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

Late T'ang Chinese - Part 8

Late T'ang Chinese - Part 8 The Fleet

As part of my building project I needed to source suitable models for the T'ang Fleet. There's a few makers out there who produce Junks including, Navwar, Langtons, Museum etc. The Tang fleet consists of four different types of vessels, 5 x War Junks, 2 x Horse Transports, 2 x Tower Ships and 1 x River Paddle-wheeler.

The war junks were the easiest to source as I used Grumpy's models as I already had a large bag of them in Project Lead Mountain. They are sold in the UK by East Riding Miniatures to special order as they are deleted from their current catalogue due to the Grumpy's moulds being at the end of their life and not everything is castable.

They are also available from Eureka in Australia casting code GRU-SHIP05

I decided that the fleet would be painted a uniform colour scheme based on traditional Chinese colours of Red and Yellow. 

Grumpy's Junk

Next up are the two horse transports. For these I purchased two large junks from EBay for next to nothing. They turned out to be Museum Miniatures casting code BO08.

Museum Miniatures Junk

The tower ships were problematic as no one makes anything suitable from historic ranges but I came across the now discontinued Spartan Games Ralgard starter fleet. 

Whilst these are designed for fantasy naval games they style is perfect for use as Chinese type ships. They are cannon armed but I can say that these represent the Greekfire weapons of the time instead. The model is right out of the box.

Ralgard Cruiser

The Chinese of this era used man-powered river paddlewheel galley type ships. Theres nothing at all like them available and I only had this line drawing to guide me. 

Since I had used two of the Ralgard cruisers I looked at the frigate models in the box and decided that I would convert one of them. The models sail was far too large so I took a pair of Grumpy's masts and sails to use on the hull. The stern rudder had to be removed so I could model a stern wheel and the model needed sponsons to house the paddlewheels that ran along the hull sides.

Converted Ralgard Frigate