Malian Ton-Tigi

 Just a quick post to show off this model.  Mainly so I can get the picture out into the accessible world and to spur me to give more details in due course!

Safe to say this is a substantial scratchbuild/conversion!

More later...

Mali mounts for Battle

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Steady progress on the Malian project has been made, and I can now add two cavalry units to the roster, the first being one of the centerpieces for the army; Horon Cavalry:

  

The Horon provided the elite heavy cavalry of the Malian Empire, essentially its equivalent of Knights or Cataphracts.  Evidence for their appearance is limited, but I took accounts saying they wore contemporary armour - either locally made or imported from north Africa - and rode armoured horses, and combined it with the look of later troops illustrated in the 1800's from the neighboring Bornu Empire, which was a late contemporary, and from modern tribal horsemen in the region.

 

The standard is the Banner of the Mali Empire as taken on Hajj by Emperor Mansa Musa in 1324.

 

It seems some form of Bamboo was used for lances, and it provides a nice look, so...

 

The padded armor and other parts are green-stuff applied directly to the largely terrible base models.  More on those below.  Hide Shields were made over plasticard formers with green-stuff, there are illustrations of shields this shape, which appear to be carried behind the rider on the saddle when not in use, suggesting a reason for the unique shape.

 

 

As alluded to, these are heavily converted.  I started with a set of the Gripping Beast Goth Heavy Cavalry, and I can't say I was a fan, apart from limited build options out the box, the detail was poor and the fit, terrible.  I wasn't sorry that I was going to cover 3/4 of each model up, I'd have needed to do a load of filling and trimming anyway.  That aside, I think I spent about 8 or 9 hours just on the kitbash elements:

 

Rather easier, and despite their simplicity much nicer basic models, were a second unit of Hat Industrie Almoravid Cavalry, painted as allied Taureg horse from Timbuktu.

 

There's only one small conversion here, but compared to the GB models, these still have more horse poses and don't require any filling either!

All this brings the core of the force up to 20-24 points in Lion Rampant, but I'm not going to rest on my laurels, I need a few options, and another centerpiece is being worked on:

Kitbashing

WIP

As should be evident, this is on its way to being a general for the force, Nobility appear traditionally to use Palanquins extensively in Africa, and illustrations of the Mande and the Empire often feature them.  This will represent a Ton Tigi, or 'Quiver Master', essentially a Malian General.  There's a long way to go on this yet, converting the foot figures into an Iman and a tribal musician respectively, adding a lot more to the already converted seated leader - an Outpost Wargames Services Inca!  With a head swap so far - and adding a bunch of opulence to his 'carriage'.  But that's all for another day... 

So far, so good..

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Building on an Empire

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Made more progress on the Malians, by painting some northern allies/subjects.  A unit of Tuareg spearmen:

Image from my Insta...

 These are Gripping Beast models straight out the pack.  I had a lot of fun with the various indigo colours for the clothes.  The shields are intended to reflect Hippo hide, which images show to be pretty dark, with a reddish-purplish hue.  The spears are brush bristles with flattened and shaped tips, I bought and cannibalised one yard brush head 20 years ago and it's still going strong, it'll outlive me!  The standard represents what is apparently the Mali imperial standard of the the period, but I can't prove that.

Of course with a burgeoning force, I need terrain; having done a bunch of palm trees, I'd been pondering how to go about convincing buildings.  I was both looking forward to the idea of some major scratchbuilds, and dreading the practicalities of doing so.

Glorious, tricky.

Fortune smiled however, and quite accidentally I came across the African range from Fogou Models.  This led to a very quick cost-benefit analysis and 15 minutes later I pressed fire on an order:

Looking good

With a neutral paint job these will be perfect for Mali, and pass muster for another 'secret' project.  The models are in a very strong resin, and dripping with texture, they should paint up a treat and I couldn't be more pleased.

All good.

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Painted Malians

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I know I seldom post nowadays,  but I'm not Idle.  The Malian project has seen some attention with the first two units now being finished:

Mandinke Bowmen

Fulani Javelinmen

Both units feature varying degrees of GreenStuff work, and represent my best efforts to research and represent a largely overlooked nation.  The bases are modelling clay, painted, much like the Scicilian Normans I did last year; I used a fairly exotic range of GamersGrass tufts to get an exotic feel to the bases.

Next up is a fairly simple unit of Berber spearmen, one of the advantages of Mali from a gaming and modelling standpoint is that it was a culturally diverse empire with many troop types available to it.  Down the line are cavalry and a novel command group; but they are a lot of scratchbuilding and some time away...

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People of the Grassland

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Progress on the Malians' has yet to reach the paint stage, but I did finish a fairly heavy conversion of another twelve miniatures:

 

These represent the various Savannah natives, converted to Islam in name at least, if not wholly in spirit.  Limited sources describe Javelin armed men, with a long spear, sometimes also bows and shields.  As there will be plenty of bowmen in the force I've opted to leave those off here, lest they appear armed to the teeth!  

These were originally Ila, from Northstar Miniatures Darkest Africa range; first order of the day being to chop off all their head dresses.  There was a lot of clean up on the models, due to a rather flashy mould, but the underlying sculpts are good, and physically, exactly appropriate.  

Upping my sculpting skills with furled headscarves and moulded leather shields, again based on a mix of limited primary sources and secondary interpretations.

That's two units ready to go under the brush.  My other major commitments are out the way (more on them soon) so I should press on!

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New beginnings, or Progress? First Malian's

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 Hello 2021 and all that.  Eff off 2020!

So, some way back I was talking up a project, and doing little else.  But I finally made a start.  Figures have been purchased, all destined for some degree of conversion to satisfy my needs, and the first handful have been prepared.

So what we have to show today is merely that stage of progress, but with a little discussion beside. 

Mandekalu Bowmen

From the limited historical records I've found to date, it appears the bulk of the Mali Empire's military strength was in infantry, predominantly armed with weak bows, javelins or spears.  Leather, and possibly iron helmets were issued amongst the infantry, but most other items were personally provided, with poisoned arrows being standard to compensate for the strength of the weapon.

My starting point here is some of the Wargames Foundry African natives with bows, decent models which have the advantage of the right sort of bone structure.  You may raise an eyebrow to that, but West Africans from what I can deduce do not look like Zulus or Sudanese, the two other readily available selections for African figures in 28mm,  These look, well, as right as is possible without attempting a lot of sculpting.

Then again, as is obvious, there is a fair bit of green stuff going on here, based on the handful of statues of these warriors and one good reconstruction by Angus McBride:

Mandinke by McBride

I added a selection of details to get the look, some had the more complex garments added, some helmets, and all the knife, sheaved on the upper arm.  The latter further augmented by sculpting and casting tiny knife models in UV-activated resin.  More on that another time maybe.

As a little artistic license, the unit commander gained some exotic feathers on his helmet, and they were done.  All ready now for a lick of paint.

But that will have to wait until some more financially rewarding tasks are finished...

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Researching Mali....

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Is not that easy.  Of course, if you want material on Western military history; or to a slightly lesser extent Arabic derived Muslim armies?  No problem.  Step south of the Sahara, and the material relating to before the colonial period is rather limited.

First off there are few good books on the subject, partly as there are few if any written histories or contemporary accounts out there.  It is possible there is more in French, but at this early stage in my project I've not been able to track that level of material down.  I've grabbed a couple of the limited English language material available; W.E Conton's West Africa in History Vol.1 and John Parker's African History: a Very Short Introduction; but beyond those there seems to be a split between material for the very casual reader and heavy academic volumes little concerned with military history.

At this point you have to give a nod to Wikipedia, who thanks to the enthusiasm of amateurs, and the inclusion of chunks of knowledge from other languages, can off a decent primer on many subjects.  It's generally reasonable material, as long as you check your sources!

No surprise, there are no ranges already available for the period and region, my intent now being to produce an army for the Manden Kurufaba, or Mali Empire, I have no obvious shortcuts to a fair amount of conversion work.  I did discover an article on the Mali Empire in Wargames Illustrated, issue 375, but the writer had done scarcely more research than I've managed in the past two weeks, and the mandatory pictures of figures were simply of Muslim warriors with vague 'I guess these would do with a different paint' statements attached.  Harrumph.

However, There are lots of models for 'Darkest Africa'  And some of these will work as a basis for some of the forces; also undeniably some Arab styled models will work as a good starting point, for cavalry especially.  However few if any of the plastic figures out there appear to meet my needs...

Image research was my next stage, to see what inspired, get some history together, and to work out how I could use the models out there. I'd direct the interested parties to my Pinterest board of West African Images:

 

I'm a big fan of Pinterest; it often beats Google for a general image search, as plenty of people are likely to already have curated what you are after, making is quicker to get a decent response.  And once you set up your own account, you can easily pin images straight from another site or search to you Pinterest board, from where you can always refer back to it.

I've managed to gather 40 or so images, and accompanying notes to give me some ideas, and from these, I've moved to my next stage in any project that 'breaks new ground'  Doing some of my own illustrations to get a feel for what I want to end up with:

Native Bowmen make up a large portion of the army

Heavy cavalry were some 10% of the army

Mali is an excellent basis for my purposes.  One of the Wealthiest Empires in History, having vast gold reserves; formally Muslim but with distinct African appearance and traits, and with many 'Pagan' troops fielded from the southern tribes and nations.  The Empire lasted some four centuries, conquering vast swathes of Sub-Saharan Africa, and having a semi-professional field army of around 100,000 men.  Plenty to get to grips with.  But as stated the source material for design is limited; hence the need for the working sketches above.  The Bowmen is easy, and as a basis for these I've opted to start with Foundry Africans:

DA084

These will need some added detail, but being pretty clean of anything that doesn't work, they are and Ideal start.

The cavalry and Spearmen are a mix of Tuareg and African influences, and so will be more of a challenge  No one range seems to be a perfect match - not least as the region only tends to get covered once the French Foreign Legion is involved - but I think the real fun will come from making something unique, so I'm okay with that.

Then there is the opportunity to add real oddball units like Knights in Full Padded Armour and masked forest tribesmen with poisoned javelins.  Even potentially a leader on a Litter. 

Aside from pushing some representation into my collection, and learning a lot of new, fascinating history, these are the sort of elements that get me excited for a project like this.

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