French North Africa - A New Project

Having recently completed (for now) my 10mm ACW and WSS projects, I've been looking around for something new to do next. My mate Mark had been on at me for us to start a new project, he'd suggested some ancient armies for Sword and Spear, but we already had 5 or 6 armies between us which I didn't think we'd got enough use out of yet. I was leaning towards something asymmetrical, perhaps 19th Century colonial, but in 10mm or 28mm? Still puzzling, I played a couple of colonial games with guys at the Tring Wargames Club using Black Powder and thought it really worked and was a lot of fun, so I decided this was the way to go. Still wondering about what to actually do, we already had club members with both sides for the Zulu War and both sides for the Sudan. I could go North West Frontier, but that would need some new terrain, and quite big terrain at that!

As these things happen, that's when I discovered Little Wars Miniatures and their 10mm Beau Geste range http://lancashiregames.com/littlewarsstore/beau-geste.html (ironically I found them via a discussion on the Pendraken Miniatures Forum). I've already got 10mm desert terrain for my Sassanid and WW2 armies, so that's one less thing to worry about.
Spotting a really nice little fort now available from Dreamholme Ebay Desert Fort convinced Mark so off we go!

Looking at the army packs, which offered quite a good deal, I thought half a pack would give enough figures for a small basic game of Black Powder. So I ordered one of each and Mark and I split the contents. The Tuaregs are really nice, with a good mix of poses. The French are also good, but a bit limited as the range only has the Legion infantry and machine guns. It is missing mule mounted legionaires, artillery and cavalry such as Spahis and Chausseurs d’Afrique, but I think I can find suitable proxies in Pendraken's 19th century ranges.

This is my share of the haul.

I'm going to use 30mm frontage bases, the regular infantry will have 20mm depth and cavalry and irregular troops will have 30mm depth. In Black Powder terms, I'm thinking of using 2 stands for a small unit, 3 stands for a standard sized one and 4 stands for a large unit. My first thought was to make the French troops standard sized units and the Tuaregs a mix of standard and large units. But, given that a basic Legion unit will be representing a company I'm veering towards using small units for regulars and skirmishers and standard sized units for warbands.

So I'm starting off with some Tuareg warriors. Looking for painting inspiration online, blues are very common, with splashes of other bright colours like orange and green. This is going to be a colourful army!

 As they come out of the pack. These ones are fairly flash-free, others need a bit of trimming, but so far it's all been very easy to snip off from the figures.

 Undercoated in grey.

Painted riflemen. I painted the rifles and flesh in similar, but subtly different shades, but after a wash they have ended up looking pretty much identical.

A finished unit of Tuareg skirmishers.