Guernsey Foundry figures, available in the US from The Foundry, (440-871-4587 or fax 440-892-5887) 1549 Marview Dr., Westlake, OH 44145.

Bryan Ansell sent along some further castings for his forthcoming "Darkest Africa" range some of which are available now. As you can see from the ad on page 10, at least some figures are available now. Some of these figures look like they were part of Stanley's expedition into Uganda looking for Livingstone or into the Congo looking for Emin Pasha. The two Askari's pictured in last issue look like Baker's "40 Thieves" body guards from his expedition against the Sudanese slavers. I can't wait for more of these figs to be available.

I assume most are in blister packs now. At the bottom of page 10 are some of the future offerings.

The six shields pictured are:

1. Kanembu - footsoldiers of the Bornu Army from Lake Chad, wood shield
2. Azande, N.E. Zaire, patterned wickerwork shield
3. Masai, Tanzania, hide painted shield
4. Bari, near Juba in southern Sudan, hide?
5. Mangbetu, N.E. Zaire, rectangular wooden shield
6. I have no idea, rectangular wood and wickerwork, but I think it might be a tribe from the Congo.

Some of these shields are passible for other tribes they are so close, sometimes just a matter of paint color. These are what they look like to me, it is very possible that I am completely wrong, my source is Christopher Spring's African Arms and Armor, Smithsonian Press, a must have book for anyone interested in gaming colonial Africa and Stanley's Wonderful Adventures in Africa, Illustrated a definite must read for gaming in this genre, as would about anything he wrote concerning Africa.

The three Africans, as opposed to the Zanzibari appear to be preproduction models of spearmen? They are fairly well animated.

The Zanzibari is really great - shouting, pointing with a double barrel shotgun you could almost pull the trigger on. He is also carrying a bugle which is interesting and would allow for a large variety of uses for him.

There has been some really very nice modelling work done on the porters/bearers. As I wrote before these paint up very nicely. I use Testor's Rubber for most of my Africans, the color is just the right dark brown I want, although I do vary them some with other dark browns. The Zanzibari's will probably be a medium or lighter darkish brown. The baggage on their heads paints up great and is easy to detail as it stands out in the sculpture so well. I can't wait to see the rest of the Darkest Africa Range.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

I can see it now, my first game in exploring Africa, Abbott and Costello in "Darkest Africa Screams". Don't suppose Bryan has any plans for producing those two figures????? to accompany Stanley???

The other gentleman scanned, is of course not part of the Darkest Africa set, unless it's for "Tarzan meets the Rennaissance." Naah! If you haven't seen these figures before from the Foundry and you are interested in the period check them out they are quite nice. But I'm still not changing to that period.

Large Illustration/Advert of Darkest Africa Range (slow: 119K)

Darkest Africa Figure Listing: Part One
Darkest Africa Figures

This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com