"If at first you don't succeed ...." Topic

Even though someone else in my wargaming group is building the Afghans for our Northwest Frontier colonial games, I have been wanting a unit of the Foundry Afghan Highlanders ever since I saw a picture of them in a battle report on TMP. I tried emailing Foundry several times to see if I could special order the figures with no success. I watched Ebay for weeks on end and posted several ads on Bartertown all to no avail. Then finally, my latest Bartertown ad paid off in spades. Not one, but three people responded with offers to sell me the desired figures. I just painted up a unit and I am pretty happy with the way it turned out. The officer is a conversion from a British Highlander. I don't think Foundry ever made a command pack for this unit.

Foundry did make an officer for the highland guard. In the catalog, it was NW55 wearing braided frock coat and pith helmet. Nifty figure.

Ahhh that figure came with one of the sets I bought, but I assumed it was a more generic command figure since his uniform is so different from the regular highland guard.

DontFearDareaper,

Awesome job! Your Afghan regular Highland Guard unit looks great and I love your custom conversion job on the officer, though I'm also bummed to hear Wargames Foundry did not respond to your request for some of their more exotic but still extremely well-sculpted and characterful figures.

The command figure JonFreitag referred to and which you recognized as being included in your order is based on the officer seen towards the right of this period photo:

But it's certainly still possible another officer in the unit could have worn an Afghan "kilt" himself.

Mad Guru,

Thanks for posting that period picture. I painted the unit above using the color plate in the Osprey book that shows the "kilts" as striped and not checkered. Happily I have a ton of figures now so I'll paint up another version with checkered kilts and the officer shown in the picture. I may do another conversion of a British highlander and replace the pistol to make him a flag bearer. I always like to do a little something to make my units unique when the opportunity presents itself

Dave

Sounds very good, Dave, and you are very welcome! I also enjoy customizing my units as much as possible, and I also converted one of my Afghan "Highland Guard" riflemen into a standard-bearer.

There is actually some question as to whether the Afghan "Highland Guard" wore red coats or green ones, and there's some evidence there might actually have been two different "Highland" regiments in the Afghan regular army, which has always left me thinking I may some day paint up a second regiment in green, to supplement my own red coated Afghan Highland Guard.

Funny, the most common visual reference I've heard used to help describe the kilts of this unit is the "red and white tablecloth from an Italian restaurant." I have to admit somehow the fact that your figures' kilts have stripes rather than checks escaped my aging eyes! They look very good as is, but if you want to you could always touch them up with a second set of red lines going from side to side.

I could and since I have a ton of these figures now I may follow your lead and do a second unit it green or I may sell this unit to recoup the cost of buying the figures in the first place and do another unit with the Foundry officer and the British highlander conversion as a flag bearer. The rules I play (To the Last Cartridge which hopefully Ambush Alley will eventually get around to publishing) only calls for 8-12 figures for the unit.

I am nothing if not picky about my miniatures. Thanks to Mad Guru's and JonFrietag's helpful posts, I have modified my unit to more closely resemble the period photograph:

Very nice work DFDR!

I really like your flag for the unit as well.

Yes, great job on the paint touch-ups AND the flag! I've got a version of that exact same flag for one of my own Afghan regular army units.

And now with a wink and a tip of the hat to Mad Guru, I present the Afghan Highland Guard in green coats!

Hah, incredible! You are the fastest wargaming paint-brush in the West, Dave, and probably the East as well! Very nicely done!

hehehe, thanks. We are going to break out ye olde playtest rules this Sunday and we'll see how the lads fare when they try to push the British infidels out of Afghanistan's fair hills and dales Mayhaps I'll do up a battle report, haven't done that in a while either.

You need to tell everyone how I wiped out that green-coated unit in our game on Sunday! ;-)

Again, thanks for the game. It was nice to trot out the rules again!

Martin