150 (men) from the same battalion occupied a zeriba (improvised stockade) on the west bank. Mograkeh (3 miles north of Kosheh) was held by the 3rd battalion of the Egyptian army and some of the Egyptian Camel Corps. The armed steamers Lotus and Shaban patrolled the river (stern wheel paddle steamers).

This garrison was involved in multiple skirmishes with the Madhists in the month leading up to the Battle of Ginnis (December 30th, 1885). They were part of a frontier force and the literally tip of the spear at this time. Not only is there a wonderfully diverse mix of units, the force is small enough to collect the entire detachment for TSATF:

1 Battalion of the Cameron Highlanders (4 units + command)
1 Company of IX Sudanese (2 units + command)
1 Troop of 20th Hussars (1 unit)
1 Troop of Mounted Infantry (1 unit)

Plus guns (although they would most likely stay with the fort for most of my games), a gunboat (only useful if the game is on the banks of the Nile, which turns out is pretty common), a battalion of Egyptians, and a unit of camels if I wanted further reinforcements. There are also three more battalions of British and the rest of the 20th Hussars nearby. My one deviation would be to field a detachment from the British Camel Corps rather than the Egyptian one, because Perry Miniatures only offers those at this time. I may make further alterations to my fictional force. For example, the British Camel Corps are essentially mounted infantry so I may replace the troop in the fort with these and substitute some regular Egyptian cavalry for support at Mograkeh.

I said one deviation, but there will be a second in that I will postpone events that led to the Battle of Ginnis. In the Quindia Studios timeline there will be a more substantial period of sniping and mayhem that serves as the backdrop for my campaign. It may be a year before gathering Madhists force the conflict at Ginnis. There will also be details added to the surrounding campaign that will be decidedly ahistorical.. a lost mine, a forgotten temple to dark powers, and other equally pulp style tropes.

My first order of Perry Miniatures (two platoons of Highlanders - a Captain, two Lieutenants, three Sergeants, and thirty-six Privates) just arrived and I hope to have painted examples soon. Wish me luck with the tartans!

Next time we’ll talk about Madhists...

The Sudan 1885

I know, I know.. what happened to the AWI? I’ll try to at least finish my Highland battalion, but I’ve been distracted... again.

I’ve been shuffling some of the clutter in my house from one room to another - hopefully organizing and streamlining collections in the process - and I stumbled on my copy of The Sword and the Flame (20th Anniversary edition). It’s been a while since I’ve read this book or even laid eyes on it, so I dropped it onto my ‘bedtime’ reading pile.

I’d forgotten how much I loved these rules.

When I first got my copy (2000-2001?) I quickly despaired of ever painting the number of models required to play the game properly. I had yet to launch my Napoleonic project and had only painted RPG minis and small armies (40-60 models each) for Warhammer and Warhammer 40k games. While a modest British force might be in that range, the 200 natives I thought I would need for a balanced game was not! I did run some small skirmishes with The Sword in Africa supplement included in the 20th anniversary edition. That was fun, but lacked the grandeur of TSATF games I’d seen in photographs. This was also about the time I was developing the rules that became the basis for Donnybrook and they became my ‘go to’ set for skirmish games. TSATF was returned to the bookcase.

So after reading the book again and with more confidence in my ability to produce hordes of painted models (and afford to procure them), it wasn’t long before I found myself skimming through pages on the Perry Miniatures site. While images from the film Zulu (A prayer's as good as a bayonet on a day like this) are probably ingrained in the being of every wargamer, I settled on the Sudan theater for my collection.

As is usual for me upon entering a new period, I set out to collect a pile of books on the subject.. 

A few are still en route, but I discover more all the time and as the project grows, I’ll continue adding them to my library. If anyone has any suggestions for a 'must have' sourcebook, please let me know!

Up next, I’ll lay out my specific plans to get this on the game table.