The shot over the table

Especially for Kaptain Kobold

here is a photo I got from another source at the web. Sadly I don't have the link for it, was in one of the many reports about the fair.

For those of you who want to know more about the battle, take a look at this Link from Wikipedia.
And if you are interested in more South American history, go to http://www.grenadierproductions.com/
and see what they offer for wargamers. I already bought the three books they had on display at the Salute.

A great book for uniforms is "Los Realistas" showing very good plates for the Spanish colonial troops fighting the Revolutionaries together with regular Spanish units, sent from Europe.

And so endet the battle of Ayacucho

Salute - Battle of Ayacucho 1824

This weekend it was the first time I was able to visit the Salute in London. After some problems with the flight which we were able to master and several beers in the evening on Friday we had an early breakfast and then went to the Salute.

Knowing the German figure fairs the huge hall and the hundreds if not thousands of visitors in front of the doors was a very impressing sight to me.

Ok, through the door and on to the first stand which was a bookshop. 15 minutes later I had 50 pounds less but 8 books more in the collection:-) And so went the day on. At the end I broke nearly down because of all the weight I had to bear...

Beside the shop there were several dioramas and wargames on display. Of course most of them 28mm. But to my great delight some 1/72 too.

My absolute favorite was the battle of Ayacucho in Peru 1824, shown by The South London Warlords.
Bolivar fought here the Spanish in the South American wars of independence. All the figures on the diorama were HAT and Italeri with a few old Airfix and some Falcata. Some Zvezda and Strelets mixed between them too and a lot of great conversions.

The guys there did the battle in numbers of 1:10. Well, maybe I will be able to show it (or another from the same war) in 1:1 as the armies were not bigger than 3000 men. But enough talk, here are the photos I made there.

 Not sure, but could be the Granadros de la Guardia

These unit I always wanted to paint myself. Guardia Honour in their colourful uniform!

 While the Spanish regulars had blue and white uniforms with some other colours of the colonial Realistas, here we have Bolivars regulars from the good old Airfix range.

 Husares de Colombia

Again regulars from the army which became later Venezuela, Columbia and Bolivia

And what I will go for sure (wasn't available at the Salute) are the books from Grenadier productions.

Finally talking about South American history, I came over the brand new book from Caliver press "Sabrs across the Pampa". The Argentinian Indian wars. Well with 47 Pounds very pricy for just 175 pages. But with 24 colour-plates each of three figures and more photos from paintings etc. I think a fair price for such an unusual subject - and you know I am always after the lesser known campaigns!!!!

And again the Indian subject

Shortly after I posted the last post, I got a mail from Michael Werth who already got some of my figures and made some very nice conversions of other figures to increase his Indian armies.

I like the Elephant with Pohlman at top:-)

Wellington in India

After showing a lot of stuff which my friends did, I thought it is time again to show something I am working on.
You all know my passion for the history of India in the 18th and 19th century from my Sikh-war postings and the own production Sepoys, Mysore etc.

As I have a job in which I am often on tour for hours in the car, I like to hear audio-books while driving. Last week I had "Sharpe's Triumph" (who wonders) and I always heard the 78th Highlanders in kilt and the white coated regular Sepoys of the Mahratta army.

Well there is no proof for the 78th. The only paintings about them with kilt in India are in the Osprey Assaye and other sources doesn't mention their outfit or simply speaking about the "myth" of the 78th in kilt. But as their are easier to get than British with hat and trousers I decided to make "true" Highlanders for them. The 74th on the other hand have the typical European uniform for India. Ingo volunteered to sculpt me some an in the meantime I use the Strelets Egyptian range guys. Well, these are not useful for Egypt, but for India (without backbag).

Then we have the Sepoys for which I used the GERman set of Sepoys/90th light for Egypt again.

Well I had the luck that just one of the 12 figures was completly broken and three others had their muskets off. Now I will try to proof that they can realy be glued as GERman usually mentions....

But the bulk of the Sepoys comes from my own production in metal. These are the first six poses in different headgear. In the meantime I was able to pay the sculptor for two poses more and have all eight poses in the four different headgears shown here.

Beside this we need the British 19th dragoons and some EIC cavalry units. Both should be easy to be converted from some existing Husar figures.

Coming to the enemies this is much more difficult. In the photo of the Bengal cavalry you already see Mahratta light horse. In the painting of the 19th you see Indian infantry. But these are wrong. It did me a lot of research and help from my friend Alfred Umhey to find out at least how the regular regiments of the Indian princes COULD have looked like. All began with a French officer of the name De Boigne who was the first to organise regular units for the Indian prince he was serving for. Later a lot of other princes wanted to have their own regulars too.

Here is my own humble drawing of a regular  under de Boigne's command. We know from British sources, that Scindia's sepoys at Assaye had a white uniform.The head is the same style as for Bengal sepoys of the EIC.

Other paintings of regulars in the Indian princes service showing troops in red coats with a kind of shako and long white trousers.  I asked Ingo to sculpt me some of these here which he promised me. And beside giving him this ugly drawing here, I also gave him the original 18th century drawing which I had. But as this has 15 MB, I didn't wanted to post it here.

So hopefully I can show a diorama of Assaye beside another about Seringapatam 1799 in the next two years.