Mountain Gun for Jhamjar

OK, not just for Jhamjar, but it was the Djelli of Jhamjar's army I was thinking of when I ordered this mountain gun from Brigade Games!  It could also find itself in action in the Indian Army of the First World War, or elsewhere as events require.  

The set includes the BL 2.75" mountain gun with a crew of three gunners.

It also comes with a team of 6 mules to transport the gun.  

As there are only 3 gunners, I've based two of them separately so they can serve as muleteers when they aren't needed as gunners.

This gun will replace Zam Zammah in the Djelli's army.  The mules also serve double duty as needed, such as on my Jump Off Point vignette for Operation Husky.

Bhistis

I had thought to title this post 'Bhisti Boys', playing on the name of the Beastie Boys band, but then realised that calling these bhistis 'boys' might be taken out of context.  Anyway, bhistis or water carriers are and have been for generations very important figures in South Asia.  These figures come from Empress Miniatures' (Iron Duke) Indian Mutiny collection, but in my games might end up supporting my Indian Army in Afghanistan in 1880, or with the Jhamjar army in 1920.

1880 armies on parade

Time to clean up the work area, and get the toys properly put away.  But before I get everything shipshape, I decided to get a good measure of my 1880-era NWF and Central Asia armies.

Currently ready for action, I have three armies; Indian, Afghan and Russian.

Indian Army is the largest:

HM the Queen

RHA gun, crew and limber

22 Indian Lancers (these are actually from my WWI army but I'm using them here as proxies as I don't have any 1880 cavalry right now)

23 Gordon Highlanders

20 Sikh Infantry (rather unfairly, I call these the 'generic Sikhs'; I should assign them a regiment as I have for the 66th Berkshires!)

20 Gurkhas (as with the Sikhs, these brave Nepalis should also be assigned a regiment!)

12 Rattray's Sikhs

20 Dismounted Guides Cavalry (I've been meaning to add some mounted Guides cavalry to balance out these men on foot - hasn't happened yet and I'm pretty sure I have higher priorities for spending both time and money these days!)

12 16th Regiment Bombay Infantry

15 29th Regiment Baluchis I

12 72nd Duke of Albany's Highlanders 

24 English redcoat infantry (these are generic redcoats marching; they are a bit out of kilter with the rest of the khaki mob)

24 66th (Berkshire) Infantry (these could also easily be renamed the 'generic Englishmen!')

Dr Watson and medical attendants

The Sergeants 3 and Gunga Din, and Peachy, Danny and Billy Fish, just to add some more character to the army.

That's approximately 185 infantry, one gun and 22 cavalry.  

Russian Army

Mounted commanding officer

54 Infantry

Gun and 4 crew

9 Cossacks

Afghan Army

Emir and advisors

48 Afghan Regular Army Infantry

Gun and 4 crew

Tribal mountain gun with crew

34 tribal horse (including two time travellers!)

50 musket/jezzail/rifle armed tribesmen and 52 tribesmen with hand weapons, flags, drums

I also have a couple of dozen modern Afghans, who could be pressed into service and hope that no one notices.  I will be using these modern Afghan casualties as markers for battered units, not historically accurate but certainly will look better than using dice or coloured tokens!

Wow, I could really have a sizeable battle game with these armies.  My task now is to convince myself that I have achieved an elegant sufficiency, and there is no need for me to add any more.  But I want an Indian mountain gun, and to increase the size of the Afghan forces, and to find some Russian regular cavalry...

Bombay Infantry

And another unit for the Indian Army!  This is a basically imaginary unit.  I'm calling it the 16th Bombay Infantry, which really did exist, but I couldn't get precise details on the uniform or the colours, so I made up some of the details.

The uniform is mostly inspired by a drawing from britishempire.com:  https://www.britishempire.co.uk/forces/armyuniforms/indianinfantry/16thbombayinfwymer.htm

So here are the photos.

The regimental colours (hand-painted, whoo-hoo!) are completely imaginary, but are, shall we say "inspired" by history.  So are the turban colours, for that matter.

Command team (English officer, Indian officer, bugler and havildar).

Jhamjar dismounted cavalry

It's been over a year since I last had much to do with the Princely State of Jhamjar, but that's not from lack of interest on my part, but simply my own time management putting a greater emphasis on other projects such as the army of Peter the Great, and delving deeper into Afghanistan at the time of the Second Anglo-Afghan War.  One of the projects that has been patiently waiting for my attention has been preparing some dismounted cavalry so I can more accurately field my Brigade Games WWI Indian Cavalry in support of the Jhamjar Rifles.

One of the things that I was fretting about, and which ended up delaying my work on these models, was that I didn't think I'd get an exact match for the paint jobs on the cavalry that I'd painted around 10 years ago.  My 'liberation' moment came when I realised I had no particular need to get an exact match.  Once I decided not to worry about getting colours and paint style to match precisely, I was free to paint with my current style and with currently available paints (especially as I don't remember the exact paint recipe I'd used back when I painted the cavalry).

Finding the best figures to use for the dismounted cavalry took a bit of a search.  As far as I can tell, there are no 'dismounted WWI Indian Cavalry' figures currently available in 28mm.  However, the Over Open Sights blog  provided just the inspiration I needed to place an order with the Woodbine Design Group for a section of Indian infantry. 

Following the ideas from the Over Open Sights blog (but at a much lower quality of execution!) I made some greenstuff turban tails to match those on the mounted figures.  I did NOT take the extra step of removing bayonets or entrenching tools, so these sowars are more than ready to function as infantry if called on!

Here are the mounted and dismounted figures together.  You can clearly see the differences from different paint shades, different approaches to drybrushing and washes.  But I'm not going back to repaint either the mounted or dismounted figures any time soon!

As I was placing an order with Woodbine anyway, I decided to expand the capabitlies of the Jhamjar Rifles.  I picked up some Hotchkiss light machine gun teams, as their absence had been noted when facing ANZAC infantry equipped with Lewis guns (although the lack of LMG had been more than offset by the Jhamjari Vickers gun).

I also got them some bombers.  In game terms, not such a big deal as I could always just state that infantry had grenades, but on the tabletop it looks better to actually have someone actively demonstrating the use of ANY weapon that the roster sheet claims (WYSIWYG, after all!).