"Ngapuhi Scouts, New Zealand Musket Wars " Topic

The following is the beginning of my next side project, a small Maori war band depicting the Ngāpuhi tribe from the New Zealand musket wars. On release of the new Empress Maori Wars miniatures being a New Zealander (Kiwi) myself I immediately fell in love with the miniatures and despite already have far too many unpainted miniatures I couldn't resist starting this side project. Ngāpuhi is a Māori iwi from my local Northland region of New Zealand, and centered in the Hokianga, the Bay of Islands and Whāngārei (my home town). I have used Back to Basixs Woodland bases to depict the thick rainforest like conditions of which the Maori often loved to battle utilizing gorilla warfare style tactics and I almost went cross-eyed painting the traditional patterns on the blanket ha.

Anyway I hope you enjoy and please feel free to comment, share and follow :-) More on my blog as per usual halflinghouse.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/ngapuhi-scouts-new-zealand-musket-wars.html

Very nicely done indeed, says one New Zealand Wars modeller to another!

I've never seen a Maori quite that dark-skinned.

Those are the AFRICAN Maoris.

No, those are 19th century Maoris. Pre European expansion.

Is that an explanation for the skin colour, Phillius? Pre or post European expansion, they've always been Polynesians, not Melanesians.

Thanks for the comments.

The skin tone may be a tad dark but the photos also make it worse than they actually are.

Having grown up in New Zealand most of my life I have commonly seen Maori with skin tones close to this. As Phillius mentioned these are Pre European expansion Maori and with other 200 years of inter racial mixing between the Maori and the Pakeha (White man)the skin tone of the Maori of today would differ substantially to that of the early 19th century. I believe that New Zealand has differed greatly to many other colonized nations in that there has been very high levels inter racial mixing to the degree that there are few if any full blooded Maori left in existence. Further more European diseases such as influenza and measles killed an unknown number of Māori: estimates vary between ten and fifty percent which would have further weakened the pure blood lines.

However; I will looked to try tone down the skin colour in future models.

What about comparisons with other Polynesian populations that have experienced much less inter-breeding? Tongans, for instance, aren't particularly dark.

nice job, I think the skin tone is fine, te light blue background actually cools the picture to much IMO.

the terrain on the bases looks promising, etched metal fern?

cheers
Matt

Very nicely done. I especially like what you've done with the piupiu, and the taniko designs – they both stand out very nicely.

Can I ask, do Back to basixs do those ferns? I'd love some for my own empress maori. Played some Muskets and Tomahawks today, and am inspired to get cracking on painting my maori to try out NZ wars with this ruleset.

re: skin colour, I'd personally do them a bit lighter. More for asthetic reasons, though i.e I'd like their features and tattoos/moko to stand out more with a contrasting/lighter skintone. Maori can get that dark, though – I have cousins and an uncle who are very dark-skinned, to the point of looking melanesian. My grandmother's family – the Matene's around Bay of Islands – had/have many dark-skinned members. My grandfather's family – the Werekake's (Wilcoxes) from Hokianga – were much lighter-skinned.