Colonial Marines, Slavers, Dragon Born & a Fly Demon

I know it has been a while since I’ve done a post about miniatures leaving the lead pile to enter the ranks with their painted comrades. This week sees the completion of some French Colonial Marines, Arab Slavers, a Dragon Born warrior and a Fly Demon.

French Colonial Marines

First, let me begin by saying the French Colonial Marines were not marines – the elite type that serves aboard ships, and performs amphibious assaults. The Ministre de la Marine administered both the French Navy and the French Colonies. There’s the old saying that despots build armies and democracies build navies.

The uniforms of the Colonial Marines varied from the uniform worn by the French Army. For my gaming purposes, I’ve chosen to set my Colonial Marines in the tropics at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. This calls for kaki and white as uniform colors with a few officers still clinging to the dark blue coats.

These figures are from Old Glory’s Boxer Rebellion line. I purchased them several years ago when I first started Colonial gaming. They came in a bag of 30 – 2 officers, 2 musicians and 26 rank and file. The rules Colonial Adventures initially called for units of 20 figures, but on forums and in an errata, the author promoted 10 figure units, so I only painted 20 of them and left the other 10 base coated, but unfinished.

Well, I’m about to play a game of Colonial Adventures using French forces instead of my usual British and I’d like to use 20 figure units. Ten figure units play faster, but 20 figure units look more impressive. Anyway, in order to field 20 figure Colonial Marine units I had to finally finish these 10 figures.

Arab Slavers

As I mentioned earlier, in an upcoming Colonial Adventures game, I’m using 20 figure units, so I needed to paint a few more Arab Slavers to be able to field two 20 figure units.

These figures are from Wargame Foundry’s Darkest Africa range. Unlike the Colonial Marines, which were base coated, these figures had only been primed with black gesso. If you are going to get into Colonial gaming, Foundry’s Colonial lines are phenomenal – the figures are full of character and paint up well and quickly.

Dragon Born Warrior & Fly Demon

Finally, I completed two Reaper Bones fantasy figures this week. One is a Dragon Born or Dragonman warrior and the other is a Fly Demon. The strength of the Reaper Bones line is monsters & larger creatures such as these. The smaller sized figures – humans, elves, dwarfs, gnomes, etc., can be hit or miss in quality. The smaller sized figures I like to buy in person at a shop rather than on-line so I can see the quality first hand.

The Count

I know I’ve been slacking off in getting figures painted, but with the 17 figures painted today my total now stands at 234 figures painted this year. Here’s the break down:

• 40 28mm Fantasy Figures.
• 67 10mm Seven Years War Figures.
• 57 28mm Old West Figures.
• 20 28mm Colonial Era Figures.
• 32 20mm Spanish Civil War Figures.
• 18 28mm Science Fiction Figures.
• Rebased 11 28mm Science Fiction Figures.
• 35 Terrain Pieces.

Your comments, opinions, cheers and jeers are always appreciated – they let me know somebody out there looks at what I’ve written! No animals, plants or Floozies were harmed in the making of this post, though I did nick myself with the razor shaving my legs the other night.