(http://coolminiornot.com/pics/pics15/img4db04bd355e0a.jpg)
Hi,
I should probably explain...
My name is James Travers, I'm 23, and I've been painting figures for about ten years. My Dad and his friends regularly participate in ‘RISK evenings’, which I occasionally attend. Essentially, this consists of vast quantities of beer, wine and arguing as well as, to some extent, playing Risk. My Dad also co-manages ‘RGC Classic Carss’, a Norfolk based classic car hire company, and is the proud owner of a 1930s Rolls Royce Phantom II Safari Wagon, among other things. This has lead to their group regularly wearing full safari regalia, pith hats included, while attending various car rallies where, it seems, Risk and beer also feature heavily. This naturally led to plenty of references to the classic ZULU film, such as awarding the player controlling Africa a pith hat, which he must wear. And all of this of course led to me spending an insane amount of time producing RISK ZULU!
Every time I’ve played Risk I’ve thought about how I would go about creating a bespoke version with painted figures. My Dad’s 50th birthday seemed a great opportunity to finally have a go. Obviously at this stage I hadn’t planned properly or thought remotely about what would actually be involved. I decided that essentially expanding the theme into the wider ‘Scramble for Africa’ period, as it has often been dubbed, seemed appropriate. This game is based roughly on the period 1879 to 1900. In addition to the British and Zulus I had to decide upon the remaining four factions, as RISK uses six. The French and Germans held the next largest African empires, and I felt that, while their empire was in decline, the Ottomans were still involved in North Africa, plus they could help reflect the other Islamic peoples present in Africa at the time. Similarly, the Zulu and Ashanti could help represent the many native Africans who resisted European colonisation. The Ashanti seemed like the perfect choice for the sixth faction after reading more about them. They had more success fighting the British than even the Zulus, defeating them not just in several battles but in a consecutive series of wars. Furthermore they were (and, indeed, still are) from Northern Africa, while the Zulu are from the South.
I’ll explain each bit briefly below:
The Board
The board is the same as the original RISK board, in the sense that all of the territories correspond to those on the original, and have all the same boarders. So, for example, ‘The Cape’ is ‘Alaska’ on the original, ‘Suez Canal’ is ‘Indonesia’ and ‘Rorke’s Drift’ is ‘Central America’. All territories therefore have the same borders, and all ‘continents’ remain essentially the same, just visually different. The gameplay therefore remains unaffected, which I felt was important to keep the game playable. It took a long time to arrange them to fit in accordance (broadly) with historical territories! The board was designed in Photoshop, then printed onto plastic and laminated courtesy of Phil Burton Photography. The map underneath was simply found on Google, and I used Wikipedia for references of several historical maps. Apologies to all serious historians!
The Figures
Choosing the figures was obviously a big decision, and luckily I found a manufacturer who produced all of the figures I would need, plus hundreds more besides, and at a feasible cost. Pendraken figures proved hugely detailed and perfectly proportioned, even compared to many larger scales I have seen (they are only 10mm). A few of them had to be converted: the Zulu and Ashanti canons are Mhadist canons with a few headswaps and some zulu troops thrown in to help them match. The Zulu and Ashanti cavalry are actually Ancient Numidian cavalry painted to match. I painted them in batches of 25 men, or 10 horses or 5 canons at a time. I found, as many have said that brighter colours and high contrast is best on smaller scale figures, and ‘line’ highlighting helped retain their form. As a former wargamer I found this scale really satisfying to paint, as I could finish 10 or maybe 20 men in an evening to a standard that I was happy with, and that did the figures justice. It was great to see legions of soldiers appearing on my desk so quickly. Seeing, however, that I had a total of 480 figures to finish, it did take a couple of months!
Cards and Boxes
The Cards were designed in Photoshop and printed by a local printer. For the icons I simply traced paintings found on Google. Colour coding helps when setting up troops. The boxes were bought online from a company called ‘Boxy Lady’. They’re amazing value for money, I recommend them highly if you ever need something similar. All the green felt, including that on the board, was bought from a local shop and stuck on.
I think that’s about it! I reckon the total time taken was around 300 hours, thought it’s hard to be exact. I’m really satisfied with the end result, and I hope you have enjoyed reading about this project. It was completely insane and I won’t be doing anything like it again! (I give it a month).
If you want to see any more of my work (mostly fantasy/sci-fi stuff I'm afraid!) the link to my Coolminiornot page is below:
http://www.coolminiornot.com/browse/page/1/submitter/JamesTTravers (http://www.coolminiornot.com/browse/page/1/submitter/JamesTTravers)
Thanks for reading,
James
Other Links:
RGC Classic Cars: http://www.rgcclassiccars.co.uk/ (http://www.rgcclassiccars.co.uk/)
Phil Burton Photography: http://www.philburtonphotography.co.uk/ (http://www.philburtonphotography.co.uk/)
Boxy Lady: http://www.boxylady.co.uk/ (http://www.boxylady.co.uk/)
Stunning James - and absolute genius =D> =D> =D>
This is the sort of thing we all think about doing but never quite get round to...
ABSOLUTE GENIUS :D :D :D
Well done sir...
That really is fantastic! I remember your initial enquiry last year, but never expected something like that. I'm guessing your Dad must have been pretty chuffed with it then?!
=D> :-bd
Great work young un!
I want one! :D
Wow - excellent :D
WOW! :o
That is absolutely stunning! A brilliant idea from concept to finished product !!!
I have been collecting RISK games since their first release. I have one of every version released and your RISK ZULU has to be the best I have ever seen! You Dad must be a very proud man to have a son honor him in such a way.
Great Job and a very beautiful job indeed >:< >:< :-bd :-bd
Real good stuff.....
ianS
Speaking as a Dad, I think your Dad would be really chuffed by this. Its well done (actually, very well done) and has obviously taken you a lot of time and thought. Brilliant - now, a small criticism and a suggestion. Zulus just didn't have artillery or cavalry but the Boers did so why not put the Zulus all on foot, scrub the Ashanti and substitute them for Boers (all mounted and with artillery too). As the Americans say, just my two cents, overall eleven out of ten!
Just been looking at this again, its stunning. Have you considered it as a commercial venture? Obviously there will be issues with copyright etc but even so, it might just fly; sell internet direct, upper end sales, could be a winner.
Thanks for all of your comments!
Cameronian - I had thought about having all of the Zulus on foot, but as historical accuracy was never really that important with this project I decided in the end to keep things consistent. Similarly with the Boers, during the period they weren't a major player as such (not like the British or French, for example). While it would have been great to include them I felt that I wanted to reflect the native African people resisting the Europeans. So while the Zulu and Ashanti didn't form vast empires to the same extent, along with the Ottomans they could hopefully represent people from across all of Africa between them. This then in a sense gave me three European and three 'native' teams. I could always add Boers as a seventh option in the future (in orange, of course!) but I fear my girlfriend will in fact kill me.
Clearly I have taken a lot of historical liberties - the Ashanti would have dressed nothing really like the Zulus for battle, and apparently used firearms, but for the purposes of the game I liked the idea of having visually a couple of Zulu teams. Also, while the British, French and Zulus retain a colour scheme appropriate to their historical counterparts I had to be more creative with the others. The German uniforms are based on Franco/Prussian war and World war I/II uniform colours, hence making them the black team seemed a good choice. A yellow leopard print colour seemed like a great choice for the Ashanti, again forming a kind of alternative Zulu scheme. For the Ottomans I wanted a quite regal look, and the green ties in nicely with a lot of Islamic flags/symbols. Many territories have clearly been shifted around to get them to fit, and again names like 'Rhodesia' were used, whereas until about 1900 it was 'Zambezia', for the sake of flavour.
I'm very lucky to work in an environment where I have access to good printing sources. I felt that the board and cards had to have a professional finish, rather than looking like they'd been scrawled on cereal packets, or people wouldn't really play. The only issue that came up in our first game was that it's a bit too difficult to tell the colours apart on the board, so I plan to stick a few more washers on the bases and paint the base rims a brighter colour.
In terms of commercial value it drove me half mad painting the figures, and based on the time it would take a single copy would cost thousands just to cover the time alone! To be honest I'm not planning on doing it all again any time soon!
Thank you again for all your great comments, any questions and of course I'll be more than happy to answer.
James
Yes I'm a bit like that too; massive push for perfection leaving you with that 'never, ever again' feeling. Well, its your baby James and its a cracker, well done again.
Very nicely done. Definitely inspirational for some projects I've got in mind with my Zulus and British.