Sudan 10mm Mahdist army

 Here in all its glory is my Mahdist army.  In total there is 3 Commanders including the Mahdi himself, 6 Tribes of Mahdists, 3 Tribes of Fuzzy-Wuzzy 2 Batteries of 7pdr Cannon, 1 Formation of Camel Cavalry.

 Here is the command, the Mahdi and 2 senior commanders.  Figures are taken from SC15 Mahdist command pack and SC13 Arab Civilians, which has a very nice chap who looks good as a senior commander.

Hadendoa Tribesmen, or Fuzzy-Wuzzy Warriors, good shock troops but need a lot of support.  To be honest I have only used them once and found them better troops than the regulars. The tribesmen were better motivated than the rest of the army.  unlike the Mahdist regulars the Hadendoa were not in general followers of the Mahdi and for the most part not exactly muslim, although close enough at the time.  They fought their own parallel war and were able to extricate themselves from the conflict when the war moved to a close.

 The Mahdist infantry are the backbone of the army, there is a lot of them too, they just keep on coming.  They may not be the best colonial troops but make up for it in sheer numbers.  The regular forces were a mixed bunch, the locals who either volunteered for political or religious reasons,  or joined through fear of having their wives and children taken as slaves.  Many foreign troops also joined the Mahdi, perhaps as many as 40,000 but after sharia law was declared and the Sudan economy imploded many simply went home.  So as regular troops they can be elements of conscripts to die hard fanatics, this could have been off set by splitting up units into separate elite and trained units, but sadly the leadership was in turmoil and although having some very good commanders they failed to organise the army effectively.

 the 7pdr batteries, captured from the Egyptians are the same guns as the Egyptians use, although lack of experienced crews and shortage of reliable ammunition lets them down.  Although the Mahdists did try to remedy this problem.  When Abdallahi ibn Muhammad took power he did try to set up an effective war machine but the Sudan had been driven into the sand by then and foreign trade for the needed materials had been all but severed for the next 20 years.