Hererowars Scenarios Figure Requirements

Dr. Roy Jones has posted some excellent new material on the Hererowars website, including the order of battle for the figures needed to run all 13 scenarios in the upcoming book that he and coauthor Eric Alvarado hope to have to the printers before the end of the year.  I am pleased that my lead pile has gone a long way toward addressing many of the unit requirements, but with an acknowledged weakness in mounted troops and native auxiliaries.  

While the Schutztruppe were mounted infantry, they generally fought on foot, so the requirements call for a single mounted unit of 8 Schutztruppe (1officer, 1 NC, six troopers).  The Herero, who also fought largely on foot, did have cavalry engaged in at least one scenario and 24 mounted figures are needed.  I have 8 (plus a horseholder with four more fighting dismounted), so this will take a while.

As for the Witbooi and Rehoboth Bastard units, these appear to be dismounted troops, and the challenge is to distinguish them from their Herero adversaries when the same (uniformed) figures are likely to be used on both sides.  The Bastards are perhaps the hardest to represent appropriately, as period images provided by the indispensable German Colonial Uniforms website show them in feld caps and modified 1896 Kord Waffenrock uniforms that are very pale colored, and suitable figures are not produced by any of the readily available manufacturers.  As my aim to take every step possible to make faithful representations of the uniforms and units involved in this period, I may need to wait on the Bastard unit until there are better figure options.

Photo © Frankfurt University Koloniales Bildarchiv

I am considering getting some epoxy putty to make minor adjustments to figures, either to have trousers cover puttees on some of the Brigade Games Great War in Africa figures or to make wide brimmed hats for figures wearing fez.  This would open up a large assortment of African figures for use as Herero troops as well as more figures in German uniforms for both sides.  I may try this experiment with an NCO unit of Schutztruppe askaris and see how it works, though the neckshade on the Askari tarbush fez thast three of these figures wear presents modelling problems.  We shall see.