I Have Malays and Dayaks in 15mm

 

You don't often see 15mm Malays and Dayaks. So, despite the poor lighting I thought you might like to see these. 

I don’t really know who made these. Maybe Frontier or some other long vanished outfit. Falcon are a strong candidate. I say that because I have some Falcon Manchus and I can see a similarity. For the purpose of this post I'm going to call them Falcon.

Now, the question is what to do with them?  Initially, I thought TMWWBK and I still might try that. On reflection I’ll begin with Pike Mans Lament. It won’t matter as far as basing goes. Of course I could mix and match a hybrid system.

Before we get into that. Let’s think of the opposition. I’m minded towards a touch of Flashman’s Lady.  British Marines and Sailors then. Probably from Minifigs. I intend keeping that Force quite compact 24 Marines, 12 Sailors and a Ships Gun. 

Dayaks with blow pipes.  I have two types Falcon and Grumpy. The Grumpy ones are shooting.

These fascinating weapons blew a poisoned dart into the target. They were also used for hunting.  The poison induced paralysis. I’m going to field these in groups of 6 as high quality Skirmishers or Commanded Shot. Note the plug bayonet effect. Faced with close work the Dayaks liked to plug a blade into the barrel of their blow pipes.  Then they had a spear.

It might be fun to have blow pipes hits take effect in the next rather than current turn. That in turn raises the interesting question of what a unit does with living but paralysed comrades. Carry them and reduce firepower or leave them and reduce morale.  As I write this I can feel the influence of Yellow Ribbon.

Let’s consider skin colour here. I have used Oriental Flesh from Coat d’arms and given it a light wash of nut brown. It looks quite light complected. I’m happy enough with the result as jungle dwelling Dayaks don’t see as much sun as you might think.  Sea going pirates would be another matter. I should say the figure on the left is an Irregular Miniatures African.

On to the spearmen. These look dandy, one pose of course. That's how it was back then.  What they need is the typical Dayak shield.  Quite, but where from? I had a Dayak dilemma. See what you think of this. 

Not bad I think. What I did was take images of actual Dayak shields.  I reduced them and then printed them out two images side by side. Then I cut them out, folded and glued both sides together with PVA White Glue. Once dried they were glued to the Dayak.

The bases you see here are unfinished. I want them to look Jungley.  As yet I know very little of what jungle ground looks like. We will be seeing the complete Malay Dayak array shortly.  I'm working on rating them according to Mr Mersey.

The British Sailors and Marines will take a bit longer. I find uniformed troops mostly do.