Shining some light into Darkest Africa

I’m starting with the elite unit that will also contain the army general’s base.  They are the savannah knights – horse curtains galore!

These are the savannah knights as produced by North Star.  On the back row is the general and his imam.  These last two are Perry Miniatures from the Sudan range.  The Fulani style emirates were Islamic expansionist which partly explains their progress eastwards across the lower Sahara.  Therefore, they sometimes claimed to be fighting jihad as a reason for attacking pagan neighbours.  They were major players in the trans-Saharan slave trade so that was the ultimate objective when fighting non-Muslims.

The first issue with the North Star minis is the white metal spears:

Here we see the 3-part process of taking the bendy spears and turn them into something we can game with.  The big, broad spear blades are characteristically Sudanese and it would be a shame to lose these so I cut them and the balancing butt counterweights off both ends.  I then cut some similar gauge brass rod to a suitable length, (aren’t tin snips just great?  So much better than hobby wire cutters.)  Then a pin vice was used to drill out a hole in the blade and counterweight and then superglued the spear together.

And here we have the finished article with heads attached to horse and rider and spear in place.  I converted one into a standard pole by making it a bit longer.  I also swapped the butt weight for a spike from the Perry plastic standard.  This might look a bit too long but I’m a fan of LBMS banner transfers and they can often be quite big so I want to leave enough room for an impressive looking one.

The standard basing in DitDC is 60x30mm group bases with either 2 or 3 figures mounted onto each base.  Now this is a bit of a problem for me as I have a significant collection already based individually on 25mm rounds as I play Congo and other games with the collection.  I was also a bit troubled by the aesthetics of a small rectangluar base to represent skirmish or tribal warriors.  Without formal training to form ranks, warriors tend to group around friends or leaders in loose groups.  No straight lines evident.

As I needed sabots anyway I looked for ones not contained within regular shapes and both Warbases and Charlie Foxtrot do them.  I need 2 and 3 figure sabots, ideally with a similar frontage, as close to 60mm as I can get.  This is what got delivered:

Warbases look like this.  Disappointingly they are wider than 60mm but even more problematically they aren’t a consistent frontage either, the 2 base sabot is around 70mm wide and the 3 base one is nearer 80mm.  Now I’m very sure Warbases would happily make some to my specification but I’ve not got time for that so on to the next:

Here is Charlie Foxtrot’s version.  Pleasingly the 2 base and 3 base versions have the same frontage.  Even more pleasingly they are 60mm wide.  Sold – I’ll use these ones then 🙂

As an additional aside Charlie Foxtrot give you the bases that are cut from the sabot section, Warbases make you buy them separately.  That’s expensive when basing an army this size.

Next issue was cavalry unit bases.  Again the target is 60mm frontage.  All of my collection are based individually on 25x50mm rectangles.  I ordered 2×1 regimental bases from Warbases to see if they would work:

Perfect.  60mm bang on.  Sold.

So that’s unit basing sorted.  Charlie Foxtrot for the infantry and Warbases for the cavalry.

Time to get started as spring is here.  This is the army I’m working on.  If you have Death in the Dark Continent this army is based very loosely on List 11 – Bornu.  Specifically we have:

1 Unit Protected Heavy Cavalry (5 bases)
2 Units Arab/Kanuri cavalry (5 bases each)
2 Units Shuwa Arab warriors (8 bases each)
2 Units Kanembu warriors (5 bases each)
1 Unit Mungu archers (5 bases)

This will give us the recommended force of 300 points.  As usual I’m a bit off-piste here as there are no Shuwa infantry in the original list.  I wanted to bulk the force out but had used up the available infantry and suitable shields I already had for the Kanembu warriors.  I then looked into their neighbours and found that the Shuwa Arabs mentioned in the list were also known as Baggara Arabs in the east.  They were the nomadic Arabs that occupied the territory along the southern edges of the Sahara from the Nile to Bornu.  These can be represented with the Perry Sudanese Tribesmen plastic box.  Perfect, and they only mean a minor tweak to the original list.

Working clockwise from top left we have the Arab light cavalry, Shuwa Arab warriors, Kanembu warriors, Mungu archers, Savannah Knights who include the general and finally the part painted plastic Shuwa Arab cavalry in the bottom left corner.  Also on the front row is an Arab camel kettle drummer.  This will be used to indicate the special rule “Drums”.

As you can see there is plenty to go at.  Mostly bare metal/plastic and work to do even on those with the Perry plastics and Savannah Knights not fully built and the Foundry Kanembu metals needing some greenstuff work to make the distinctive head coverings you can see in the cover art.  For those who are interested the Savannah Knights are from North Star and the part painted plastic cavalry in the bottom left corner are Gripping Beast.  Top left corner are Perry metal Sudan Baggara and Crusades Bedouin cavalry.  There are a half a dozen Agema miniatures metal Nubae in with the Perry Sudanese, these are now produced by Footsore Miniatures.

NB: Use of Geographical terms. 

I think it helpful for the modern reader to have a clear idea of where this army is based and who they are likely to fight.  I will therefore make reference to modern states (like Chad) and geographical place names.  However, historically the map was vague at best and featured many areas of unknown territory, both to colonial forces and the local warlords.  Therefore, I’ll follow historical convention and refer to the area that this army is based in and will fight over as “Soudan” which covered the area below the Sahara from modern Mali right the way across the continent to the lands of the upper Nile, modern Sudan.