6mm North West Frontier: Part 3

"The enemy were massing in inconvenient strength among the hills, and the moving of many green standards warned.....that the tribes were 'up'.....Then the foe began to shout with a great shouting, and a mass - a black mass - detached itself from the main body, and rolled over the ground with horrid speed...."

(From 'The Drums of the Fore and Aft' by Rudyard Kipling)

Well not quite a mass, but 32 blocks or so done so far, for a total of 196 'figures'. As you may have seen in a previous post, the Afghan/Pathan range from Irregular is quite typical of their output; at first sight a bit lumpen, but on closer inspection, some detail and character emerge.

In a sense, I think a better painter than myself could do a lot with these figures, but I just went for a bright and cheerful colour scheme, and tried to show up the main areas of the sculpt, rather than outlining every strap, belt or fold.

Afterall, the curse of doing a Colonial period is the fact that the Native side always requires large numbers, but these figure blocks paint up quickly, and look good from a 'table top / three foot rule' distance. The basing is the same as the Imperial Troops; although you could argue for a sort of horde like basing in depth, given the characteristic use of ambush by these tribesmen, I went for a skirmish line that would allow them to line up behind terrain or scenery.

What I have done, however, rather than merely basing whole blocks side by side, is to continue the strategy I had with the command stands, and cut and chopped here and there to add variety, or even lopped off the odd miscast figure or two.

The only individual command stand I have done is the counterpart to the British Brigadier, in this case an Emir or 'Mad Mullah', accompanied by his Russian advisers. (Have to have some representatives of the Great Game on hand!) This base is made up of GWR15, Russian Generals and mounted messenger, and IND35 Gurkha Command with two kneeling figures removed from either end. This block has a good looking standard, as well as two native drummers, although it's important to note that it does not depict Ghurkas under British command, but rather a commander of an earlier era, so it adds a bit of variety to the Pathan leaders: 

Cutting and chopping the various stands also allows better placement of flags, so that I could identify a Left, Right and Centre amongst the Pathan troops:

As the framework of the project was the Tirah campaign, there were, I'm afraid, no cavalry or artillery to speak of on the native side, so for a bit of extra interest I added in a couple of IND66 Afghan Regular Infantry; at the time, the British were nervous that the uprising might become more widespread, and draw in the forces of neighbouring Afghanistan, so these chaps are deserters, who have crossed the border to join their cousins in making war on the infidel. 

Next we have a pic of the final group of native troops on the Imperial side; IND34 Gurkha Infantry, a stand of kneeling firers, and IND51, Mutiny era Gurkha Rifles skirmishing. Both of these are a little underwhelming, unfortunately not a brandished khukri amongst them!

Finally, as promised, a shot of the Elephant Gun tramping toward the Khyber Pass:

All in all, the figures from Irregular available to cover this period are cheap and cheerful, and sometimes do not quite meet expectations in terms of variety of poses or clarity of sculpts. For the life of me, however, I can't find it in me to be disappointed, as they allowed a quick and dirty painter like me to set up both sides of the conflict relatively easily, and overall gave a good enough flavor of the period, enough to inspire me to actually make it to the gaming table and try them out for once!  

North West Frontier in 6mm: Part 2

Next up we have the second look at my North West Frontier project using 6mm minis from Irregular. After having a go with the Imperial Infantry seen in the last post, I made a start on the command and support troops. Immediately, I came up against a problem here, in that Irregular's command blocks from the Colonial/Wars in India Ranges all have two flags depicted; of course, as I wanted to do Tirah circa 1897, this was at a time when the British had stopped carrying Colours into battle, with pistol or rifle armed officers being the norm, accompanied by a bugler at most.  

Now the only option was to reach for the small hacksaw and needle files, which if you've ever tried it on the thickly based and tightly packed blocks from Irreg, you'll know this was no small undertaking! After much swearing and groaning (Note to self: buy sharper files!), I managed to massacre the six man blocks down to some manageable pairs or trios, which could be mounted on half scale bases at 30x15mm. 

The glowing exception was the mounted half of the Brigadier's stand seen in the photo above; this is an absolutely cracking mini with great character and animation, with the two officers discussing the campaign over a map. The only slight issue with this, Z8, British Generals mounted and dismounted, was the dismounted pair provided, in that for some unknown reason, the heft and size of these had more in common with the much smaller figures from Heroics & Ros, so they got thrown in the spares bin, and after a bit of surgery on a Z7 block, with one flag removed, the Union flag was raised resplendent as above.

The results with the survivors of the block surgery, with the addition of two WWI Officers, GWC3 (the bracketing figures on the leftmost stand) can be seen below:

The Highland command stand is a good block, but again with the problems of the Colours being carried, I had to reduce it thus, which turned out alright, although the bagpiper on the right of the stand looks a bit lonely!

Next we have another great sculpt, and crucial for any Colonial campaign , a couple of Kipling's screw gun, seen here in the shape of Irregular's IND64, late 19th/20th Century Mountain Gun with crew and Mules. The mules in particular are really good, you receive one block of three per gun.

Having dealt with the 5th Bombay Mountain Battery, Punjab Frontier Force, where would we be without the 18th Bengal Lancers? Thankfully, Irregular's IND62 report for duty here, although I have to say, in common with a lot of their 6mm cavalry, the horses are a little bit too well fed! I guess if I'm honest, these are rather dumpy and blobby, none of the elegance you might expect from such a romantic regiment, but then they are on campaign, you know...

The next stage is a quick look at what is next on the painting table, the Pathans themselves. (Although in Tirah, I suppose we should strictly call them Afridis, or Khambar Khels, or Orakzais, or somesuch...)

Below we have the IND39 tribal command block, although I have removed a figure from the right hand side of the base, a chap who should be holding a sword above his head, however, in an unfortunately all-too-familiar way, he is often miscast, rendering him a bug-eyed mutant. 

These miscasts can be a problem when ordering from Irregular, although at this scale it isn't always so obvious, and the company has good customer service, so, in my experience, are happy to replace the worst examples if you receive a lot of them in one order.

Next we see the IND38 tribal infantry with Jezails. These sculpts have good detail, but are rather passive in their pose for my liking; they look more like a bunch of friends lined up for a fishing trip photo than fierce tribal warriors!

That's why I have decided to scatter a selection of IND37, tribals with swords, and IND44 Sikh/Afghan Ghazis/Zealots in amongst them, to add a bit more animation. Ideally, of course, you'd have some blocks in skirmish order aiming their weapons, but given the excellent value for money offered by Irregular at this scale, you can't have everything I suppose....

Finally we have a couple of shots of something I just couldn't resist, the IND59 Siege Gun with Elephant Team, yes, it belongs to an earlier era than 1897, and might be more comfortable at Maiwand than the Dargai Heights, but just check it out! This is the Tiger Tank of it's day...well, something like that....it comes with a base that depicts a number of artillerists, both colonial and native, behind an earth embrasure, as well as the neat Heffalump we see here.

Can't wait to have a go painting it, I'll update with some pictures of it, and the Pathans, as they come off the workbench.

North West Frontier in 6mm

(Note: all photos should be clickable for a larger view)

Next up on the workbench, part of my ongoing project to do the Tirah Campaign of 1897 with the 6mm Colonial range from Irregular Miniatures. As some of you may know, minis from Irregular are (and I'm sure Ian and the gang at York won't mind me saying this), well.....a bit .....umm.....irregular. 

Sometimes when you unwrap them, you can't help but do a double take at what at first appears to be an undistinguished lump of metal, and the style of sculpt is chunky and colourful to say the least. However, and you will read this all over the 'net: whatever they look like 'naked', they always paint up really well!

Now of course you have the old Heroics & Ros line from Navwar, and also the excellent stuff that Baccus are now producing, but I find the H&R ones a bit tough to paint, as they are very small and the sculpts are sometimes a bit plain, and Peter Berry's stuff is far too pretty for a quick and dirty painter like me! 

Somehow, even if they look as ugly as sin, Irregular's troops are full of character and swagger, which is always important in a fight, table-top or otherwise.

Above we see Irregular Z23, 'Highlanders Marching', a nice looking mini, although the rifle/bayonets are a bit fragile; unfortunately there is only this pose available for the Scots. Below we have IND40 'Sikh Regular Infantry', which  actually I use for Indian Sepoys, as I find that their turbans are a bit small - if you look at contemporary photos the Sikhs have huge turbans at this period, but luckily the IND60 'Later 19/20th Century Sepoy' fits the bill for this. (see my company of 3rd Sikhs in amongst the photos in my first Blog post)

Next then, we see them painted up as the Afridis of the Khyber Rifles, as well as a view of how I've decided to base the troops for the campaign. Irregular's stuff comes pre-based, and the size can sometimes vary, so I went for two blocks to a base, to present a sort of skirmish line, with therefore a width of around 60mm, depth 15mm. 

The basing material itself is 1.6mm thick artist's card which I buy with pre-applied magnetic backing from Tiny Tin Troops - I am not a big fan of thick bases for troops at this scale, and so compromise over possible warping with these thin card ones, or even sometimes plasticard.

Next up we have the Dorsets, a base of Z5, 'British Infantry Kneeling', and one of Z6, 'Binf Standing', the definition on these is not so hot, perhaps, and the pose of the standing figures is a bit unnatural, I would have preferred something with a bit more animation; preferably levelled bayonets (The cold steel Carruthers!).

Finally we see the Gordon Highlanders (Although I bet they wore trews in this campaign: it can get chilly up your Khyber Pass otherwise!) who are protecting the Brigadier who is a mix of Z7 'Britinf Command Group', and the mounted half of Z8 'British Generals Mounted and Dismounted'. This is a cracking sculpt, and will feature again in my next post on command groups, along with some of the supporting troops.