Burnaby & Fiends! (sic.)

Firstly, I must make yet another apology!  I am afraid that life here at 'Awdry Towers' has been turned upside down of late!  We are all well, but having made the decision to have some much needed decorating done a rather alarming structural fault has been discovered!  Subsequently the 'Saintly Mrs. Awdry' and myself have been confined to the back room, surrounded by many of our possessions, now boxed, with everything else that we own covered in a film of plaster dust!

I had hoped to try and find a way through to the painting table this morning, but alas no.  Due to the unexpected discovery earlier in the week, I am now joined, on this somewhat grey and damp Saturday morning, by a couple of plasterers keen to push the job on.  All of this upheaval has meant that I am woefully behind on my correspondence, my apologies.  

That said, I did manage to post my first entry in the Challenge proper on Thursday!  For someone who rarely plays a game, I seem to be amassing a decent collection of skirmish rules and so when 'Warlord Games' released 'Blood On The Nile', a Sudan Black Powder supplement, I just had to have a copy.  To sweeten the pill somewhat this splendid edition came with a rather wonderful free miniature representing that quintessential Victorian hero, Frederick Gustavus Burnaby.  The Colonel, perhaps not unsurprisingly, has been mentioned in dispatches here at '28mm Victorian Warfare' before - The Man, the Legend, the Title Banner!  A splendid chap in many ways and a fellow Old Oswestrian, but alas the  similarities end here.

Having painted the man himself it seemed only right and proper to give him something to scare with that shotgun of his and so five 'Perry Miniatures' plastic Mahdists were hurriedly assembled and painted.  For those of you following the progress David Docherty Esq. in the 'Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge' will understand why I was somewhat embarrassed to submit such a paltry few,  but they were part of an entry that I’m pleased to see finally posted.

Just from a technical point of view this was the first time that I had painted 28mm troops on a stick, often working on all three at once.  I appreciate that this is nothing new, but was quite a revelation for me, especially when I compare this latest stand of five with the previous efforts and of course from an arm's length there was no disc enable difference in quality!