I dug out my old, half finished Patrols in the Sudan Mahdist army yesterday and set it up on my desert terrain board to see how it matched up. As you can see, the figures are half painted but wouldn’t need more than a bit of blocking in, a wash and some colour patches to be ready to deploy. I’m not intending to use PITS again, although I did enjoy the games that I’ve played, but did think that I could use this army for The Men Who Would Be Kings instead or for Death in the Dark Continent?

I would prefer to have individually based figures for TMWWBK and have already set aside some 15mm Peter Pig Beja and Egyptians for just the purpose, but as a fall back I could re-use these multiple based units as well, using counters or even individual wounded figures to track casualties. A quick check of the army lists (5.River Arabs) and it looks like I have more than enough bases for an army, although I would need to have five base units of fifteen not sixteen infantry, as they are based in threes not fours. 

It’s worth a thought and, if I do just go down the individual figure basing route, at least I have an alternative option. It would be a shame just to shove them back in the box to gather dust.