Remember the Foundry's Darkest Africa movement? I finally did.


First up, I owe a deep felt apology to Larry F.

...Long, long ago, in the before time, there was a game store in Pullman, WA named Wally's World.  (Sadly, both Wally and his store are no longer with us.).  I would meet there with others to actually play historical wargames in a public forum.  Here I was introduced to games like Spearhead and Piquet (And Jon's homegrown Anatomy of Glory.  Still my favorite set of Napoleonic rules.)  I introduced others to Battleground WWII.  Games of Fire and Fury and Johnny Reb III were free to be had.  These were indeed the halcyon days of historical war gaming in the Palouse.  

Larry was one of the regulars at Wally's World and was also a coach at the University of Idaho.  He had gotten into Wargames Foundry's Darkest Africa line and was hankering to play some games with them.  One of the figures he had was of Teddy Roosevelt on safari, and I asked him if he was interested in trading for it.  (He was always my favorite Roosevelt.)  I am not sure how the conversation turned out, but a couple of weeks later Wally handed me a plastic bag from Larry.  In it were the figures you see here, a witch doctor, the Roosevelt figure and a note with painting instructions on it.  I primer-ed them did the basecoats and then set them aside intending to ask Larry some questions.  Then I never saw Larry again.  I understood at the time he took a position at the University of Alaska.  I put the figures in a box and promptly forgot about them in the sands of time.  Feeling guilty of the entire affair, I have not been able to bring myself to do more than clean Teddy's casting.  (Somehow painting him felt like theft.)

With my recent Renaissance in miniature painting, I decided to finally finish these models.  I found the Witch Doctor only this week, so he will take a bit longer.  I think I got them to about where I want them, so now I need input for the guy who asked for them....


So Larry, if you ever read this, I hope these are what you wanted.  If not, send me a line and I will make the necessary adjustments before forwarding them to you.  Otherwise they have moved out of the box and onto the display shelf until you run across this post in some wildly unlikely coincidence.  Stranger things have happened.

Comments

  1. Those were the days! I bet it was about the same time that Larry made a similar proposal to me. In exchange for a couple of ECW books, I would paint several fistfuls of Foundry Sikhs. Luckily for me (and Larry), I painted and delivered my before he vanished into the arctic.

    Great memories. You probably have a few good Wally stories too. I know I do!

    By the way, nice job on the figures.

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    1. Thanks. Yeah, we have 4 game stores in the Moscow-Pullman area now, and none compare to Wally's and even Hodgin's under his brother's guidance.

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  2. That would be so cool if you catch up with him.

    Last year, I managed to find the fellow who introduced me to miniatures when I was 16. We keep in touch by email and share stories about gaming past and present. I do hope you find and hear from Larry.

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