The Forgotten

With my recent post about my friend Mal’s collection of American Civil War miniatures which recently saw the light of day after some 30 plus years of inactivity, I thought it only fair to tell my own tale of forgotten miniatures. Jasper recently posted about his Fallschirmjaeger for Chain of Command which took a year to finish. Sadly, I can confess I have a story which can match that.

I remember going to SELWG back in 2002 (I think). There I spotted a group of Darkest Africa miniatures on the bring & buy going for a bargain. My friend Paul Houghton and I agreed to go halves and bought it up. At the time, we were trying the Foundry Darkest Africa rules (which later evolved into Death in a Dark Continent) which we played for a bit before getting distracted by another project. Some models even received some paint! After Paul passed away in 2006, I inherited his miniature collection along with his ‘half’ of our Darkest Africa horde.

Come 2016(it’s only been a decade!) now there’s two new games on the block. Studio Tomahawk’s game Congo is a really neat game set in the same Darkest Africa setting of the original games. Osprey’s The Men who would be Kings is another good set which can be used for Darkest Africa, Zulu Wars and other colonial periods.

These new games have inspired me to get out these old miniatures, or rather try and remember where I left them and dig them out! This was quite a task in itself, I know I had most in an old Games Workshop case, but the more I’ve dug, the more I’ve found. I’ll be finally getting some of these painted - or with some of them, finish what I started all those years ago. Some will be dual purpose as well. The Zanzibar Slavers, for instance, will also be very useful stand-ins for irregulars to add to my planned 2nd Anglo Afghan war project.

I’ll keep you all updated how I get on with renovating these old miniatures.