Avernos' Rorke's Drift

Painting the British troops is relatively straight forward the only real issue being in the detailing of the uniforms. Once again these were quick paint jobs with minimal work that I’m now going back to complete. Some colours can be varied and because my plan is to use an Army Painter Strong Tone dip I’ve taken that into account with some colours also.

on the left we have a line rifleman and on the right we see an officer. The jacket is red and the trousers blue velvet with the unit facings in green on the collar and cuffs. Things to note are in the details though. The officers collar facing is around the whole collar while the ordinary rifleman is only at the front of the collar. Also the piping on the jackets is different as you can see below. I prefer to avoid using straight white as it’s too stark even when dipped it looks odd to the eye.

Helmet and equipment. The tropical pith helmet was issued in white as was the bread bag and webbing. These were stained down by the men on campaign using tea and coffee, to make them less stark. If you want you can leave them white in which case ivory. I decided to use the buff for the helm and let the dip stain it darker. If you wanted to you can also use Buff for the webbing, but I wanted the webbing in a white colour although initially I’ve painted them grey and will apply the wash then highlight with a white afterwards to leave some shading. This is just for the Hollywood look of the game.

Loose ammo pouch, bayonet sheath are black, while the canteen body is best painted in a light brown, for which I’m using heavy brown.

before and after a dip.

next up is basing, I’ve decided to scrap my usual method of sanding, painting and then applying flocks and grasses. I’ve a lot to do and time is of the essence, so to this end I’ve mixed up two types of sand, some small ballast and stones, a green flock and an autumnal static grass. I mixed the sand I needed and then started adding the flock and grasses and stirring with a finger until I reached a consistency that looked right to my eye. Then I pva’ed it down to some test models. I can go back and add larger dried tufts and turf blend if time permits.