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As some already know, I'm a huge Rhodesian Bush War geek. I've long wanted to game this conflict, but the last of rules and miniatures for the period has been a stumbling block. Well, earlier this year I submitted a request for 28mm Rhodesian Light Infantry figures to Eureka Miniatures (a mid sized miniature company out of Australia). Simply put, Eureka takes requests for specific projects and if enough interest is shown in it, the figures will enter their production line. Well, enough people signed up for them and now the new Rhodesian line is in the works. I've been working with the company owner and the sculpter, providing ideas, research material, and the like. it looks like these will be finished and available in about two months.

Well, needless to say I'm excited and have been working on other aspects of the games I'm planning. The hardest of these has been the army lists to convert my favrite WW2/Modern skirmish rules for the era and locating enough 1/48th scale Alouette III helicopters to use in my games. This weekend I started working on a more pleasant task: painting up the bad guys for my games.

Here are some test paints I whipped up on Saturday.


These are figures from The Assault Group's African Militia line painted up to represent ZANLA terrorists. The Zimbabwe African Liberation Army (ZANLA) was of course Robert Mugabe's organization (yes, THAT Robert Mugabe) and was one of the African nationlist groups involved in the Bush War. They were a very rag tag bunch and tended to wear a mixture of civillian clothes and Communist camouflage. I've seen a number of blogs and such online were other painters have taken this to mean bright colors like red and yellow. (we are talking about the '70s here...) But photographs I've seen of captured terrorists and corpses would seem to indicate that the civillian clothes they wore were sensible dark colors. They were not the most sophisticated bunch, but clearly they were not completly stupid.

I particularly like the figure that is wearing part of a blue denim Mozambique army uniform. You really cannot see it in these photos, but I made an attempt at East German "raindrop pattern" camo on his pants which I think turned out very well. The biggest disapointment in these was the leader figure with the machete. I tried to paint up his jacket as Portuguese camo (they got alot of this from the new Communist goverment in Mozambique after the Portuguese left in 1975) but it turned out way too dark. But these are test figures, so I'm entitled to make mistakes, right?

Anyway, since these test paints I've painted up 16 more and plan on doing about 50-75 total. If there is any interest, I'll post more of these as they get finished. Eventually (when Eureka's line is released) I'll be doing Rhodesians as well. They are going to be a bit more difficult to paint as I'm still trying to get Rhodesian camo to look right on a 28mm figure.

These are the second army on which Im trying out a whole new meathod of painting built around Reaper's line of inks and washes. (the first being my recently compeleted Blood Angels)

So what do you lot think?

TR

That some nice camo. You should keep posting. Do you also do WW2 british or americans.

Glad to see you're sticking with your new painting style! So much more natural than the old blacklining method.

I wish the photo was a bit clearer, but I dig the East German camo trousers. I know the pattern you are talking about and it looks like you did a pretty good job replicating it in 28mm. Maybe you could get a close up of the Mozambique/DDR uniform guy so we can see the camo pattern a bit better?

They definitely have a ragtag look, which is perfect for this kind of thing. Also, you should upload these to the Dakka Gallery dude! We need more historical stuff on Dakka!

That looks pretty cool, will they be played as Imperial Guard or for a different gaming system?

Pennywise: I've done both for Flames of War. But I have only painted up WW2 germans in 28mm scale.

Gitkikka: If I wanted your opinon, I would beat it out of you!
But seriously, I agree. It does look better and honestly it's not all that much slower. I got 16 of these guys painted up in a couple of hours yesterday. I have not tried this method with 15mm figures yet. I'm curious how they will turn out. I may have to retain the "toy soldier" look for them.

Hordini: Thanks. The problem with re-photographing the the figure with the East German camo is much the same with the pattern in the real world. At any kind of distance the actual camo print is not visible and it just looks like the base color. That's why East German camo is widely regarded as one of the least effective patterns in history.
I'll have to look into putting these up in the gallery.

Napalm: I have actually thought about using some of the Rhodesians when they come in as veterans in my IG army. But the figures you see here are for a different game system. I'm using the modern supplement for Iron Ivan games's "Disposable Heroes and a Coffin for Seven Brothers" WW2 skirmish rules.

TR