Desert Forces

 

... or pretty much, what I did during New Zealand's second COVID lockdown.

So the goal was to do something with the hordes of 20mm figures that had been replaced by newer sculpts and companies and recklessly stuffed in a box, and had come home from far to many Bring and Buys.

The second goal was to find a game and a way to teach my stepson about losing during a game, especially your 'favourite' figure of the day.

The result was a Black Powder supplement - greatly simplified with the addition of heroes, magic, monsters and machines, desert scenery and the desert forces themselves - which were meant to be reinforced by Redbox's Dark Alliance Mummies and Anubis army, which have as yet, failed to show up from muster - international shipping being what it is.

Excellent Adventures - Black Powder Supplement

I grabbed Hordes of the Things, Warmaster Revolution and Black Powder V2 and munged the first two into the third. What resulted was an exceptionally fun, and funny, not to be taken seriously supplement which worked really well - with very little rule changes for core BP rules.

We had hordes, steam tanks, Giger-moths, stoic British infantry, and crazy magicians firing off their fizzing silliness all over the place. Instead of trying to 'win' the object was to tell the 'story' and not mind which side you were on or who won - I guess teaching how to lose before teaching how to win - sounds counterintuitive I know, but I don't think we've laughed so much in ages.

Terrain

Building upon previous desert escapades, we updated the Temple of Seth with a couple of extensions.

Then, 'build a pyramid' he said, 'from the bricks we made from das' he said, 'it'll be fun'.

Ten hours later and we have a small pyramid, which I have to admit, set the scene nicely, even for the pyramids in northern Sudan (who knew they had them???)

And of course you have to have an abandoned fort and a hastily erected stone defence robbed from said pyramid (see the 'good guy' photos for the stone defence).

The 'Bad Guys'

The bad guys, in a homage to Indiana Jones baddies, red and black theme and warriors from the Esci Set 238 Muslim Warriors and Italeri Set 6010 Saracen Warriors, flying horrors from Eagle Games Egyptian 'Age of Mythology' sprue, and a giant Djinn from the 25mm Ral Partha range.

Led by a great As-Sihr (magician) and hell bent on reaching the pyramid cemetery at Meroe to raise the dead and basically do 'bad things'.

Classic hordes of bad guys for your chosen heroes to fight, backed by a mighty Djinn hero.

The red and black certainly put colour on the board and the forces were finished off by further Eagle Games Egyptian sculpts of various monsters - used in a summoning/charm spell during the shooting round.

The 'Good Guys'

A lot of these were re-based from various HoTT forces and further photos can be found here.

Victoria's Forces

Stirling lads from various regiments stationed at Suakin, set out to chase and confront the As-Sihr forces. 

Mostly drawn from the old Esci Set 232Colonial India British Infantry and A Call To Arms Set 57 British Infantry Zulu War boxes of 1/72 awesomeness.

Including a regiment ordered to wear their red coats - one last time - to show the As-Sihr forces they were just as 'red' blooded as they were.

Inspired, many of the KRRC donned their old dark green for the coming battle.

The rest of the forces wore their new khaki smocks.

The special brigade (the only one with red epaulets) were led by their general.

Even a regimental chaplain volunteered to meet the As-Sihr and all their magical fizzing silliness, quoting "This maniacal fuddery-duddery just won't do!" - essentially a 'magician' that uses the Dwarven 'dispel magic' spell from Warmaster,

Envigoured by their comrades, the Camel Regiment joined in also, ditching their camels for local ponies - Italeri converted confederate cavalry.

Dismounted, the Camel Regiment loved to blow their own horn - Esci conversions.

Lost in the desert, a Major and his colleagues struggle on.

Some gas-powered Giger-moths for scouting and machine gun action.

A hero in a steam-driven armoured car joined the fray.

Along with a steam-driven tank (converted from Emhar, I think)

Sepoy Regiment

Worried by the rate at which the As-Sihr forces were drawing supporters from across the northern Sudan, the British dispatched reinforcements from India in the form of some Sepoys and cavalry. Drawn from the same Esci set above and Strelets Set 057 Bengal Lancers.

The general and some light foot troops.

A full regiment of Sepoys was a welcome sight given what faced the force at the Meroe pyramid cemetery.

As fierce as any British soldier.

Drawn from all over India.

The Indian 'lights' were a welcome addition for scouting and flank duties.

Those Caught In-between

The Mahdi's and Local Forces

Forces to make up the numbers on either side, depending on who they choose to support.

The addition of Red Sea pirates never hurt.

Madhist rifle-armed forces to make up more numbers.

A company of 'imports' from the Northern Frontier.

Most Excellent Adventures

So, having reused many very old bits and pieces, some most excellent adventures were had in the northern Sudanese desert. I might cobble together the additional rules for the future and wasn't really surprised that the magic from Warmaster fit right in to Black Powder given the lineage of these rulesets.

The heroes, machines and monsters required an adjustment of thinking for unit sizes (We only used Small and Tiny units for 'company-level' units), but all in all a completely unexpected success and now these figures can be used by a subsequent generation - as well as this one :)

AWI: 2nd Continental Dragoons

The first auxiliary troops for this period have come off the painting table, a small BP unit of the 2nd Continental Dragoons.

These guys have come from the Revell 02573 Austrian Dragoons set and I've done some head conversions using the heads from spare light infantry out of the A Call To Arms 65 British Infantry 1775 set.


The uniform reference this time began out of the Rebellion! BP supplement but was finalised on the Baccus website, hence the helmet conversions - which I admit was a last minute decision. I've gone for Bay horses - standard and buckskin - and a single gray for the commander.


Not my best effort and had to spend a lot of time on painting some of the white details on as the moulding from 1992 - when the set was first produced - was not the greatest.


The 1775 flag is off the net (after the following search on Google images "awi 2nd continental dragoons flag") and after a quick confirmation from the Historical Flags of Our Ancestors website to make sure it was correct... wish I'd scrolled down as there is a flag for this unit for the later part of the war, no matter.


Next up - will the fun never stop!? - an artillery crew.

AWI: The Problem With Light Infantry

So here's my first British light infantry unit for Black Powder: Rebellion! and the American War of Independence, which I painted last year while getting a commission done for some other Brits.

This unit has yellow facings and cuffs and really could be for any of the units with this regimental colouring - e.g. 6th, 9th, 10th, 12th, 15th, 16th, 20th, 26th, 28th, 29th, 30th, 34th, 37th, 38th, 44th, 46th 57th.


There are however, several minor but nevertheless enjoyable issues to overcome when producing British light infantry in this scale, for this period and rule set.

Firstly, for plastics, the only figures available are the A Call to Arms range's Set 65 British Infantry 1775 which contains British light infantry and grenadiers. Although these are highly detailed with accurate proportions and uniform, they're a little bit short.


Left to Right: Imex officer with helmet conversion, ACTA LI, IMEX Drummer, ACTA LI, Revell Jager (SYW Austrian)

Against the Accurate/IMEX figures they're short and against the other figures in this range and other periods close by, they are even shorter - almost by a head - closer to 18mm than 20mm/25mm.


As you can see, for instance, the IMEX drummer is a giant of a man compared to the light bobs. So what's to be done?

Cuban Heals is the answer or more precisely Cuban Bases. These guys and the shorter Accurate/IMEX figures are getting high heals in the form of 3mm thick bases from Litko, while the taller figure ranges get thin plastic or card for their bases.

This at least puts everyone's head near the right height which works well for units and for festooning the Brit LI battalions with command and musicians, then shaving off the molded plastic base on IMEX figures also evens the playing field.


The next issue, to overcome confusion during a game regarding which stand belongs to which unit, is how to dress the unit.


For this war it was common practice to combine companies of light infantry and grenadiers into their own battalions, stripping them from the line regiments to form their own units.

In a period where the only real discernible difference between regiments were the colours of facings and cuffs, this creates an issue.

Although BP: Rebellion! has many different (awesome) scenarios and hence unit size for these troops (they can be Small, Standard or Large), if sticking to history then each base in a unit should have a different colouring; and each unit of LI (and grenadiers for that matter), should have several colour facings/cuffs.


As light infantry regiments weren't formed until a few years after this conflict, in the early 19th century, you can either go with different colours and potentially get confused - i.e. which green stand goes with which unit, or paint the entire battalion in one facing/cuff colour.

As I wanted some LI unit's at battalion level and to act 'in line' with the cool shooty stats, I've opted for one facing/cuff colour for this unit which is technically incorrect but at least looks cool (unless of course the LI companies were taken from several line battalions, all with yellow facings - :o !).

It'll probably turn out that it really doesn't matter in terms of playability and each base will get its own colours to represent an individual company at battalion level. The rest will be formed as small skirmishing units in any case.


In fact I've probably overthought the problem but:

a) even with the molded base cut away, that drummer is huge! That's the last time I use one on the same base as the ACTA figures!

b) at least the hobby has, yet again, taken up a decent amount of my time and prevented me from hiring prostitutes and doing drugs :)