In my most recent posts I have been going on about the influence the Flashman books have had on my take of gaming and painting miniatures. In a combination of showing newly painted miniatures and rambling on about the hobby, I present you with this day's post.
A few years back I first heard about the Flashman Papers, not living in the English-speaking world tends to get you behind on these kind of things. The 12 books comprising the Flashman Papers were partly bought online and partly when visiting the UK with school, Waterstones Oxford: thanks heaps!
Anyway, when I do not have any new books on my nightstand, I tend to re-read ones I have in the bookcase. So a few weeks ago I reread the Flashman books and since I now have a bit more knowledge about the events Flashman experiences, I could now put them in perspective a bit more. When first reading the books, the conflicts Flashman gets himself into, were not all that interesting to me in that I was intrigued but not enough to get into gaming them. Lately the Crimean War is something I have been painting (in 15mm no less) and have done some figures for in 28mm as well.
Reading the books and most specially "Flashman in the Great Game" reached out to me somehow and I got drawn into the Indian Mutiny... That is not something I had ever expected to happen. The brutality of the conflict is not my regular cup of tea, nor is it anything for me to have mr T. Atkinson rambling around in anything but his trusted red coat, that said I really connected with the conflict and the great miniatures available for it by Mutineer Miniatures, Foundry and Iron Duke.
Yes, that's right I started a new project and am now in deep in the Indian Mutiny... At the moment I have a small amount of Foundry miniatures and a slightly larger amount of Mutineer Figures. I am currently aiming at collecting two Sharpe Practice forces for the Allahabad Moveable Force and it's adversaries.
While I have a Flashman in India figure (just like the one in the bookcover above) it is from the same line as the figure in lancer outfit shown in a previous post. Studio Miniatures have a nice regular 28mm figure of the same pose and uniform. Apart from that I have obtained one of the Wargames Illustrated Giants of History line Flashmans and an Eureka figure is on it's way.
With help from friends and the excellent information on the Iron Duke site, it really is brilliant, I have now quite enough reference material to get the uniforms historically correct, that said; I want the figures to look right but I also want them to look good. Therefore I am quite ok with stretching the limits and mixing in the odd figure in regular uniform and yes with a red coat.
Apart from the larger games using Sharpe Practice I would like to game smaller skrimishes using Flashy and perhaps replaying scenes from the books. I am now counting on those being solo games, but who knows perhaps in the future...
If this whole project has learned me anything it is that from now on, I am only going to collect and pain, what I like. No more painting and collecting figures in order to be able to play a game. No more painting stuff because it "needs" to be finished, it can wait till the fancy takes me for it again.
In a way this is really liberating and painting all these greatly exotic and thus very colourfull subjects really is grand!
Well I am not sure whether my ramblings here are making any sense but there you go! Keep watching this space for more progress on the Indian Mutiny front.
