Mahdist Gunners

Some eagle eyed viewers of the post reviewing Jack's colonial armies spotted a set of Madhist gunners and I have had a couple of questions about them and whether they ever went into production.  The simple answer is 'no' they are my conversions.



I have to confess that once Bob laid out all the figures we started asking ourselves why Jack never got around to making certain figures, and why over all the years we hadn't noticed?  

We had gone over the thorny ground of 'Senior Command' command figures with him lots of times, but in Jack's wargames they really didn't count, so you only come across them in the ACW range.  Same with Standard bearers and the struggle even Stuart Asquith had trying to get him to make them for the colonial range.  I still remember Jack shaking his head and saying they never had them and finally bowing to pressure and making them but never casting or adding them to his collection.

Anyway, back to what struck us as missing.  On the Mahdist side we both felt they would benefit from some artillery. Guns were captured during the war and turned on the British and Egyptian allies.  From what I have read gunners were often Egyptian artillerymen captured and forced to work the guns or indeed deserters/converts to the Mahdist cause.

Having done lots of conversions for my S range armies I figured it must be possible to do the same thing for the Jacklex figures.  Looking at the figures on the table, I came to the conclusion that the simplest and quickest way to give the Mahdist some gunners (we had plenty of guns!) was to use the Indian artillery figures.  They have turbans after all so I was a good way there, Mark Lodge (jacklexminiatures.com) very kindly set me a couple of sets and I set to with my scalpel and sandpaper and removed all the belts and pouches, not to difficult.  I then added a little bit of 'green stuff' to hang down from the turban and already the figures looked different.  I them added more 'green stuff' to extend the jackets.  The paint job hides a multitude of sins as I can never seem to get it right with that stuff!  Jack always used 'Plastic Padding' so I am going to try that in future.  Anyway, in terms of conversions I made two crews, we didn't need lots and all eight figures didn't take very long at all.  The longest bit was waiting for the 'green stuff' to harden.  Yes, exactly like watching paint dry!  

This has spurred me on to do a set of head swaps to give the Egyptian/Sudanese contingent a set of gunners in white with red fezzes, should look rather fetching, using the British artillery figures as the basis.  I will post some pictures once they are done.