Friday 28 January 2011

Charity shop find

  From time to time you can find wonderful little items rooting around the local charity shops, they usually come in the guise of the odd military history book, but on the odd occasion you find an item that could come in useful on the wargame table.
This happened a few weeks ago, searching through a big box marked up with a sign saying  " all items 10p each" this box was full of  " made in china" plastic toys, the main volume being made up of cars and dolls, but in amongst all the broken cars my eyes found an elephant continuing my search I found another smaller Elephant calf a Hippo and a Giraffe and not the usual soft bendy plastic type, this lot seemed to be made of a harder more rigid plastic. They initially looked like they may well fit with 28mm figures.  So being very extravagant I took a risk and handed over the full asking price of forty pence without even haggling and exited the shop with my loot.


After a bit of cleaning up of the mould lines and a repaint I think the elephants will add to the scenics for the Zulu war games and may in the future be used in some Darkest Africa games.


I was not so lucky with the Hippo and the Giraffe both were to big to be useful in their current form. So the Hippo lost his body and got a slap of paint and became a waterline model which seems to have done the job and it now fits in quite well, the Giraffe, well that has been added to into the bits box for now.

Monday 24 January 2011

Mk III Ambulance


004, originally uploaded by MrTeld.
Not really what I had planned as a second post to the blog, but having just made a new Flickr account and finding I could post uploaded pictures straight to the blog from flickr I thought i would give it a go.

So here is is the first picture uploaded to Flickr a lledo conversion of a Vauxbeers draft cart to a Mk III ambulance. Taken from a line drawing in Michael Barthorp,s the zulu was a pictorial history.

The plan is to use this as a recovery point during TSATF games so there is a chance of patching up any wounded figures that make it to the ambulance and get them back into the fray.

Saturday 22 January 2011

The first post

Well here it is the first post, and what better day start the blog but on the 22nd of January. On this day 132 years ago the two of the most memorable actions of the Zulu war took place The Battle of Isandlwana and the Battle of Rorke's Drift.  
It is the films made depicting the actions at these two battles that I watched time and time again while growing up, that are on the whole  responsible for my Interest in the Zulu war and to a larger extent my interest in military history and war gaming.
So on to the project well this is my second attempt at playing the Zulu war , the first attempt with the black tree 28mm figures stalled very early on, only a handful of  British line and about the same of Zulus were painted before other period  caught my eye and the project was put on ice.
My Interest was re sparked with the introduction of a new company Empress miniatures and there new range of 28mm Zulu war figures, The sculpts looked superb but after doing a bit of research it was evident that the Empress figures were not really compatible with the Black tree figures that I already had in my collection so I was in a quandary about how to proceed  this was quickly resolved upon visiting partisan and seeing the Empress figures in the flesh, the fist small batch of empress figures were purchased and the Black Tree  Brits were put on E-bay. The Black tree Zulus being held back for now knowing just how many Zulus I was properly going to need just for small skirmish game.
The project was at this stage  going to be a little side picking up the odd pack of four Empress figures  and slapping a bit of paint on them in between my other projects, This all changed after a trial purchase of one box of the war-game factory plastic Zulus. Suddenly the prospect of being able to do the Zulu war skirmish with lots of Zulus was a real possibility.
So all other projects were put on a back burner and for the last year I have been “on and off “ busying myself with this project.
Ok enough of the blabber time for some Pictures 


What better picture to start with than the one I have used as the banner. Here we have the Empress miniatures
“Hollywood” Rorkes drift character pack,  a must have pack for me as I just love the film.

here we have  Private Henry Hook,Chard, Bromhead and Colour Sargeant Bourne.AKA James Booth , Stanley Baker,Michael Caine and  Nigel Green
avalable from :
of course as well as the Hollywood charector pack Empress also do the "real " Rorkes drift charector pack.
containing the same charectors as the hollywood pack as they rearly apeared on the day of the action at rorkes drift , Chard, Sargeant Bourne,Broomhead and private Henry Hook. 
Sorry for the quality of the picture with this one will look at putting a better picture up some sometime in the future.

well that will do for the first post,all that is left to do is to raise a glass in memory of all those fought on both sides in the actions at Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift on this day 132 years ago.