"The Petite Race for Africa" Encounter Tokens

Our game at MOAB included encounters scattered around the table for players to discover and/or stumble upon. Counters were required to indicate the locations of these encounter areas and rather than just using numbered discs I chose to represent the encounters with little skull totems.
Each encounter token had a different number of skulls, one through eight, with each indicating a specific encounter.
The tokens were based on mdf discs, piled with some rocks and the odd clay urn, and some baboo skewer stakes, upon which the skulls were placed. I also added some copper wire here and there to represent rope.
I looked at many providers of 28mm skulls but in the end, surprisingly, I found the box of Citadel Skulls were the best proportioned and value for money.

The finished encounter tokens

The tokens before painting

Citadel SKULLS

"The Petite Race for Africa" Pregame Photos MOAB 2019

So in preparation for the upcoming convention game at MOAB in Sydney Australia, I did some "glamour shots" of the miniatures and some of the terrain we'd be using. This was purely to grab people's attention as a sort of teaser and an attempt to convince players to sign up and register. I assume it worked because we had a full compliment of 8 players sign up for each of the two days.
Sadly the majority of these miniatures were NOT painted by me, but by Sven, the friend who puts on these events with me. Sven is a great painter and has the ability to churn out figures like there is no tomorrow in large healthy batches. We both have our strengths, but I could never compete with Sven's painting output and to the quality he achieves. He is available for commission painting and can be reached at here.
Most of the figures are from the Wargames Foundry Darkest Africa range while others are from the Northstar Africa and Copplestone Castings ranges. All great sculpts either way.
The last image is the short spiel that sets the background to the game which players received as part of their game information on the day.

"The Petite Race for Africa" African Tembe Build

One of the main terrain pieces required for our big colonial game at MOAB this year, "The Petite Race for Africa", was a slaver tembe, which was to be center stage.
For those who don't know what a tembe is, its simply a fortified structure used by both native Africans and slavers for defense. I believe it was first mentioned in the memoirs of Stanley on his journeys throughout Africa.

I spent a lot of time planning the tembe because I knew it was to play such an integral part in the scenario and needed it to look good and to be as functional as possible.
There are a lot of examples of other people's efforts in tembe building and that's where I started the build, scouring the net looking for images. The Lead Adventure Forum was a great source of inspiration.
After I had decided on the look I wanted I gathered together the materials. I chose foam-board for the walls, a mdf base, real twig palisade, along with the classic towel for roof thatching. 
From there the build itself was relatively easy - just like a big jigsaw puzzle. Pictures tell it better than words. And because someone asked the Tembe measures 240mm wide by 360mm long and 55mm

 

Gaslands: MOAB 2018

After a late change in plans this years we opted to run Gaslands instead of another Very British Civil War game. It turned out to be an OK decision.

We managed to put on 4 games in total, one of which featured 10 players! The feedback was very positive and we received many comments from our players, who were all wonderfully enthusiastic about killing each other's cars and were all great sports.
A complaint about the shouting and cheering coming from our table was just the icing on the cake.

The amazing terrain was produced by Adam of The Rook and Raven who is more than happen to take advanced orders on the crowd filled bleachers and gates. 

WHAT A LOVELY DAY!!!