Quick Victorian Officer Conversions

Thanks to eBay I've been able to duplicate my Foundry British Zulu War command figures relatively cheaply and I'm just playing around with them tonight before starting some conversions tomorrow.

I really like these Foundry figures not only because they are so full of Zulu War character, but they are equally incredibly versatile for any gamer interested in Darkest Africa, Victorian Pulp and VSF gaming. In fact, some headswops, maybe change the rifles to the SMLE, a C20th paintjob and you have some extra characters for VBCW.

For gamers of In Her Majesty's Name, you have a nice little adventuring company just there. Note that the official Foundry pack also includes a soldier in shirtsleeves. To make these figures even more interesting, the two officers armed with swords (top right, bottom left) come with separate left arms and the pack includes a sprue with an extended arm firing pistol, crooked arm with pistol and an arm with binoculars.

The easiest conversion I'm going to do is to the officer firing a pistol,shown top left. I'll  swop his head with the one taken from the NCO (bottom middle) and add a Zulu shield. That's it. A simple conversion yet I think you'll agree he's now brimming with even more character.

It might be worth pointing out that being officers, the majority of castings have no equipment beyond their pistol belt. This would make it easy to add some additional IHMN furnishings such as steam driven exoskeletons, electronic ocular enhancers, ornithopters etc. And if you want to make them usable on the streets of London as well as the Veldt, just replace the sun helmets with Glengarries which are available as separate heads from Empress Miniatures.

Hope that's given you some food for thought. At the very least It's got me wanting to create some interesting figures, regardless of final use on th table and paint them. A good thing, as I barely touched a brush in 2013 and a small discrete group of figures like this may just break the anxiety that's now compounding the problem. In addition, you know, it's just occurred to me that I entered my first painting competition back in the seventies with a 54mm Cliff Sanderson Zulu War British officer. Maybe just maybe there's an omen in all this.....and it's a new year after all.

Cheers
Mark