The Return of the 'Desert-Loving Englishman'

A rather dramatic scene from somewhere in the desert - not sure what the Vickers gunner is shooting at though!

The first batch of figures have arrived from Irregular Miniatures for the WW1 Arab Revolt project. The Turks are very nice indeed although the horses for the cavalry need a fair amount of cleaning up – primarily flash so nothing serious. I needed to order some additional figures just to round off the organisation which will be as follows:

48 x Infantry based as 16 x 3

12 x Cavalry based as 6 x 2

4 x Infantry officers based individually

2 x HMGs with 2 crew figures

2 x 77mm field guns each with four crew

1 x Staff car with 2 foot officers in attendance.

The Arabs were slightly more problematic in this regard and so I need to order slightly more additional figures. The organisation is as follows:

45 x Infantry based as 15 x 3

12 x Mounted Camels based as 6 x 2

12 x Mounted cavalry based as 6 x 2

4 x Foot officers based 2 x 2

4 x  Mounted officers based as 2 x 2

I will also be adding to this three Rolls Royce Armoured Cars, possibly some machine guns assuming I can source suitable figures and some French mountain artillery, again when I have some more details.

The above collection is designed very much with the Portable Wargame in mind and so it can be seen that one can raise some very representative forces that are quite modest in size (and cost). Taking the collection forward I have in mind some Russian opposition for the Caucasus Front as well as the French Foreign Legion in due course. Both of these forces will be of a similar size to the above.

On a different tack the last of the 1:4800^th scale WW2 ships for the North Atlantic have arrived which means that work can begin in earnest on this project. The plan is to have all the models finished for this completed by the end of the year so that work can then commence on the Kurz and Allison Spencer Smith ACW project which will also include some scratch built ships for good measure.