Afghan Horse - OMG, soooooo many little horses.....

Miniature megalomania rears its head again...  

My favourite games tend to be relatively small, usually skirmishes with a half dozen figures up to a few dozen figures per side.  But when it comes to collecting, all reason goes out the window and I just need to get EVERYTHING.  A consequence is that I end up with loads of painted figures that I don't really need for a game, but since I have them I try to get them on the table, and then the game suffers as a result.  Smaller usually is better, especially in the context of being able to play a complete game in the typical 2-3 hour time frame for an evening game.

Games like The Men Who Would Be Kings and the rest of the Lion Rampant series are great when kept within the suggested two players, each with a 24-point force.  I just can't convince myself to stay within that limit!

That's a bit of a rambling introduction to my latest painting:  20 more mounted warriors for my Afghan/Pathan armies.  Just what I need to add to the dozen that I already have.

Over a year ago, I looked at the Castaway Arts cavalry and decided that I wanted the Afghans to have the option to bring two units of horse to a fight.  I looked at what was available and settled on the Old Glory NWF Pathan Tribesmen Mounted on Ponies and placed the order with Imperial Hobbies.  Of course, immediately afterward, Perry Miniatures expanded their Victoria's Little Wars line to include Pathan Tribal Cavalry, but I was already committed to OG.  Once the OG pack arrived, I was just not as 'in' to them as I needed, so they languished on the back bench for a long time.  And of course I got Perry Miniatures as well, including the Afghan High Command pack.

Oh, by the bye, Netflix provided me with a Bollywood movie to have playing in the background as I painted these!  Khuda Gawah, the epic story of the love between Badshah Khan and Behnazir, Pathans from rival tribes.  It starts off with a great buzkashi match, and moves on to Badshah Khan winning Behnazir's heart, but after the first half hour the story goes off to boring land as Badshah Khan takes the fall for murder and spend 18 years in prison in India.  It was partly filmed in Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif (in 1992, just before Najibullah was overthrown), though, so there's some great, authentic background scenery!

Enough blather, time for pictures!

Here is the Emir.

Paint scheme was inspired by a photo of Afghanistan's Emir Mohammad Yaqub Khan meeting with British officials (including Major Cavagnari, in white helmet) in 1879.  Obviously I had to interpret or extrapolate the colour scheme somewhat!

Here is the full high command pack.

The chapan worn by the chap on the left is inspired by the one worn by former Afghan president Hamid Karzai.

Here are Perry Miniatures Afghan tribal cavalry:

If I've transcribed it correctly, the flag says something "William's little askari" in Pashto. 

Here are the Old Glory Pathan Tribesmen:

And finally a group shot showing all the mounted Afghans, including the Castaway Arts miniatures that I painted years ago, plus a couple of time travellers who might show up on a battlefield, just to see if anyone notices.  (here's an idea:  what if 'Guns of the South' was set in Kandahar in 1880?)

Fieldworks

In conversation with Kevin and Doug at Trumpeter's Bonsor night, Kevin mentioned that the Russians in the era of Peter the Great were quite keen on fieldworks.  They seem to feature in every pitched battle, especially when artillery was present.  I'd go further and add that fieldworks seem to have been part of Russian army activities through time, such as the great redoubts and flèches constructed at Borodino, and other fieldworks and camps that were constructed for the 1812 campaign, right through the Second World War and beyond.  "Sweat saves blood." 

So when I got home, I went through my various arts and crafts supplies, and pulled together a simple little field work.  The base is an old CD.  I built up some layers of cork board, and chopped up a pencil to use as the 'logs' on the inside, and laid down some stir sticks as base boards.  Slathered it first with sand and ballast, then with paint, and finally dusted it with static grass.  

Here is the bottom, showing the CD used as a base.

A few different views of the finished piece:

It's just the right size to take the cannon including the base:

 

But it gets a bit crowded when the artillery crew all attempt to squeeze in... 

If you look carefully, you can see that I've changed the stockings to blue, as the white that I originally painted them was not correct.

It's not just for the gunners; it could be held by dismounted dragoons

Or a forlorn hope of grenadiers

But it's not quite big enough for a full unit of 12 shot :) 

All in all, a fun little weekend project.

45th Rattray's Sikhs

My Indian Army continues to grow!  These are Perry Miniatures, and have been painted to represent the 45th (Rattray's Sikhs) Regiment, Bengal Native Infantry.  Rattray's Sikhs participated in the Second Anglo-Afghan War, including serving with distinction at the Battle of Ali Masjid.

My idea is to add a little more colour to the army (trousers, turbans) without losing the overall khaki look, as well as to offer a bit more character to various units (45th Rattray's Sikhs is more distinct than 'those Sikhs').  Also, painting up units of 12 for TMWWBK is less work than the 20 or 24 figure units that I've previously done for other armies!  And they have a piper :)

Russian Artillery

Following on my review of the Warlord Games/Wargames Factory WSS Artillery Box, here is my painted version of the gun and crew.

First the gun.  The gun comes with a choice of two barrels, nominally 8-pdr and 12-pdr. I went with the slightly smaller barrel.  As I mentioned in the review post, there are some small bits that can be a bit fiddly such as the dolphins (handles) on the gun barrel as well as the trunnion plates. But all in all, a nice wee model.

Wargaming convention is that artillery pieces should have 4 crew each, and so there is a tendency for miniatures companies to sell sets that include 4 crew with each gun.  Warlord Games is no exception.  However, Pikeman's Lament calls for each gun to have 6 crew.  Accordingly, I assembled 6 artillerymen.  I ran out of tricorne hats, so I attempted to convert a couple of the plastic heads from wide-brimmed floppy hats to Russian kartuz caps. 

Reading a bit further into Russian artillery uniforms, I realise I should have painted the stockings blue rather than white.  

And finally here are a couple shots of the men serving their gun.

4th August edit:  now looking to find one of these in 28mm!  Bombardier with hand mortar, possibly more dangerous for the user than the enemy...

Thunder Hollow

A little while back I had an idea that I could convert my moderns into a sort of post-apocalyptic setting - I've got a slowly growing collection of armed men on motorbikes, beat up trucks and cars, and rugged, mountainous desert terrain.  So I went looking around for a ruleset to use or convert.  I ended up picking up Osprey Games' Gaslands and had a read through, including checking out various YouTube videos on the game.

Well, it's not really what I was looking for, but it is still a fun, easy game.  I then hooked on the idea of recreating the Thunder Hollow scene from Cars 3 (very popular in my house - Erik has had us watch over and over, and he has almost all the 'broken cars' from the demolition derby).

As Erik is out of town, I 'borrowed' his toys and set up a game at the Trumpeter Society's monthly Bonsor meeting.

The track is intended to copy the Crazy 8 format from the movie, and the brown felt circle in the centre is muddy ground (difficult terrain).

I had 10 vehicles ready, but ended up using just 4.  Thanks to Gord for joining me for a run through of the game.  In theory, the race should have gone until only one vehicle was still operational but we agreed that one full lap would be enough.  Actual racers we used were Lightning McQueen (in disguise as 'Chester Whipplefilter'), plus Jimbo the pickup and two normal cars.  Whipplefilter was the only 'performance car', which ended up being a huge advantage for him.  

Straight out of the gate, we had a collision 

Whipplefilter geared up to 4 and pushed through the mud with Pushover (#16) following after.  The white die on the rusty shipping container shows the current gear phase.  Higher gears let you move more often, but maneuvers are more limited and dangerous.  

Whipplefilter clears the mud.

You can see the accumulation of hazard tokens on each vehicle card.  Managing these is a big part of the game.  Unless you drive like a granny (or like me!) you will end up accumulating loads of hazards, and once you have 6 of them you will have a wipeout.

By the by, the rule book recommends little paper triangle hazard symbols, looking a bit like this:  

but I decided to use the coloured blocks seen as I had a bunch of them left over from an earlier project, and thought they'd be easier to manipulate than tiny paper chits.

Pushover nearly catches Whipplefilter, but he uses his special 'slip away' ability to get an extra activation and avoid the crash.

And then Pushover (with too many hazard tokens) wiped out and spun out.

Whipplefilter wasn't in the clear, though - he ended up spinning out on the crater immediately afterward.

Meanwhile Jimbo and Fishtail were stuck in the mud...

After a few turns we had the movement down, and things went pretty quickly.  However, the cars were now spread out enough that they weren't getting in each other's way anymore.

Chester Whipplefilter for the win!