Late T'ang Chinese - Part 5

Late T'ang Final Get Some Commanders

As part of my original EBay purchase the army only had two generals elements. Having made sure I had sufficient figures orders from Outpost I was disappointed when the figures turned up with only two horse poses. I had thought their generals horses would have been armoured. Luckily my Lead Mountain still has plenty of spare castings within it to provide me with suitable armoured horse castings to use instead. The castings were very well pised but the separate standard and flagstaff was so flimsy it wasn't worth the bother of using. I cut off the metal pole and hand carved a groove into the side of the metal flags and replaced them with steel lances. I have three reference books on the T'ang plus the Chinese Osprey books so I researched what their flags looked like. Since two of the flags were already done I repaired the damage I had done replacing the flagpoles and put them to one side and painted the other two flags. After what seemed like ages I finally got around to painting the actual horses and riders this week. None of the generals came with shields but since I knew I wanted to make them carry shields I had already ensured I had sufficient painted shields left over from when I completed the T'ang cavalry early this year.

There are four generals, one is the CinC, two sub-generals and an internal allied general. Each flag is different so it means I will be able to tell them apart quickly if necessary. The pictures are not of my usual standard due to my camera deciding to play up so I used my camera phone to take them.

The CinC

Outpost Wargames Code STC14 Mounted Command 

Sub-General No:1

Sub-General No:2

Allied General

Next up are some more T'ang Militia Infantry. This is the third batch of six I plan to do and since they are peasant troops I decided to give them a green uniform for variety. They are yet more Outpost Wargames castings just like the other two batches.

Outpost Wargames Codes STC7 Unarmoured Archers & STC18 Unarmoured Swordsmen 

The army also has a lot of Regular Trained Armoured Crossbowmen which is the staple core of most Chinese armies. Outpost of course make a suitable figure for these troops. The code STC11 Armoured Crossbowmen has two different poses. Thankfully they supplied the poses in even numbers of 32 each meaning I decided to make two batches of crossbowmen each of eight elements of 4 identical figures. I put aside the second batch for another time to concentrate on getting at least half of them completed. The castings were nice and clear with minimal flash and hardly any casting feed lines.

Armoured Crossbowmen - Pose 1

Outpost STC11 Armoured Crossbowmen Pose 1

I am finally getting to the stage that I can think about putting the army on the tabletop. Since I am modelling the Regular Army version I still need to complete the armoured swordsmen before I can use the army and that is the next thing on my painting table.

Finally once in a while EBay turns up a bargain listing. Part of my long term plan will be to be able to use this army using the Sui and Early T'ang army list which includes the option to field the Million Man Army that invaded Korea in 612 AD and was defeated by the Goguryeo at the Battle of Salsu. This battle is listed as being one of the most bloody battles of pre-industrial times with over 300,000 casualties. The Sui army requires 60 elements of Untrained Unwilling Soldiers classified as Hordes. The Late T'ang list has 24 elements of Horde within it and I noticed a Feudal Chinese lot on EBay consisting of 15 elements of Hd totalling 75 painted castings. The basing of the elements is pretty uninspired but for a purchase price of less than the cost of brand new unpainted metal from Essex Miniatures I ended up with 15 elements of Irr Hd O as a quick and cheap way of getting a large part of the Horde elements done. The painting is average but it means I don't have to worry about painting them. I have no idea what figure codes were used and they are a very mixed bag of castings and makes.