A French column for Congo

I was lucky enough to get the Northstar boxed "French Foreign Legion Expedition" set for Christmas. The figures are by Artizan Designs and are really nice castings. The set consists of;

Your Characters

The Explorer
The Scientist

Your Auxiliaries

Two Bearers

Your Groups

Soldiers
Trained Askaris
Askaris
Ruga-ruga

So, after spending so time on other things, I finally got round to doing these, apart from the two bearers. I made a mistake over the leather belts and pouches on the legionnaires, because they really should be black, but I am happy with the finished articles.

First, the four Soldiers (legionnaires in tropical khaki uniforms), the Explorer (with the pistol) and the Scientist (in the white kepi).

Next, the five Askaris, who are Moroccan fighters with muskets;

Five Ruga Ruga with muskets, although one has a shotgun and another what look vaguely like a smoothbore cavalry carbine. It all makes for a nicely varied bunch of mercenaries, though;

And finally four Trained Askaris with rifles, who I have painted up as Tirailleurs Algeriens;

Overall, I think these look pretty good. I tried to keep to a fairly limited palette for the two sets of Askaris, based upon the pictures on the website, which I think helps make the column have a unifying scheme, and tried to make red a reasonably predominant colour on the Ruga Ruga, again like on the website. The brown leather on the legionnaires still annoys me a bit, though, but I am not going to go back and repaint them with black. In any case, some pictures do show brown leather equipment, so maybe both options are OK.