Jacklex Chinese

 Been sitting on this for a couple of days as it was embargoed until today...

'Rob,

Here is the full range of the Jacklex Chinese Army. I thought you might like to see them. I hope to have these on the site in a couple of weeks. The new Japanese and Russians will take a little longer.'

Regular infantry

Irregular infantry

Cavalry

Artillery (mine will, of course, use completely wrong Rose guns!)

Needless to say, I've got an initial order on pre order...

1 1x general

2 1x Chinese cavalry

4 20 x regular infantry advancing

7  4 x officers with sword

8  1 x drummer

9  23 x advancing militia

11 12 x peasant

12 12 x peasant

13  2 x gunners

14  2 x gunners

15  2 x gunners

16  1 x flag and pole.

French infantry brigade finished.

Nothing else to say really - now done 3 x 3 company batallions of infantry, 2 guns and a general. All on element bases.

All that is needed to complete the element-based basic army is a unit of cavalry...

20mm Rose '1897' Generals

 

In reality, Rose 'Duke of Wellington' figure. Not sure when these were originally designed, but they appear in the 1958 Rose catalogue! They make decent late fictional late Victorian senior officers of doubtful accuracy!

For some reason bridles rarely cast well on this figure - so on all of these the bridles are made of green stuff!

Although I call the early Garrison figures 29mm, in fact this is purely to distinguish them from the large 25mm figures. This comparison between a '20mm' Garrison general and the Rose version shows this quite well...

Contact! Update Chinese Dragon attack post (see bottom of post)

The lead Boxers get ready to attack.

 

The cavalry face them as they send a messenger back to the fort.

Suddenly there are loud noises behind the Boxers! Columns of smoke rise into the air around the curve of the hill!

Disturbed by the passage of a noisy crowd of humans two dragons burst from their rest and engulf the column in flame!

When the smoke clears five Boxers had been fried to a crisp!

Confused, the leading Boxer unit halts in indecision.

Panic! The Boxers flee in pure horror! (To stand, officer and standard bearer needed to throw 5 or 6, other ranks a 6. All failed!!!)

The dragons follow up on the fleeing Boxers, forcing some of them to try and fight back.

Mostly they ran...

Treating all the figures as individuals, the Boxers are all down as Hordes (due to panic I've listed them as Hordes throughout, the Dragons as Dragons. +6 v +2. Using colour coded dice, in this battle 3 blue Boxers used blue dice, the red Boxers orange and the green dragon green. One Boxer did really well in this combat!

 

With many of the humans dead or running away and only a couple of them still facing them, the dragons decided they'd had enough and quietly sauntered off.

Faced with panicked Boxers heading towards them the British decided to charge!

First contact with the standard bearer who died!

Two Boxers promptly threw themselves to the ground and surrendered, a couple decided to fight and the rest scattered!

One of the resistors died, the other managed to hold off three cavalry!

 Satisfied with the outcome, the British rode off with their prisoners leaving one Boxer with a story about how he defeated and drove off a whole regiment of British cavalry! Of course, they never saw the dragons so haven't a clue what happened!

In fact, the Boxers finished up with four heroes, the other three being the ones who actually fighting the dragons - which, of course, they would later claim they killed...

 As an aside, I hate it when I read a detective novel and the detective solves it by introducing something they haven't told the audience about to solve the case. In this instance, there were enough clues and hints around that this was not a straight British/Boxer contest, though some were very obscure/hidden - I would be interested in knowing how many people spotted!

So, a few hints/clues. Nothing much, but here goes:

Firstly, right away through I have made a point of stating these are Pulp scenarios. The labels of all three of these posts include 'pulp'. The pulp side of my gaming has always been very specifically placed in the Newhaven universe (with 1897 extensions) and the single based figures  (rather than element based) especially so.

Look at recent posts - the Airfix Foreign Legion 'done as pulp rather than 'authentic'', Couple of Chinese buildings '28mm individual ones should be finished for quite a while apart from 'monsters'. 20mm for larger scale battles - got a prototype hopping vampire,', etc. Clear hints that 20/28mm single based figures are often for games with a supernatural element.

Now, the first of these three posts, 'Somewhere in China'. 'Between the Boxers and the British is my newly made village plus a temple and large protective idol.Of course, the British fort is behind the idol, which is probably why it didn't work' - so what direction IS the idol facing? Answer, towards a supposed threat. And of course magical idols are designed to ward off magical or supernatural threats. Didn't work against the British - not supernatural and came from the wrong direction. Seems to be working against the dragons - they're still outside the village!

OK, the dragons. Where did they come from? Never mentioned before. Yes, they were. Look under dragons on labels you get https://easterngarrison.blogspot.com/search/label/dragon - 

They're well hidden, but they're there! And no, I didn't expect anyone to spot that one!

Then lets look at another point. The design of the board itself.

That is a very long section of woodland. Looks like a major waste of space if that's all it's used for. Yet at the other end, where a possible siege of the fort could happen:

It was stuck at the far edge of the table... useful as a source of misdirection of course, but if I had ever intended it to be a pure Boxer/British battle the forestry section would have needed to be shorter and the fort would need to have terrain on it's far side! Otherwise - a very poorly designed board!

Anyway, as said there were plenty of clues and hints... but no-one was expected to find them, any more than someone reading a detective novel should be able to work out whodunit before the detective explains everything at the end. The idea is that tthe clues are there but you aren't supposed to notice them!

Getting closer.

As the Boxers approach from one side of the board...

The cavalry cross the bridge on their patrol.

Meanwhile one company of the Highlanders leave the fort, their tour of duty over. A replacement company should have arrived to replace them but it's overdue. No matter - it's a quiet sector, one infantry company plus a cavalry squadron should be more than enough!

Not quite in sight of each other yet - still part of a hill in the way.

 

The cavalry haven't seen the Boxers so the squadron splits as it carries out it's job of checking the village is quiet. Not sure if the Boxers have seen the cavalry yet!

And the 2nd infantry company get further away from the fort.

Jacklex again. This time Arabs.

Firstly, function. Although these are from the 'Fuzzy Wuzzy' part of the Arab world, I'm looking for generic Arabs. Actually, I would have preferred long flowing robes, but these will do. Likewise, they are wearing a turban rather than the desert Arab Gutrah . Yes, I did have to look up the name!

I suppose a lot of the time I would use these as separate Warband and firearms groups, Wearing the same headress seems to be the norm for different groups/nationalities so I decided all mine would wear red turbans. I very much doubt there is a real red turban tribe out there but you never know! As I'm not bothered about total accuracy I'll be getting some North West Frontier as a bit of variety. Plus I need a couple of distinct chieftains and standard bearers.

The rifle component will possibly be used as a separate 'unit' but that's not a given. I'm not sure how many I will need on single bases - possibly another 20-40 total infantry and ?? cavalry and camels? Or restrict this to very minor skirmishes and use element based for bigger battles. Plenty of combat opportunites against the British or French.

 

For rules I'll give the 'Magdala to Mafeking' rules by Andy Callan a try as they are on the Jacklex website! These don't have rules for attacking an actual fort - I'll probaby do something like roll a die th see if a particular figure is carrying a grappling iron (or ladder!) then roll again to see if it works, then he has to climb the thing and engage in melee at the top. I'll make something up!

Jacklex Naval Brigade

 

Not so much a Brigade, more a Detachment,

Probably all I'll do on single bases, thoughmight do a 24 strong batallion for DBX.

I've given the Gardner gun brass barrels to give a bit of relief from the assembly being all black.

At some stage I'll have to decide what to do about ship borne machine guns - what to make, what to buy!

French battalion finished

Should be enough of the single based French line colonial infantry for pulp uses.

Figures are a mix of Rose infantry with Jacklex officer and standard bearer. Flag just a basic paper tricolour from the internet - download flag, copy, reverse copy, put them together so that I finish up with both sides. Again, nothing fancy on this lot, just basic wargames standard. Future figures will be for the element based army.

 

Devils in skirts

I've finished this unit so it can be fielded in two different formats. Here it is basically ordered as three separate units - perhaps three companies in a battalion, or three battalions in a regiment, or three regiments in a brigade! The officer in the kilt then acts as the senior officer.

And here the extra command groups have gone to give a 24 figure unit with one command group.

So I have a total of four officers and three pipers.

As for the other ranks... those tartans and stockings are enough to make me never do a Scottish unit again! The 42mm Scots are much easier!

 So that leaves me with one lancer squadron to finish this 'army'. I doubt that I will do a version of this army based on elements - I'll leave that to 20mm.

Other countries - 20mm French Colonial

The Rose Colonial British are actually quite versatile - pity there were only 4 figures in the range (plus a casualty!). The officer is Jacklex.

Here I've simply painted the Rose figures up with blue tunics and red trousers. The French (and just about everyone else) seem to have had a lot of colour variations. In their case, different blues, sometimes including the trousers, Trousers could also be (possibly mostly?) white.

To a certain extent it would be easy to use lots of different schemes for an army. Here, I think a more stylised blue tunic/red trousers is better than a mix. My intention is to get the 'full' battalion of these on single bases witjin the next few days - though currently working on the 25/28mm Scottish Colonial battalion at the moment. I'll probably start doing both at the same time - Scots take a long time because of all those tartan kilts!

Having said that, the Rose ACW figures make quite good French in this scale. Next to him, the all blue figure suits as either Royal Marines or Germans. Of course, Germans could also be produced by painting the figure khaki!

There are lots of other variations possible. Add in the use of Jacklex figures and I've got quite a project/projects ahead of me in this scale.