Indian Mutiny - Sepoy Rabble

Unlike the Well-ordered Sepoys, these Sepoy Rabble have all but lost the ability to fight as a discipline unit. They have adopted their more traditional clothes and not much shows them to have been part of the Bengal Native Infantry. They are however a large part of the Mutineer forces in Sharp Practice.

The minis are mostly Iron Duke, with a few Mutineer Miniatures thrown in to increase numbers. I decided that the minis representing the Sepoy Rabble would not have red coats, which should make it easy to see which units are Well-ordered Sepoys and which are Sepoy Rabble.

The colour palette used is limited to different shades of white, very light blue, cream and light khaki. The hope was to make them individual in appearance while still looking like a unit.

I plan to use the minis as three units of Sepoy Rabble (remember I use half-sized units) and two units of Sepoy Skirmishers.

Next up will be the Badmashes with Big Choppers.

Indian Mutiny - Well-ordered Sepoys

These are the first of my Mutineer force for my Indian Mutiny project where I will be using the revamped Sharp Practice rules by Too Fat Lardies.

The best troops available for the Mutineers are the Well-ordered Sepoys, so these will form a large portion of the force as they will also help spend the points for the Mutineer side. These sepoys still bear some resemblance to a disciplined unit and the rules incorporate this.

In all there are 16 figures, 12 from Iron Duke Miniatures and 4 from Mutineer Miniatures. While they can go together in group, the Mutineer miniatures are more bulky and I must admit that I prefer the Iron Duke miniatures. The Mutineer miniatures paint up very nicely and might just be more easy to get to look good.

Overall I am very pleased with the look of these sepoys. Next up will be the Sepoy Rabble.

Indian Mutiny - British/Company forces

Been busy painting for the past couple of weeks and have finally finished my British/Company forces for The Indian Mutiny.

The rules I will be using are Sharp Practice 2, but because I will be collecting both sides of the conflict, each group/unit is only half size. The combined points of the force below is a lot more than I currently have Rebel troops for, but will give the British/Company player some options.

All the minis are Iron Duke and Mutineer Miniatures. Both are easily painted and even though the Mutineer minis are just a bit bigger nobody will notice on the gaming board.

I have tried to paint them according to the information on the Iron Duke Miniatures website. Most of the troops were at Delhi, which is what I have gone for, but there is no doubt that some of the troops historically never saw action at Delhi or together.

I will be starting on the Rebel forces this weekend, which I am looking forward to painted.

HM 64th (2nd Staffordshire)

HM 64th (2nd Staffordshire)

53rd Foot (The Shropshire)

Sirmoor Gurkha

Native Skirmishers

Sikh Infantry

Sikh Infantry

9 pounder cannon and crew

5 Different leaders and a musician

Indian Mutiny - new project

As any normal wargamer I wander from project to project - some of them I never I get to play as I will loose interest while painting the miniatures. Latest example is my interest in Darkest Africa, which saw me trying to get a Force Publique and an Arab Slavers force. Before I had finished the last minis I had decided to sell, and within a day of putting them up for sale I had sold them.

This was around the time that Sharp Practice 2 was launched and after reading some reviews, seeing the YouTube videos that Richard Clark has made, and listing to Neil Shuck's interview with Richard I knew I just had to try it out. So I decided to get the PDF version.

When it came to the conflict that I wanted to use the rules for I was drawn to the Indian Mutiny, although I will not rule out getting into the other main conflicts that the rules are aimed at some later point. The reason for choosing the Indian Mutiny was because of the variety of troop types available to each side and the excellent Iron Duke Miniatures that I had been keeping an eye on.

So before the money received from the Darkest Africa sale burnt a hole in my pocket, I had made an order with Empress Miniatures for some of the Iron Duke miniatures. I will be collecting both sides, as I have found out that this is something I prefer.

One of the options for the Rebel forces are Badmashes and I was looking for suitable figures when I came across Mutineer Miniatures - unfortunately the Badmash pack was listed as sold out. I wrote to Mutineer to hear when/if the pack would be back in stock. 4 days later I received a reply that the minis were back in stock and prices had been reduced from £6 to £4 per pack! So I shelled out on some officers, artillery, civilians, badmashes, a few more sepoys and regular infantry.

There is one problem with the Indian Mutiny and that is the amount of Rebel forces needed. The cost of a Regular British group of 8 with Enfield rifles is 10 pts, and for those points you can get 3 groups of 10 Sepoy Rabble! So early on I made the decision to gather the groups/units that I wanted but a half the force size. In the above example I would only need 4 British regulars and 15 Sepoy Rabble - a lot more healthy for my wallet. I have not found anywhere in the rules where this should be a problem, so this is what I am aiming for.

When my Iron Duke miniatures arrived I started basing them on 25mm Renedra plastic bases, while the Leaders are placed on 32mm washers. I then started painting Sikhs that I got for the British, and yesterday I finished to groups of 2nd Staffordshire Regiment groups.

The Mutineer minatures arrived Monday and I have only unpacked them so far. So a lot of work still to do.

The last thing I bought was the two of the three wagons which will typically be used, Ammunition Wagon and Engineer's Wagon, and three draft horses from Warbases. I made the Water Cart from some of the other carts and bits that I had lying around.

I have also bought and MDF board and gotten it cut up in 2x2 pieces. Some terrain pieces have also been gathered.

Must admit that I am very excited about the project, the rules sound great, the miniatures are beautiful, and hopefully the terrain and the board will be so as well. This is the largest project that I have commenced since my brief venture into SAGA - The Crescent and the Cross.

Here are some pictures of the painting table and the individual minis.

1897 - Pathan Uprising game

Finally had a chance to start my colonial wargaming yesterday when my friend Frank came around to my place with his beautifully painted Pathan forces. With him he also brought his scratch built British fort, which looks tremendous.

The rules for our game is my own reworking of the Lion Rampant rules, altered where I have found information from the upcoming The Men Who Would Be Kings rules by the same author Daniel Mersey.

Since neither of us had tried colonial wargaming before and because Frank is not really into unit-based games we had decided to half the number of figures that each unit normally consists of. The means that a regular/irregular unit is 6 man strong, while tribal units are 8 man strong.

The scenario we played was a straightforward one where we would have to take out each another. We rolled a Leadership score for each of our unit leaders and a Leader skill. My British forces consisted of three units:

British Regulars
Sikh Sepoys
Guides Infantry

My unit leaders where pretty unspectacular with all of them having a score of 7, while the British regulars would be able to reroll a failed Discipline test, the Sikh "gained" Wild Charge and the Guides Infantry could reroll one failed Fire die.

Frank on the other had rolled quite well and managed to have two of his leaders be Inspiring, meaning that they would get an Ordered activation on top of their Free activation each round - not good news for me. His forces consisted of the following units:

Ghazi Fanatics x 2
Pathan Riflemen x 2
Pathan Jezails

All units started off the table and would need a successful Move activation in order to deploy.

The rules proved to be quick to learn and the flow of the game was okay considering that it was the first time we played them.

For me one of the measurements of a good ruleset is if the game balance flows back and forth between the two forces and this was very much the case in this game. Final result was that the Inspiring Pathan leaders extra actions proved decisive and the Pathans killed off the British.

The smaller units was not an issue and the game/rules did not suffer at all.

Here are some pictures from the game.