Trying out Templars

At Vapnartak I picked up some figures from a new (to me) manufacturer, Templar Wargames. Looking at their website they seem to make quite a range of 28mm figures but it was a small range of 20mm modern types who caught my eye. Note by the bay that, contrary to the labels on the packaging, the website is templarwargames.com and not templarwargames.co.uk.

They make a range of modern British troops. These will allow you to tailor your models to your chosen regiment; you can choose to get troops with helmets, berets, Tam-o-Shanters with hackle or Special Forces with a variety of doubtless unofficial headgear. 

By way of opposition for the British Templar make Islamist and African irregular types. Whilst chatting to the owner I picked up a couple of packs of these to see how they would blend in with my Andreivian collection.

Just off the workbench is this Islamist medium mortar team.

Wearing keffiyehs and salwar kameez, they fit nicely with the Elhiem Al-Qaeda models I use as Arab volunteers fighting alongside the Andreivian Turks.

They aren't as nicely proportioned as, say, AB Miniatures; they're a bit dumpy and the hands are rather cartoonish but they fit nicely with Elhiem or the old Dave Allsop-designed Hotspur minis.

The mortar comes as two castings; the mortar tube and the bipod. These are each cast with half of the base and they slot together very neatly to make a good, solid model. I decided to base them all together on a 40mm MDF circle with some sandbags I'd made previously out of left-over Milliput. 

The castings were reasonable; I just had to do a little cleaning where the mould half alignment was not quite perfect.

I also picked up a pack of Africans. I had wanted some guys with AK-47s but in error I grabbed a pack of eight chaps with RPGs. I've since decided one of them would make an excellent Andreivian militia leader. I quite like the idea of a squad- or even platoon-leader who routinely carries an RPG-7.

As you can see, there's nothing particularly African-looking about this chap. In fact I could see him passing very nicely as some kind of southeast Asian.

The pack contained eight figures; four pairs of duplicated poses. Most of them are more obviously African in appearance:

I think I'll paint this chap up as an African volunteer fighting with the Andreivian Turks. I'll probably use one of each pose and put the rest (when painted) on eBay. I don't want to side-track myself into wargaming Angola, Sierra Leone or Somalia; that would defeat the whole point of inventing Andreivia in the first place!