W. Britain doesn't run on a monthly calendar the way King & Country does. When they release, they release — sometimes one figure, sometimes ten. July 2026 fell into the second category: a substantial wave covering four eras, plus three notable back-in-stock returns.

The anchor of the release is a single Zulu War figure that most collectors of the period will recognize immediately. The Great War gets its biggest push in a while — six new figures, all on the German side, including a three-figure MG08 heavy machine gun team that carries one of the most memorable nicknames of the war. Easy Company of the 101st Airborne picks up its fourth sculpted figure. And, for readers of last month's Six Presidents post, one small addition worth flagging.

The Zulu War Anchor: "A Well Aimed Shot" (24th Foot at the Mealie Bag Wall)

The lead figure in the July release is "A Well Aimed Shot" — a British soldier of the 24th Regiment of Foot, in shirtsleeves, firing his Martini-Henry rifle from behind an improvised wall of mealie bags. The scene is Rorke's Drift, January 1879. Every collector of the Zulu War will recognize it immediately.

The historical moment is famous. On January 22, 1879, a Zulu impi of roughly 20,000 warriors overran a British force of some 1,800 men at Isandlwana. A reserve column of perhaps 3,000 to 4,000 Zulu warriors under Prince Dabulamanzi kaMpande — half-brother of King Cetshwayo — pressed on that afternoon toward a small mission station at Rorke's Drift, on the Buffalo River. It was garrisoned by about 150 British soldiers, most of them from B Company, 2nd Battalion, 24th Regiment of Foot, under two young lieutenants: John Chard of the Royal Engineers and Gonville Bromhead of the 24th.

They had a few hours to prepare. The garrison built a defensive perimeter out of the only bulk materials they had: 200-pound mealie bags (sacks of dried maize) and wooden biscuit boxes, stacked into low walls linking the mission's two stone buildings. The fighting began around 4:30 in the afternoon and continued through the night, wave after wave of Zulu assaults into rifle fire at close range. By the morning of the 23rd the attackers had withdrawn. The British had lost 17 killed and 15 wounded. Zulu losses are estimated at 351 to over 500. Eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded for the defense — the most ever given for a single action in British military history.

The W. Britain figure captures the specific look of that defense: shirtsleeves rolled up (the men had removed their scarlet tunics in the January summer heat), Foreign Service pith helmet, cartridge pouch on the belt, canteen at the hip, and the Martini-Henry rifle that made the defense possible. He is firing across the mealie bag wall itself — which W. Britain has sculpted with the visible seams and stripes of the sacks. It is one of the more historically specific single-figure sculpts they have produced in the Colonial line in years.

The Great War — More Figures (German and Allied)

The biggest push in the July release is on the German side of the Great War. Six new figures — a heavy machine gun team, two Sturmtruppen, two regular infantrymen — bring the W. Britain German WWI catalog to real depth for the first time. One Allied figure completes the Great War section, continuing the Belleau Wood thread we started in May's dispatch.

"The Devil's Paint Brush": German MG08 Team

The centerpiece is the "Devil's Paint Brush" German Infantryman Team with MG08 — a three-figure diorama built around the Maschinengewehr 08, the standard German heavy machine gun of the war. The MG08 was a licensed derivative of the Maxim gun, water-cooled, belt-fed, sledge-mounted, firing 500 rounds per minute. It was the most feared infantry weapon on the Western Front. Allied soldiers gave it its nickname: the way the tracers and impacts moved across no man's land at cyclic rate looked, from a distance, like the arm of a painter working a canvas. On the receiving end, the metaphor stopped being poetic. A single MG08 team could break up an entire battalion attack in the space of a minute.

W. Britain has sculpted the crew in action — gunner, loader, and observer — on a rocky terrain base with the tripod and ammunition boxes in position. It is the closest they have come in the WWI Trench series to a full firefight diorama piece.

Sturmtruppen: The Tactical Innovation

Two figures depict German Sturmtruppen — the storm troopers who, in the war's final year, permanently changed infantry tactics. Rather than the long linear waves of earlier assaults, Sturmtruppen were trained to move in small groups of specialists, infiltrating past strongpoints, bypassing whatever they could not immediately reduce, and pushing deep into rear areas. The tactics were codified by General Oskar von Hutier and demonstrated with terrifying effect in the German Spring Offensives of 1918. They did not win Germany the war, but they set the template for the infantry-and-armor combined-arms doctrine that ran through the German Blitzkrieg of 1939–41 and every serious military reform after it.

• German Sturmtruppen Advancing, No.1, 1916-18 — advancing with rifle at the ready
• German Sturmtruppen Advancing, No.2, 1916-18 — variant pose

Standard German Infantry

Rounding out the German side, two figures of standard Infanterie in the Stahlhelm-and-tunic uniform of 1916–18:

• German Infantryman Standing Firing G98, 1916-18 — firing the Gewehr 98 bolt-action rifle, the standard German infantry weapon of the war
• German Infantryman Advancing, 1916-18

Allied side — Marine NCO with M1911, Belleau Wood

Continuing the Belleau Wood thread from May, W. Britain has added a U.S. Marine NCO Firing M1911 Pistol. The Colt M1911 is one of the most enduring American sidearms in history — designed by John Browning, adopted by the U.S. Army in 1911, still in service in various forms today. On June 6, 1918, when the Marines began the assault on Belleau Wood, NCOs with pistols were leading squads through close-quarter fighting in the exact conditions the M1911 was designed for. The figure pairs directly with the Belleau Wood set we covered in May.

WWII Additions: Easy Company, Waffen SS, and Ford

Three figures on the WWII side round out the release.

Sgt. John W. "Johnny" Martin — Easy Company's fourth figure

The Sgt. John W. "Johnny" Martin figure is the fourth Easy Company sculpt in the Breagans catalog, joining Winters, Speirs, and Shifty Powers from the May dispatch. Martin was a real Easy Company sergeant — one of Winters's NCOs, jumped into Normandy on June 6, 1944, fought through the Netherlands and Bastogne, and made it home. He is depicted in his D-Day loadout: parachute harness, Mae West life vest, jump smock, M1 Garand, thumbs up. The pose is drawn directly from a June 1944 pre-jump photograph the Band of Brothers miniseries later recreated.

Waffen SS Grenadier — Eastern Front, 1944-45

The Waffen SS German Grenadier is a late-war Eastern Front figure — advancing with a K-98 (Karabiner 98k, the standard German service rifle), wearing the reversible Kharkov parka developed for winter combat in Russia. Camouflage smock, canvas gaiters, ammunition pouches. The figure fills a gap in the Eastern Front catalog for anyone building a 1944–45 German infantry display.

Lt. Cdr. Gerald R. Ford — for readers of the Presidents post

Finally, if you read our Six Future Presidents Who Served in WWII post from earlier this month, the Lt. Cdr. Gerald R. Ford figure we featured in the Eisenhower-through-Bush lineup is one of W. Britain's new July releases. If you wanted him after reading that post, he is now available at Breagans.

Back in Stock

Three notable returns to inventory alongside the new releases:

• Colonial Militia Man Standing Firing No.3 — Revolutionary War militia figure, back after a stretch out of stock
• Yoke of Oxen — accessory piece useful for Revolutionary War, Civil War, and colonial-era displays
• Theodore Roosevelt, Cuba 1898 — the Rough Riders' colonel at San Juan Hill. This one has been a strong seller and it's good to have him back.

That's the July wave from W. Britain. Rorke's Drift is the flagship, the Great War German push is the biggest structural news, Easy Company keeps growing, and a couple of the smaller pieces fill real gaps. If you want help pairing any of these figures into a specific display, or you're looking for something in the W. Britain catalog I haven't covered, write to me at daniel@breagans.com.

— Daniel