Sunday, November 4, 2018

North Star Rug Ruga

Outside of Bolt Action, my local hobby shop doesn't usually carry much in the way of historicals these days, so I was pleasantly surprised when some packs of North Star's Africa line showed up on the racks. In hopes of encouraging more of this, I bought several packs of the Ruga Ruga to create a raiding party who could support my German forces.  This was made up of two packs of extreme musketmen, and one each of packs 1 and 2 of the musketmen.


North Star Miniatures 28mm Ruga Ruga

The figures are full of character and and the sculpting quality is quite good. The castings had minimal levels of flash, though I found some of the details on the guns to be soft and one figure had a strap that wasn't cast properly (fixed with some green stuff).  However, these are minor complaints that can be hidden in the paint jobs.

Since I had two packs of the extreme musketmen (masked troops), I did my best to come up with varied paint schemes to hide the duplicates. 

North Star Miniatures 28mm Ruga Ruga

North Star Miniatures 28mm Ruga Ruga

North Star Miniatures 28mm Ruga Ruga

I didn't catch it at the time of purchase, but it turns out musketmen packs 1 and 2 are actually the same body dollies with different head variants (and the same running dolly is used by the extreme pack). I would have preferred more varied poses in my squad, but at this stage there was nothing to do but again try to vary the paint schemes.

North Star Miniatures 28mm Ruga Ruga

North Star Miniatures 28mm Ruga Ruga


I don't have any of the Foundry Ruga Ruga to do a size comparison, but here is one of the figures up against a Foundry Masai, Copplestone Azande, and Warlord plastic Natal Native. The bases vary a few millimeters in thickness, but I think the figure sizes are comparable, along with the sculpt styles.

North Star, Foundry, Copplestone, Warlord 28mm African Miniatures

I'm quite happy with the final unit and hope I'll get a chance to get them on the table sometime in the near future.

8 comments:

  1. very nicely done, I do like a bit of darkest africa

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  2. I think the ‘extreme’ masks are made from the faces of dead enemies, nice!

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  3. Great paint job! Hopefully they don't succumb to the traditional 1st game trouncing.
    Cheers,
    JB

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  4. Very good job !
    We like particulary the shields on the last pictures !
    Bravo !
    :-)

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  5. Wonderful painting, awesome masks, shields and scenery, congrats!

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  6. Great paint job on these guys

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