They sell these as one offs without bases at shows and on eBay for the princely sum of £2 a piece - which is a great deal by anyone's reckoning.
The photo above shows spear and shield armed warriors.
Wargamers for both artistic and entirely practical reasons do like any army/regiment to have a unified style that defines it as distinct from other armies/regiments on the table: GW are masters at this. But photos of African warriors from various armies in the field, as opposed to in dress regalia, suggest they were neither uniform nor necessarily particularly distinct so it is not entirely unrealistic to use a mixed appearance, general purpose force as a money-saving fudge.
Except for artistic and practical purposes of course.
Colorful and great looking African warriors!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Phil.
DeleteDear John,
ReplyDeleteThe one thing that strikes me is that the assegai, the double-ended stabbing spear, was unique to the post-Chaka Zulus, was it not? Not that this is a real problem in a war game, but it's an exception to the general all same-same appearance.
Dave
Dave, actually, no. Originally an assegai was a javelin and was turned into the short stabbing spear by a number of African tribes from all over the continent. We associate it with the Zulu because, well, we were on the receiving end. Chris Peers has an excellent book on the African warriors of the late 19th C.
DeleteLike the figures John; as I understand it in the field the more extreme bits of the regalia were left at home and only the shields were of a uniform colour (predominantly black for unmarried and white for married regiments ) one other point the shields got smaller as time went on because they were running out of cattle to make new ones as large as the old ones or so I understand
ReplyDeleteI hadn't heard that about a cattle shortage. Makes sense.
DeleteDear John (and Shaun),
ReplyDeleteI'll be darned. I guess I'd better get Peers book.
By golly, I'm going to be an extremely erudite corpse one of these days!!
Dave
Aint we all. :)
Delete