Time for some Old School colonials!
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My Legion forces can use more mounted opponents, and the camels suggested to me that they would readily take some speed paints. There may well be photos of these out there somewhere to provide ideas about the colors these warriors would have worn but I never found anything of much use. The models themselves also turned out to be quite fiddly and I'd be surprised if many of these enjoy active combat theses days.
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First, I bought these decades ago and, as you can see, they are quite a
mess our of the blister. The lead in the lances is very, very soft. So
soft, I'm not even sure the little wrists and hands would satisfactorily
accept drilling and then the pins for replacement. Also, nearly every
camel had those big chunks of flash and evidence of mold shifting were
evident on most of them. Still, the figures are very cool, but I don't
expect them to endure a lot of play without problems. They are doomed to
die you might say.The other issue is that they don't sit right at all in the saddle and lean way back. Absolutely unusable in that pose. Just a mess in the execution of figure design. I could kind of get them to work if I cut the pommels off but they still needed propping up in the back. In the end, I left the pommels alone and put a pillow of epoxy for them to sit upon. It bled around the outsides here and there so I just painted them as if it was more robes. Many would have just said these are not worth the effort. And for many years I felt the same.
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I used Contrast or Speed Paints for nearly everything but the bases and some freehand work on the shields and flags. Here I did them with a dark blue with black turbans, saddle cloths and decorations, all in red. There's a common image of a shield pattern but it is on a trapezoidal shaped shield. I intend to use these for Sword in the Desert so I will have to mark casualties on the spearmen. I don't track wounds on natives because I use these rules for engagements far larger than they are intended for. I also don't intend to use this mat for any of these games.
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One thing about the difficulty in finding information about the "uniforms," it often means no one can prove I did them wrong very easily.  |
For these, I did the turbans and the saddle blankets in Ratling Grime, some Murder Scene for the decoration on the reigns and camel necks, then a mix of reds, purples, and tans for the robes.
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As pictured, these 12 man units are comprised of 6 spears, 3 rifles and a musician, flag and officer. I could easily make a 15 man unit of 12 spears and command along with a 9 man unit of rifles and they interchange easily. I don't particularly bother with trying to strictly build units to the rules. These tribes, and the legion itself, used what they could get.
All in all, and once based, I think they are a nice, colorful entry to the collection and will force the Legion to either race to their objectives are take some turns to drive them off. The delicate lances bend like a bread tie so not sure how long they will last but it's easy enough to grab these without touching them if one is careful. I still have 2 more platoons of Legion and some Spahis to do for the French as well as horse mounted Tauregs and the Bedouin half of the camelry so there'll be many more mounted figs to come at some point. I do enjoy doing 15mm because they paint up very quickly. I'm continually disappointed in how speed paints look on some of these but my earliest Bedouins were done all in washes so they kind of match.
You can see all of French Foreign Legion pieces here.
As always, thanks for looking - questions, comments and followers are welcome and encouraged! I'm doing more and more on Facebook so follow my page there too! https://www.facebook.com/One-of-My-Men-Became-Restless-100659928063858
