Sunday, June 5, 2011

With Clive in India in 2mm

As mentioned in my "Hmmm" post, I've been working on a 2mm SYW in India project. Actually I think I've been mentioning it for a while! I have been processing my first batch of figures recently, and have most of them mounted. It's amazing how I'm managing to not order enough of so many things - battalion guns, organ guns, brigade and wing commanders, etc. but I'm happy with the progress so far:

Some of the native units - mobs of paiks (melee-only levies) in the front, Afghan mercenaries (mounted and foot) in the middle, and Arab camelry (dismounted and mounted) in the rear.

Native artillery in various varieties - platform guns (heavies) in the front left (see below), the princes' super-heavy guns ("Moghul Monsters") in the left-rear, backed up a heavy gun in a redoubt. In the front right, with two elephants for their limbers, are everyday heavy guns, and back-right are field guns, with a variety of limber combinations - elephants, elephant+caissons, elephant+2 caissons, elephant+field of rock

A close-up of the platform guns (heavies). The "horses" will be painted as oxen (as I will for most limbers), and the gun's base will be painted as a wooden platform. I imagine the guys at the back of one base are the official elephant pooper-scoopers... To make this, I put a standard artillery base on two uncovered wagons. Here's the inspiration, from a relatively local 25/28mm collection. I played in their Pondicherry game last March and my fellow commanders had to face this in the centre of our line.

Native organ guns are the three bases in the middle-ish, otherwise at the top/back of the photo are some caisson/supply trains, with English (with caisson) and French (limber only) guns in the foreground. The French artillery often had supply problems, so I've depicted that by not showing their ammo caissons on the limber's base.

A whole slew of bases, at front centre is my standard infantry battalion, with officers to the front and battalion gun on the line's left. The unit beside that is a specific one without a battalion gun (others to the rear are just missing theirs). Front right is the French (Compagnie des Indes) volunteer battalion. The square-ish bases with three-horse figures are wing, division, etc. commanders. Behind them are three units of hathnals - elephants with big guns - that may or may not have been at Plassey, but are too cool to ignore. Towards the far back, behind the infantry, is a unit of Rajput cavalry.

More stuff. CdI and EIC dragoons/mounted infantry are front left and centre, with more of the regular, company, and sepoy battalions behind them. Further back-centre are command stands, the native ones with elephants. A unit of native bodyguard cavalry are back-right.

As always, you can click on the pictures for a bigger version.

I have a few more to mount (mainly cavalry) with what I have on hand, then another big order goes in to Irregular. I figure this is about 1/3 of what I'll need in total for the project, which will include an Afghan army, variations of a native prince's army (Moghul, Mahratta, Mysore), and the French and British. I plan on later extending it into the "Wellington in India" and Sikh War eras.

3 comments:

  1. I am really looking forward to seeing how this progresses!

    gwz

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  2. This is really shaping up to be something special, I think - looks like some nicely organised bases - going to be a really colourful collection of armies once painted up.
    What are you going to do about flags - go with the cast-on variety, or something larger?

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  3. Thanks guys. I'm going with the cast-on flags, since being so small they're harder to screw up! To concretely ID units I'll use a colour-coded scheme similar to what's in Tony Hughes' 2mm DBA guide.

    For the better known flags, i.e. the EIC, I'll put the company flag on the front, then the battalion flag on the rear. Somewhere (Warflags?) I found made-up Indian flags that I'm going to use as a starting point for the native forces.

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