CAMERONE DAY

As I write this it is 12:59am on Monday, April 30th, 2012.

Later today will be the 149th anniversary of the battle of Camerone.

Though this blog is devoted to wargaming the Second Anglo-Afghan War in general, and the battle of Maiwand in particular, I must confess that as a boy I was a devotee of Camerone and the French Foreign Legion before I had heard of the Battle of Maiwand.  With the rather momentous 150th anniversary of Camerone coming in just one year, I have been planning for some time to do for that anniversary of Camerone what I did for the 130th anniversary of Maiwand a little less than 2 years ago, and build terrain and raise troops expressly for a miniature game to be played on the big day in question.  Late this past Summer I started a blog to keep track of the process.  Until now I haven't publicized its existence, since I haven't put much of note up yet.  But tomorrow -- on Camerone Day -- I will be participating in a one-year early "play-test", thanks to my good friend Nick Stern, who drove down from Northern California, with his car filled with Legionnaires, Mexicans, and the Hacienda de la Trinidad (all in 28mm of course!).  I hope to have an AAR on tomorrow's game up on the new blog very soon.  For anyone who's interested, please check it out here:

LINK TO CAMERONE DAY BLOG

And to tide you over until I manage to post the many pics of the new rocky hill and the battle of Charasiab, here's just a few more -- plus a couple showing some new JTT Micro-Scale pine-trees I picked up at Allied Model Trains, that look to me exactly like the pine-trees in pics from the battle of Peiwar Kotal...

9th Lancers in Afghanistan -- and a brief increase in scale...

It's been a while since I've posted anything new here, but there's some good stuff in the pipeline...

(1) I'm almost done with my second "vertical wood-chip" hill -- here's a few WIP pics as a teaser:

...and...

(2) I recently played a brief but rather decisive game of the battle of Charasiab, fought by General Roberts to clear the way through the last mountain passes between his army and Kabul, following the uprising which led to the massacre of Major Pierre Louis Cavagnari and his escort of Guides, who were at the time ensconced in the Afghan capital. This was the first major engagement of the second phase of the war. The first phase had ended in May 1879, when the Amir, Yakub Khan, signed the Treaty of Gandamak with the British, amongst the various provisions of which was his acceptance of a permanent British embassy in Kabul, to be led by the aforementioned and ill-fated Major Cavagnari.

Once again, here's a few pics (first of which features my son & one of my two daughters setting down troops):

But I'm not posting just to tease with things to come, I'm really here to share something I feel lucky to have discovered, thanks to fellow blogger, colonial wargamer, and transplanted Southern Californian, Michael Davis (CLICK HERE TO VISIT Michael's excellent "Horse & Musket" blog)...

During an email discussion on the 9th Lancers and their service during the Second Afghan War, Michael sent me an image of a 1/6 scale (12") trooper of the regiment, uniformed, & equipped in incredibly accurate detail:

Although this blog is devoted to 1" or slightly larger figures/miniatures/toy soldiers, the 12" tall variety hold a nostalgic place in my heart, as I imagine they do in the hearts of all those who played with GI Joe &/or "Action Man" when they were growing up. Discovering an exquisitely-converted Second Afghan War GI Joe... well, it blew me away -- in a good way!

The above figure, whose dress, weapons, & equipment -- as well as his very characterful head -- are nearly all custom-made -- is the work of an incredibly-talented gentleman by the name of Tony Barton. I've taken the liberty of reproducing a couple of images here, but I STRONGLY encourage you to click on said pic in order to visit a 1/6 scale forum page with much more information and a bunch more pics of the same figure, wearing multiple uniform variations, including almost every known order of dress the 9th Lancers wore throughout the war in Afghanistan. I also encourage you to visit Tony's own website at Tony Barton's website LINK, where you can see many more of his custom-built 12" figures, spanning British military history from the English Civil War to the Falklands, and as you can see from the image below, including colonial subjects!

*NOTE: Tony has yet to add the Afghan War lancer to his own gallery as of yet, so if you want to see it all, you'll have to visit both sites!

***THIS JUST IN... HOT OFF THE INTER-WEB PRESSES...***

Tony was kind & generous enough to send me a pic of a pair of 12" figures he made but had never taken any pics of previously, and which he though I'd appreciate -- and man was he right!

It's Gunner James Collis, VC, of E/B Battery, RHA, and an unnamed soldier of the 66th Regiment, at Maiwand. Talk about appealing to your target demographic, it's hard to imagine anything from the 1/6 figure world that could fit as well here on "Maiwand Day"!

Many thanks, Tony!

MINI SIZE COMPARISON PICS - mostly Perry & Empress

In response to a question about size/scale compatability of Perry and Empress miniatures that came up over at TMP (The Miniatures Page), I took some pics and made this post. I couldn't help but throw a couple of minis from other manufacturers -- Wargames Foundry, Castaway Arts, & Pontoonier, into a few of the pics. At some point in the future I hope to do a more formal series of shots, comparing Inf, Art, and Cav. from all the companies in my collection, but for now this will have to suffice. Hopefully it will prove useful to someone!

1. Copplestone castings officer, Empress officer, Perry officer:

(NOTE: click on any pic to enlarge it)

2. Another angle of same:

3. Yet another angle of same:

4. Castaway Arts officer, Pontoonier NCO, Perry officer, Empress officer, Perry officer:

5. Reverse angle of same:

6. Perry officer, Empress officer:

7. Another angle of same:

8. Yet another angle of same:

9. Perry British general, Empress Inf. officer on horseback:

10. Another angle of same:

11. Perry 10th Hussars officer, Empress Inf. officer on horseback:

12. Another angle of same:

13. Yet another angle of same:

14. Wargames Foundry WWI wounded, Empress wounded, Perry medical officer:

15. Wargames Foundry NWF wounded, Empress wounded, Perry medical officer:

16. Empress wounded & Perry medical officer:

17. Empress Ensign & Perry Sudan Inf. standard-bearer:

18. Closer shot of the same:

19. Perry British general & Empress Art. Battery commander:

20. Another angle of same:

In general, as I said earlier on TMP, I see Perry as being a bit chunkier/thicker than Empress, as well as a tiny bit taller in general. But the difference is slight enough to give me no hesitation whatsoever using figures from both companies side-by-side on my table. I think they can even be fielded in the same unit, if a little care is taken to address the slight size difference -- such as giving the height of an Empress officer a slight lift with a thin sheet of card between his figure base and movement base, if he will be serving alongside Perry troops. But of course, that's just my opinion!

Right now I have a unit of old Wargames Foundry 17th Lancers painted up and serving as the 9th Lancers in Afghanistan, but I am going to have to order a unit's worth of the new Empress Miniatures 17th Lancers, to replace them. I hate adding to the "lead pile" when I already have the troops in question, but those new figures are just so incredibly gorgeous looking, I can't resist...

(NOTE: if you are particularly interested in British cavalry regiments that served in the Second Afghan War, type "cavalry" into the SEARCH bar at the upper left of this page and you should find a brief post I did a while back on the subject)

(NOTE #2: click on any of the 4 thumbnails below to see the FULL SIZE pics of these somewhat spectacular cavalrymen)

(NOTE #3: click on pic below to visit the EMPRESS MINIATURES Anglo-Zulu War British troops page)

Some costumes & props from Gunga Din

There's been a lot of excitement lately in the Colonial miniature wargaming world, thanks to the first pics being posted online of Bob Murch's PULP FIGURES (CLICK HERE & JUMP TO HIS SITE) sculpts of the "Sergeants Three" from Gunga Din, as seen here --

-- and discussed at length on this topic page at TMP:

LINK

For anyone familiar with the movie, it's very easy to understand all the excitement.

Messages were flying fast and furious on the Colonial Wars Yahoo Group regarding the proper color for the Sergeants' uniforms, equipment, and headgear. I weighed in with the opinion that the movie takes place in the late 1880s or 1890s, after the conclusion of the Second Afghan War -- when khaki became standard issue for all arms -- but before the Maxim Gun replaced the Gatling. The most obscure reason I gave was that Victor McLaglen's character, McChesney, was obviously based on Kipling's Private Mulvaney, who had previously seen action during the Third Burma War, as detailed in "The Taking of Lungtungpen."

Truth is the film is obviously fictional, there was no major rebirth of Thugee in late 19th Century India, and anyone buying Bob Murch's gorgeous miniature versions of the Sergeants Three should feel free to paint them up however they like... but, historical wargamers being who they are, it's easy to understand a certain obsession for wanting to know just what color (a particular shade of khak...? pure white...? offwhite...?) their costume uniforms were, and the same for the imitation foreign service helmets... etc., etc., etc.

Turns out by a fluke of luck I have some handy info on this subject, since I accompanied my son's Boy Scout troop to the town of Lone Pine, California this past Fall, while camping in the nearby Inyo National forest, at the base of Mt. Whitney. We also visited Manzanar, the Japanese Relocation Center, drove through the incredible Alabama Hills, and -- a personal highlight for me -- stopped at the Beverly and Jim Rogers Lone Pine Museum of Film History. Most of the props, costumes, posters, and various other movie-making memorabilia & artifacts relate to the hundreds of Western movies and, later on, TV shows filmed in the area. But one corner of the museum is devoted to the far smaller but no less significant -- at least to me! -- sub-genre of Imperial British adventure movies. These films used the rugged hills, rocky cliffs and dusty scrub-covered prairie to double for the North-West Frontier of India and Afghanistan, and foremost amongst them was one of the greatest movies ever made...

GUNGA DIN.

Now, some of you reading this blog may have guessed long ago that the origin of my user-name "MAD GURU" had a connection to the movie version of Gunga Din, and if so, you were totally, completely, 100% absolutely right. I LOVE THE MOVIE. Have since I first saw if as a very young boy. And my favorite thing in it has always been the Mad Guru, who earns his sobriquet when one of his three British captives-turned captors, declares: "You're mad." The Guru's reply, committed to my memory decades ago, will forever remain etched in my brain:

"Mad? Mad?! Ceasar was mad... Alexander was mad... and surely Napoleon was the maddest of the lot. Since the beginning of time they've called 'mad' all the great soldiers of the world. You shall see what wisdom lies behind my madness."

Oh, man. I get chills just blindly reciting it in my head for the umpteenth-millionth time...

Anyhow, that's a very, very long preamble to a handful of pics of Gunga Din costumes and props I took with my iPhone while visiting the "Colonial Gallery" (my name, not theirs!) at the museum.

They show a WHITE helmet, a brown leather ammunition shoulder-belt, and a khaki tunic and matching helmet ued by an extra who was "shot" onscreen (the tunic has the red blood stain to prove it). If I remember correctly, the khaki tunic and helmet may have been used for another British-in-India movie as well...