15mm Chinese - Part 22 Mounted Infantry

15mm Chinese - Part 22 Mounted Infantry [II]

This weeks offering is more mounted infantry. The castings are part of the Grumpy's Range available from Eureka of Australia. They were part of a bulk purchase of unpainted figures from Ken Bell off EBay last year. It took me a while to ID the castings because Ken got them as a job lot from someone else from EBay! They were described as Mongol Chinese which wasn't much help. The casting code is CHIC01 Chinese Peasant Cavalry with Halberd. There are three poses and from looking at the website they originally had a tall thin plume on the top of the Coolie Hats as they are also sold as part of the Grumpy Ming Range using a casting code share. The figures are well posed and given their age still very nice castings with minimal flash or degradation of the moulds. Since I need lots of castings for mounted infantry in my Chinese armies they will be perfect to use as these or as low quality cavalry elements.

It took me a week to do them from start to finish which isnt bad considering my painting speed and level of detail I am currently applying.

Grumpy Code CHIC02 Chinese Peasant Cavalry with Spear

I now have 6 Mongol cavalry to do followed up by 30 mounted Crossbowmen. I still need to purchase some more artillery crew and some 10mm scale guns from Kallista to use as the Yuan Reg Art [I] elements at the end of the list. I am using 10mm scale guns because the design of the pieces is correct for the army and the scale more suited to the smaller artillery pieces that started to emerge in the beginning of the Black Powder era. I also have a Tribal Khitan allied contingent to paint for the Tang. I might also buy a Khitan-Liao contingent for the Northern Han option in this list.

15mm Chinese - Part 21 Mounted Infantry

15mm Chinese - Part 21 Mounted Infantry [I]

As the final stretch comes into view I am now working on the mounted infantry part of the Chinese collection. I thought that these figures are part of the Outpost Wargames Services range of Sui/Tang Chinese. I was sure the figure code was STC8 Mounted Infantry but Jeff at OWS has confirmed that they are NOT OWS castings so now I am not sure exactly what they are. I have two batches of 18 to do, one batch are holding the typical Chinese fringed spear of the time and the other batch are holding bladed polearms that look very much like halberds. Because each batch is complete different I have split them up and painted the first 18 before starting the next 18 which will appear in another blog entry. As infantry mounted on horses to improve their mobility they will double as poorer quality cavalry if need be too. The all wear the typical iron ring reinforced long coat of this period. Basing etc done in the usual style that I do for my ancient armies. After some intensive searching online it appears that they are Grumpy miniatures.

Grumpy Code CHIC02 Chinese Peasant Cavalry with Spear

15mm Chinese - Part 20 Elephants & Firelances

15mm Chinese Part 20 - Elephants & Fire Lances

As part of my purchase from Evil Gong of Australia I decided to obtain three of their Southern Dynasties War Elephants Code EGC5 War Elephant. The elephants came in multiple pieces consisting of, body, head, two different types of tusks, howdah, umbrella canopy & four crew, It took some careful cleaning to ensure that the tusks actually fitted onto the head and each standing crewman had to have their bases trimmed as small as possible to ensure that actually fitted inside the howdah. I painted the crewmen in identical uniforms whilst varying the colour of the elephants body cloth for variety. The Southern Dynasties get the option to use one elephant whilst the Southern Han within the Late T'ang & Five Dynasties list get the option to take up to three elephants.

Evil Gong EGC5 War Elephant

Part of my original purchase for my Late T'ang army was mounted crossbowmen they are primarily for use as mounted infantry elements but the list requires two elements of Mounted crossbowmen classed as Reg Cv [O] so I have painted up two elements in a special uniform to represent this option. They come from the Outpost Wargames Sui/Tang range Code STC8 Mounted Crossbows. These are two piece castings and were very clean. I shall paint the other figures in a variety of colours when I eventually do them as mounted infantry.

Outpost STC8 Mounted Crossbows

The Sung Dynasty seemed to love Black Powder Fire Lances They had mounted and foot troops equipped with fire lances. They seemed to fall out of favour with the collapse of the Sung Dynasty and the Yuan used limited numbers of infantry with fire lances. For some reason DBx grades these cavalry as Reg Kn F rather than the more usual cavalry despite the fact they were also equipped with bows. Khurasan Figures make both in their Sung range. The castings were very clean and required minimal cleaning up.

Khurasan SUNG-FIRE-CAV

Last up for this blog entry are the Sung Fire Lance Infantry rated as Irr Ps X in the Sung list. I painted them in matched pairs of elements which will enable me to swop around the bases depending on which command has them in. The castings were very clean and required minimal cleaning up.

Khurasan SUNG-FIRE-INF

This now brings the painting tally for 1st January to 7th April 2021 to:

185 infantry & 4 war drums [63 elements]

80 cavalry [24 elements]

12 Bamboo & Paper Lions [8 elements]

3 elephants [3 elements]

Plus I have rebased

32 elements of Pikes

4 elements of Psiloi

50 mounted elements