The Persian Figures what I made

Dear reader, you will recall that I cast my Persian Napoleonic infantry, see here. Well I painted them up for the painting challenge.

I also finished the camel artillery

I'm going to cast some more soon for artillery men and maybe even another unit of infantry

Persian Army 1807

Regular visitors will know I've become a little obsessed with the Persian - Russian war between 1804 and 1813, due to my reading of The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk. I've been buying some Perry Napoleonic Russians and I have a lot of Afghan type figures that I can use but I was without any Persian Regular Forces known as Sarbaz.

Persian Regulars

  

1811 Persian Zembouraki Camel Artillery

Persian Militia - 3rd from right

Westfalia do some really nice regular figures but I was feeling cheap and bought some renaissance Persians from Old Glory. Generally I like Old Glory stuff and the figures I got were great but the uniforms and equipment were wrong. The infantry were wearing frock coats, were wearing puttees, all had swords and had a variety of fashionable head wear.

I could modify the hats, swords and boots but the frock coats would be a proper nightmare. Luckily they can be used as Persian Militia (see above). However I still had no Regular Persians. It was time to break out the casting kit and make some.

I make simple bodies and legs and then add heads and arms from the bits box, who hasn't got thousands of these. I made the body from a plastic zombie body and used milliput to make the trousers into pantaloons and some webbing.

The webbing broke off in the mould but not a disaster. I used the model to make a plaster mould and melted some of my collected swarf (11g per figure) and managed to cast 20 figures.

After cleaning up I added ACW arms and musket and a Dervish head

 I then added the relevant hat - Kadjar

I had previously converted the Old Glory figs to militia.

Finally the  Persian Zembouraki Camel Artillery which the Old Glory figs came with Wheelock muskets but needed light cannons. Luckily I had some of these from my Pirates.

Camel gunners post conversion - I have 6 of these and have fitted 3 with cannon.

All I need now are some bases to put the figs on, I've run out.

I'm off to Matt's next weekend to play a game in his Sealion campaign a,nd he is putting on a demonstration game at Dumfries in March where I will play. Really looking forward to that. In February I am at another gaming day with the Old Guard in Northallerton. Hopefully in a couple of weeks I'll be playing a Zombicide game by Google hangout with Simon (BlaxKleric) as a spin off from the painting Challenge. That should be fun although i've never played Zombicide, but have been reading around it. Overall very busy, which is nice but it means I can't go to York in a couple of weeks.

The Great game

I'm currently reading The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk about spying in the NW frontier and it is a fantastic read full of daring do and great battles. Like all true wargaming butterflies I got the bug to play. I've got loads of figures for the late 19th Century stuff but the thing that really pushed my buttons was the Russian / Persian wars of 1807 - 1827. These looked at great chance to play large scale skirmishes. So I went shopping

I have loads of irregular Persian troops, Afghans and the such, but no regulars. The only real source is Westfalia but these are a little expensive for a flight of fancy (£9 for 6 infantry and £14 for a single camel gunner). So I went looking and Old Glory had what I thought were suitable figures at less that £1 for infantry and £24 for 6 camel gunners. So I bought them. Unfortunately they aren't right. The infantry will be a tough conversion to regulars but an easy one for militia - only hats need doing. The camel gunners weren't armed with 1lb cannons but with wheelocks. Luckily I have some swivel guns that will convert them nicely. probably a score draw on success.

To fight them I needed some Russian Napoleonic troops so off to Perry for some infantry, some Cossacks and an artillery piece. These will work straight from the box with forage caps instead of shakoes.

Next some Perry some Madhists to complete the collection for now.

Finally I gave my first public lecture on Thursday, The Newcastle University equivalent of the Royal Institute Christmas Lecture to a room of 200 children and parents. I really enjoyed it.

The bags are field geology kits that I gave out - bribery and 100 new geologists in 5 years

To close i bought this yesterday from the cool independent record store - Germ Free Adolescents by X-Ray Spex which got me thinking about other great songs from my youth especially this one