Indian Army Review 2019

The logical end of the November mass painting spree...

Not as big as some of my other armies but quite reasonable.

Inspecting the first chariot unit...

Second...

And third...

Along the line of javelins.

The archery Corps

And finally the cavalry

The 2 horse chariots came with a 1 man crew - I've replaced them with a 2 man crew.

Medium cavalry units - in blue, so could possibly substitute for Kushites.

The EHC came part painted. 'Actual' EHC in an Indian army should be Kushans, basically a Parthian cataphract figure on a half armoured horse. Not something I'm going to quibble about!

These elephants show the flesh tones issue - figures all came ready painted though I painted the elephants.

Current phase of Indian army complete!

Done and based. Started this around the beginning of the month and have now produced:

2 x 48 medium archer units
1 x 18 strong light medium  archer unit
1 x 12 strong light infantry archer unit.
2 x 24 strong medium javelin units
1 x 12 strong light infantry javelin unit
Total 186 infantry.

(Completed) 1 x 12 man extra heavy cavalry unit
1 x 12 man light cavalry unit
2 x 12 man medium cavalry units
Total 48 cavalry (but also did 1 x 12 man Egyptian heavy cavalry unit as well)

3 x 6 man 4 crew heavy chariots.

Which is not bad for 1 month!

Looks a lot when you look directly down on them

A more normal view.

'New' medium cavalry. I've cheated a little bit. By painting them with blue saddle cloths and plumes, plus giving them cowhide shield covers, they don't look too different from Kushites. Of course, Kushites are mounted on sand bases rather than green, but...

Second unit of flower shielded infantry plus unit of light infantry added.

The archer serves three purposes - bulk line infantry, light medium as mercenary archers and standard light.

So that is effectively the Indians complete apart from a new crew for the 2 horse chariots - another 10 figures and that's it. Once I've painted them I'll do the full army review.

Chariot of the Apocalypse

There are still a lot of individual or small groups of  figures in my collection I don't seem to have covered yet. One of these is a model in the RAFM Demons of Darkness range - number 3705, the Chariot of the Apocalypse. (Actually, thought I had but can't find it so....)

Painting style a bit different from my current block painting efforts. Could probably touch up the chariot wheels.

One thing I like is how the charioteer's head turned out

It's one of those figures I'm not sure about. Not convinced I like the horses for instance. Quite happy with the painting though - comes under the heading 'once upon a time I could paint'

Kushite/Saitic Heavy Cavalry

Simple conversion of the PB Indian cavalry figure to make something that looks Egyptian.

Conversion simply consists of cutting of the rolled piece of cloth at the front of the headband and painting it as just a tied headband.

Again, figures mounted on Garrison horses.

Being Kushites armour should be painted as copper rather than iron - didn't have any copper paint so... the armour is not very satisfactory, I usually do better!

I have enough figures to do another unit, but don't know yet whether to do light or heavy cavalry.  If heavy, I'll paint the skin tones as Kushite, if light I'll use flesh coloured tones to represent native Egyptians. Another option for the lights would be to use the Numidian cavalry from the Garrison Roman range.

White bird hoplite unit 'upsized'

It's now a 48 figure unit instead of 24.

Full size 48 figure unit.

The two different paint jobs match.

Although I seem to have painted the sword belts different shades of brown.

Might do the same for my Spartan unit, or simply do another shield pattern unit.

Tin plate Assyrian chariot based.

Says it all really. I've also based the 'Carthaginian' Assyrian light archers.

Shown together with the first one I painted.

Being line chariots instead a 'general' I've used a much plainer style for the chariots.

The archers go to form two units of 12 and fill in quite a gap in my Minifigs Assyrian army.

Still quite a lot of figures to be based, including another 48 Indian archers.

Meanwhile I decided to to upgrade the early Greek hoplites with the white bird shield blazon to 48 (nearly finished), plus completed another 48 Indian archers, and have undercoated a unit of Saitic heavy cavalry (slightly modified PB Indians on Garrison horses) and another 24 Indian javelins.

More Indians - javelins

Done (but haven't based) the unit of javelinmen.

Same shield type as for the chariots, basically quick paint job apart from that - background is light green which doesn't really show on the picture.

I've also done a few figures to act as officers for units - could (should?) have given these standards, it would be easy but the idea of this army is speed rather than quality so didn't happen.

Next lot up is another archers unit. I have also got a cavalry unit being undercoated - but I've cut off the (can't describe it, the front rolled part of the headband?). The figures have been put on Garrison horses and will be joining my Saitic Egyptian army as heavy cavalry!). This leaves me with 36 earlier cavalry riders with thick javelins and about 30 later ones with (mostly broken) thin javelins. These will probably provide another 2 units of Indian medium cavalry and a Saitic light cavalry unit. Need more horses.

Also to do are another 24 javelins - probably as a 12 figure LI unit and 12 figure LMI mercenary  javelin unit. Still to be decided.

Indian 4-horse 6-crew chariots.

So, at 6 days three chariots took twice as long as that load of infantry and cavalry - though to be fair I have based them.

Mainly because I took a bit more care and also added more detail to them.

Plus it does represent 18 people and 12 horses - takes a lot more than 2-horse 2-crew chariots.

View of the crew - shield designs total fantasy but look good. I may end up doing a javelin unit with a similar shield design.

Likewise the chariots - pure fantasy but I like them!

Painting some Indians

Been busy last few days... lots of Indians archers and cavalry sorted, still more to do. One thing about Indians - wargames paint the flesh in all different shades ranging from flesh to black. The ones I've been doing to match the army I got from Harry use Vallejo medium flesh; for the ones I'm doing now I've painted brown to give a range of skin tones.A quick search shows they were given their brown spray nearly 3 years ago!

70 odd archers and 24 cavalry so far. Not bad for about 5 days work.

Extra heavy cavalry had already been started and were finished using the same flesh colour as the 'main' army.

Light cavalry mounted on Garrison horses - I've got a lot of Minifigs Indian horses but I'm keeping most of them back for chariots. Light cavalry rather than mediums - already got a couple of units of medium cavalry, will no doubt be painting more!

Infantry very simple basic wargames figures , no frills and quite roughly painted.

Still got a lot of poor quality painted figures to sort.

However, at the moment concentrating on getting more unpainted figures done.

One thing is that I haven't done an Indian army Review since I bought the original army, just various chariots and elephants as they were added. So probably do a full Review when I've got more figures painted and based.