Back to the German-Herero War Painting Table: What's on Deck in 28mm?

The last four months spend researching and developing a skirmish scenario based on the historical battle of Uitkomst have been an exciting and rewarding interlude for me, as I hope they have been for those of you who have been following along with the 12 part series that resulted from that effort.  Although I am considering tackling a second battle scenario from this period, I don't have the bandwidth to take on that project right away: certainly not while also addressing the huge backlog of figures that await my paints and brushes.

It won't surprise readers of this blog that I now possess a large number of Boer figures in 28mm scale, mounted and on foot, that I should start painting in earnest so I can begin play testing the Uitkomst skirmish.  They are a selection of mounted (Black Tree Designs, Foundry and Redoubt) and dismounted Boers (all of the above, plus North Star Africa and Empress).  The Black Tree horsemen are just slightly larger than Foundry's but usable together.  Redoubt's are both stylistically different and as a rule slightly too small for use with Black Tree.  For Uitkomst I'll be using five of Black Tree's and three of Foundry's mounted Boers, and a probably will favor North Star and Empress for the foot figures.  Redoubt's Boer horse holder is not ideal, with extremely long legs and a rough and ready sculpt, but I have not yet found a good alternative.

I've got 12 Mounted Hereros to paint (Empress Natal Native Horse with the spears removed from their quivers), and a really neat idea for one of the Herero's most effective war leaders - Assa Riarua.  Then there are the German civilians who fought at Uitkomst (represented thus far by figures from North Star, Foundry and Redoubt), and a growing number of vehicles with draft animals, drivers and figures representing native handlers (Treiber) that are needed for scenarios such as Groß-Barmen in the Jones/Alvarado Herero War Scenario and Rules Book

I may start, however, with a scenic vignette, featuring an ubiquitous sight characteristic of the terrain in central and eastern Hereroland, along with one of its associated denizens.  It provides a welcome contrast to an otherwise flat and mundane landscape of thorn and savannah, not to mention a bit of cover.  Your guesses are welcome in the comments, but you will need to wait for the big reveal...

Scenics: Herero Cattle and Herd Boy

28mm Northstar Africa! Native Cattle

 Cattle were everything to the Herero, a pastoral people for whom these animals were sources of wealth as well as subsistence.  Even with the decimation of their herds during the Rinderpest outbreak in 1897, the Herero had tens of thousands long horned African cattle (with more than 20,000 estimated to have been brought together at the Waterberg prior to the battle of Hamakari).  These herds consumed vast amounts of forage and could drink a waterhole dry.

These 28mm animal figures are by Northstar Africa!, with gaps between the cattle heads and bodies filled with epoxy before painting.  The herd boy is part of an African Women and Children pack  - DA027 in 28mm from Wargames Foundry's Darkest Africa line.  They are painted with subtle shading. I may add another layer of ground cover sand but otherwise consider them finished.  They will travel with my Herero forces as they maneuver in the field.

Scenics: Two Southern African Vultures

Vultures and carcass by Wargames Foundry (GPR63)

I'm a conservationist by trade, and did a lot of birdwatching in southern Africa in the 1990s when I lived and worked in Namibia.  It is not surprising, then, that my German-Herero War in miniature project includes scenic elements representing the indigenous fauna.  Yesterday I finished this scenic vignette of two vultures squabbling over the barest of bones.

The miniatures are from Wargames Foundry and I painted them up as two vulture species that occur in Namibia today, though they are less common than they once were.  On the left is a whiteheaded vulture (Trigonoceps occipitalis) and on the right is a lappet-faced vulture (Torgos tracheliotus).  They are competitors, and the lappetfaced vulture is dominant and will drive the other away from the food source: in this case the dismembered remains of a quadruped carcass, perhaps a small antelope, army mule or a calf from the Herero cattle herd.  I think this will add a nice, somewhat macabre touch to my gaming table.

Scenics: Springbok Herd and a Lion

Antelope from Irregular Miniatures Painted as Springbok

I'm working through my first batches of German Schutztruppe, both mounted and on foot, and it's taken me longer than the first Hereros did because I've been struggling to get the paint mix right for the various shades of faded khaki and corduroy brown (not to mention the whites of their eyes).

Along the way, I've taken the opportunity to use some of that excess paint to work on some scenic elements, particularly wildlife.  That has been a welcome change, using different techniques, and I'm quite pleased with the results.

Here are some antelope figures I picked up from Irregular Miniatures and have painted as Springbok.

They work fine for 28mm scale, though they are well fed little antelope and my partner teases me about my "goats".  I am very fond of them, as they remind me of the herds I used to see in Namibia.  I used a palette of orange ocher mixed with sand yellow for their fur, and dark brown with grey highlights for the horns.   I have other antelope that I will get around to painting - gemsbok and greater kudu,- and my gaming table could start to look like Etosha Pan (which would really only be appropriate only for the attack of 500 Owambo warriors on a handful of Schutztruppe at Fort Namutoni).

The springbok seem blissfully unaware that there is danger nearby.  I picked up this lion in a Big Game Hunt set by Foundry that also had a great German figure in a Sudwester hat and a monocle, and some Africans in European clothing who have gone off to join the Herero forces.  I used various tans and sand colors for his tawny coat, dry brushing the mane and using a stone gray for his underbelly.  I am especially pleased by his eye, the same orange ocher as the Springbok with a black spot in the center which I added with the aid of a round, pointed toothpick.  I have more to do with the groundwork on this figure and will be adding tufts of grass, but he is quite splendid and I guess I'll have to get some crouching lionesses to add to his pride.

African Wildlife for a German - Herero War Gaming Table

North Star Africa! Kudu (modified to create cows from bulls)

Having spent several years living in Namibia in the 1990s, and having made a career as a conservation professional, it is not really surprising that my interest in modelling the German - Herero War as authentically as possible on my gaming table extends to getting the scenic and terrain elements right, including wildlife.

It is tempting to sprinkle the board with clusters of the classic African game and predator species on offer from two excellent manufacturers - Foundry and North Star Africa - but even with a personal knowledge of the wildlife that these areas of Namibia support today, it would be a mistake to assume that those animals had the same ranges and populations in 1904.

Two significant factors need to be considered.  The first is the impact of extensive harvesting of wildlife resources that occurred after European traders arrived and firearms were introduced to the regional economy in the mid-19th century.  In Land Filled with Flies: A Political Economy of the Kalahari (1989); Edwin M. Wilmsen makes a compelling case that even the most remote areas of the Omaheke sandfeld were well integrated into regional trade networks that produced hides, ivory and ostrich feathers for both African and European markets. 

Ostriches in particular were valued by the Herero and Matabele for their white feathers and the beads made from egg shells, and  in Europe for their black feathers until that fashion faded in the 1880s and ostrich farming started in South Africa.  More than 300 elephants a year are thought to have been hunted in the 1870s and 1880s in the western Kalahari alone.  These two species would have been rare to nonexistent in the ephemeral Swakop River catchment where most of the engagements in the German-Herero war took place.  The range of Namibia's healthy elephant population today only extends to one battle site: Fort Namutoni in Ethosa National Park.  Rhino would also have been under extreme hunting pressure at this time and were not found on the Waterburg Plateau where southern white rhino have been established today.

The other major factor was the regional Rinderpest pandemic that decimated both cattle herds and even-toed ungulate wildlife species in the region between 1896 and 1897.  The Herero lost up to 90% of their vast herds, along with what one study calls "unquantifiable destruction in the vast, free-ranging populations of fully susceptible wildlife."  These included some species such as cape buffalo and hippopotamus that require perennial water-bodies and regions with more rainfall than these parts of southwest Africa provide, but also giraffe and many antelope species such as kudu that thrive in central Namibia today.  It is estimated that most of these populations crashed to levels that were too small to sustain the virous and may have taken many decades to recover.  The worldiwde eradication of Rinderpest was declared just two years ago.

Wargames Foundry Vultures

So what would have been left?  Certainly there were predators, though these would have been subject to hunting for reasons of stock theft as well as for hides.  The region has cheetah, leopard and spotted hyena today, and all of these are available from either Foundry or North Star.   Lions would have been rare indeed.  It would have been a good time to be a vulture, though, and Foundry has an excellent set with two of these birds that I recently acquired.

I have also purchased the baboons and intend to get the warthog sets made by NorthStar (from a great series of African animals formerly produced by the Honourable Lead Boilersuit Company), as both of these species would have been present in 1904 across this region.  There might still have been a few oryx (gemsbok) in the lower Swakop or Omaruru drainages around Klein Barmen or Liewenberg, and North Star makes these, along with kudu, wildebeest and giraffes though they would be very scarce.  There might have been Hartmann's Mountain Zebra in the lower Swakop as well, though today the range of this endangered species along Namibia's escarpment has been augmented by artificial water points.

North Star Africa! Warthog AA08

I have not found much from  manufacturers in 25mm or 28mm scale to represent some of the smaller ungulate wildlife such as steenbok, diuker, impala or springbok that would have been supported by this landscape before the Rinderpest outbreak and do well here today.  Irregular Miniatures does make a gazelle that could be painted as a Springbok, but that's about it.  Nor have I found any good storks or hornbills. 

Venturing out of this period into the realm of Fantasy offers other unusual options in 28mm, some of which will work for this period.  You can get a falcon, raven, vulture and hedgehog (along with a cat and a baby dragon ) in Reaper Miniatures "Familiar Pack VIII.

I can imagine  fashioning the nests of social weavers in my acacia trees, and constructing termite hills the color of clay.  That project, though will have to wait for another time.