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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.