Some pictures of Friday’s battle. Victory to the Western trained and armed Green Dragon Army. The Blue Dragon Army left the field after half it’s units were destroyed. Big Wars worked well. I look forward to hopefully seeing a BDA victory next time…
The final photo shows the Blue Dragon Army General and his bodyguard surveying the tattered remnants of his army and his victorious opponents. Next time it will be different!
Here are the initial deployments of Green Dragon Army and Blue Dragon Army-
The photos below show the armies advancing in the first turn-
Later today the Chinese will hopefully have their first battle. They have been mustering behind the battlefield ( being organised on trays for sorting out) and getting into units. The two armies represent the state of Chinese forces , old and new-
Above is the Green Dragon Army ( officers in green ) which is equipped with modern rifles. They are trained in Western tactics. Forward looking, tactically at least…
The two photos above show the Blue Dragon Army . They are equipped with antiquated muskets with a frame rests and also field units of spearmen . They are looking forward to showing the superiority of the old tactics.
Perhaps either or both sides may obtain some artillery along the way, only time will tell…let battle commence…
The Chinese figures came with no artillery. I decided to remedy this by firstly painting up a large old fashioned gun and secondly by scratch building from bits n bobs a jingall. The resultant jingall is a tad over sized but will serve on the battlefield. Here are photos of work in progress and also finished items.
Some of the Chinese have these stickers on them. Can anyone tell me about the company I can’t seem to find any info on it.
Needing to work out the best way to store the Chinese, any suggestions welcome. Doing some reading too. The Osprey is a good introduction and the Ian Heath an excellent source of information. I have three others in the Foundry Book series and they are all well worth getting hold of. My others are on Tibet& Nepal, Burma & Indochina and Small Wars 1919 to 1939.
The rest of the Chinese arrived today. Thanks to their previous owner’s excellent packaging they arrived safely and took ages to unwrap. I will set up a grand parade over the coming days but in the meantime a few photos-
Without over complicating things I want to differentiate on the table between modern rifles ( with a nod to ammunition problems as many Chinese units had many different rifles of different calibres in the same unit) and older ones , melee only units and Western trained ones. I hope to bring out the character of the army. Longer term plans are to get some artillery, jingls and irregular cavalry. There are a lot of figures so I think initially I will make two armies out of them and fight a civil war or rebellion.
I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity at the turn of the year to acquire a collection of 54mm toy soldiers depicting the Chinese of 1900. It comprises many conversions and other unique items. After some thought I decided this was an opportunity I couldn’t miss. The first two packages arrived today, excellently packed by their former owner B.P and a credit to his modelling skills. Eventually the collection will number around 270 figures once the rest arrive. So without further ado here are the photos
