Hee Hawfully Good Models

This sublime Donkey Mill is another one of those timeless pieces which would fit a wide period of games, ancient to modern and be a great addition to them all. I’d seen the Architects of War Middle East range some time ago and always wanted to see it up close before parting with any shekels. I found this piece at Red Knight when they still had a shop and jumped on it immediately. With my upcoming Jihadistan game at a soon to happen show I finally pulled this out of the to-do pile.

The pack contains four pieces, the mill and ground as a single pre-coloured in brown resin piece, the millstone, the wood and the donkey all in pewter. As with most simple kits it’s also a little tricky. The millstone and the wooden upright have to be straight on the vertical while the horizontal beam has to meet the donkey’s harness properly. A tiny bit of tweaking was needed on the beam to get this right and i found the easiest way to assemble once painted was to hold it all in place and with my third hand glue the donkey into place first.

Corn was what I wanted being ground. So I gingerly picked out two shades of yellow from mixed flock packs with the agility of a diamond buyer with a date with Kiera Knightly. This was glued onto the mill and into the sacks before assembly. To harden it up I doped it with superglue, as it dried the two-tone yellows went dull brown, well two-tone brown. So had to be dry brushed with yellow to brings it back to life.

It was fun to paint, I imagine some might think the donkey is too small but foreign ones typically aren’t as healthy no9r as big as the seaside donkeys we see most offen. Can’t wait to get another piece from these folk.

Tags: 28mm, afghanistan, Architects of War, Donkey, iraq, Jihadistan, ME006, Middle East, Mill, north africa