Saving the Guns! Take 2

Last night at the Trumpeter Society's July club night, I set up the same 'Saving the Guns' scenario that I tried a couple of weeks ago (see here:  Saving the Guns AAR).   This time the players were Reeve (who took the Afghan forces) and Jim, who got to play the British mostly because he brought the right hat.  Rules used were The Men Who Would Be Kings.

As before, the British start with a gun and a unit of regular infantry in the middle of the table.  Their objective is to get the gun off the table before they are overrun by the Afghans.

Man, that's a lot of Afghans...

but help is on the way!

Afghans begin a general advance...

While the limber moves up to effect the rescue.  (rules for the limber:  movement is 10", may not move in difficult terrain, takes one full activation to limber the gun).

"A thin, red line, tipped with steel.."

Afghan horse moving on the flank.  Why, no, that rider isn't carrying an RPG, why do you ask?

Afghan horse almost ride down the gun crew, but effective musketry from the infantry sees them off.  

But there are still many more Afghans approaching!

Afghans converge on the beleaguered defenders!  The coloured wooden cubes are used to indicate which units have tested for activation.  I need to replace those with some more appropriate markers.  Suggestions welcome!  In other games I've used livestock such as goats or sheep as markers.  Another idea might be to use pebbles.  Hmmmm

It looks pretty scary for the Imperials!

But then some effective fire cuts down half the horsemen, pinning them

 And a timely charge by the Lancers finishes them off!  (I need to make some 'pinned' markers for the Afghans, too!)

Still plenty of Afghans advancing

So the lancers charge again!

About this time, the Pathans remembered that about half of them were carrying muskets, and used them to shoot down the Lancers, allowing the Ghazis to charge the gun...

While the last unit of Afghan horse charged the regulars and pushed them back!

Pinned markers for the British!  

The second unit of Lancers charge the Afghan horse and rescue the infantry.  In order to keep the units organised, I painted coloured stripes on the rear of the bases.  It was amusing to see the players avoiding referring to 'black lancers' or 'while lancers' as no one wanted to sound racist!  This also applied to the black, white and brown stripes that I put on the Afghan forces.

After chasing off the horse, the Lancers turn their attention to the Ghazis!

That didn't work out quite so well for them...

And finally the badly mangled British troops realise that they can't win.  The limber has been mangled, but could still theoretically pull the gun.  However, the mass of Pathans would simply shoot them to pieces.  This was where we called the game.  Once again, an Afghan triumph.

I want to try this scenario again, but would like to adjust the balance a bit.  In each game, both players reported that the scenario was fun but I'd like to see if the British can actually rescue the guns.

Changes from the first scenario:
No testing for leader casualties.  This was something that slowed down the earlier scenario for no particular result.  Especially because I excluded leadership traits!  The leader traits make for some fun role-play opportunities, but can as easily saddle a unit with a big liability (such as a cavalry officer who refuses to charge his enemy).

Changes to consider for next time:
Larger playing surface.  This would allow more room to maneuver which would give the players more choice in how they deploy and move.
Add another infantry unit to protect the gun. Maybe offset this by letting the Afghans have a gun as well.

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).

A Tale of Two Houses

As I mentioned in my post from a week ago, I recently found a very reasonably priced little dollhouse in a nominal 1:48 scale, for only CAD$8.  In this post, I'll compare it to the CAD$50 Games Workshop Laketown House from The Hobbit.

The Laketown house is a gorgeous piece of scenery.  In addition to the house, it includes several sections of dock (3 pieces approx 4" x 1", 1 that is 1" x 2"), a 4" x 4" platform and a small rowboat, plus a number of small pieces like baskets, lanterns, and the like.  So your $50 gets you a bevy of extras.

There's even a dunny!

The house itself is very nice, with plenty of detail moulded on.  The wall details are different on each side, so the same model could be assembled a few different ways to produce rather different appearances for the house.  One of the best things for me is that this GW product has NO SKULLZ!  It's just a normal house, with details that place it in a fishing community (fishing nets, baskets, actual fish).  

The dollhouse does not have the same level of detail, which has a charm of its own.  It's very straightforward.  The open back is a minor nuisance, but that could even be a feature if you wish to place figures inside.  I chose to cover over the back with a sheet of cardboard and some popsicle sticks.

Both houses scale well with each other, but the difference in style is quite noticeable when they are placed side by side.

I also made a second flèche for my GNW Russians.  The mound for this one is made from DAS clay, while the first was made from leftover scraps of cork board. DAS is much easier to work into shape!

Here is the new flèche occupied by some grenadiers (in red), dragoons (with black boots) and musketeers (in the rear). 

Side by side comparison of the new (left) and original (right).

Both flèches ready for action.

Mounties

For Canada Day, I dug this pair out of my lead mountain.  They were mostly finished and only needed a little touch up to complete them.

These models have been in my collection for years.  I originally ordered them from the Honourable Lead Boiler Suit company, if I remember correctly, but the moulds have since passed on to Tiger Miniatures.  Modern RCMP horses are always black but as I intend to use these in Old West games, or at least in settings when horses were still routinely used for patrol, my argument will be that colour was not as much of a concern.  (mostly though I just didn't want to repaint the base colour...)

Mosque phase 1

At the end of my time in Afghanistan, I had the opportunity to visit Herat, where (among many other treats), I had a tour of the magnificent Friday Mosque.  It is utterly magnificent, originally dating from medieval times but undergoing constant renovation and restoration.  The bright blue, white and turquoise tiles covering the mosque in particular amazed me.  When I started my Afghan city building, I always knew that it needed to include a mosque.  I've been daunted by the task of creating anything that could even remotely compare to the beauty of the Great Mosque of Herat.

After far too long a time dithering, I have finally started on my Afghan Masjid project.  It's too big and too detailed for me to complete in any reasonable time, so I'm going to build in stages.  Here is stage 1, the basic structure.

As per my experience following Matakishi's building patterns, the walls are cork board.  The semi-dome is a Styrofoam ball from Michael's.   

The layout consists of a courtyard, with the prayer hall to direct the faithful to pray in the direction of Mecca.  I am grateful to the book, Built to Last by David Macaulay for teaching me some of the details of how a mosque is built! I've been a fan of David Macaulay for as long as I can remember, and the many hours I spent poring over copies of City, Castle and other of his books that I borrowed and then borrowed again from my elementary school library.  His books were one of the reasons I ended up as a civil engineer!

Here are some of the interior details, showing the arcade around the courtyard and the iwan entrance to the prayer hall.

I'm taking a break from this project now, but over time I intend to add further features and details.  I would love to recreate the gorgeous Islamic tiles of the Herat mosque, for which I'll probably need to print some suitable wallpaper and paste in place.  I'd also like to improve on the dome.  I plan to provide a sadirvan or fountain in the courtyard, and a minaret from which the faithful can be called to prayer.  

My Afghan city is now fairly extensive, and covers most of my 4'x6' gaming mat.  

Cheers,

Will

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!).