Forces Of Empire!

I’ve been continuing to work on those armies that I identified as having been neglected over the past few years (see my last post here), particularly those that can just have small bits and pieces done on them. Latest figures to be painted are Indian infantry for my Boxer Rebellion British Empire force.

My Allied forces for Boxer Rebellion games are spread across most of the Allied powers (I’ve got British Empire, US, French, Russian and Japanese troops) so none of the contingents are large, since they can operate as a combined force. One thing I’ve tried to do though is give each nationality the capability to operate independently, so most have infantry and artillery and some have cavalry and machine guns. My British Empire and US forces have all of these!

I’m quite particular in that my “Brits” are really British Empire forces. Only one infantry battalion in the force dispatched to China was from the British Army, the bulk of the troops being infantry and cavalry drawn from the Indian Army. Consequently, with the completion of these latest figures, I have two 10-man Indian infantry battalions to go with my other units.

When I started this project in the ’90s the only Indian troops I could get in 20mm or 1:72 scale were plastic figures from ESCI. These came boxed with Zulu War British infantry and were meant to be representative of troops in the late 1870s/early 1880s. Although the Indians’ uniforms contained a few inaccuracies and items no longer worn in 1900 they were all I could get (and they are nice figures). In the years since then IT Miniatures have produced 20mm Indian Army troops for WW1 and Newline Designs brought out some late 19th Century figures, so I bought a handful of each to bulk out my forces.

Of the figures shown above, the figure on the left is an IT Miniatures WW1 soldier, second from left is an ESCI plastic figure and the rest are Newline Designs figures (the picture could have been better I think). They were relatively easy to paint, essentially wearing khaki drill uniforms and brown equipment, but completing them means my British Empire force for the Boxer Rebellion is finished! I posted a while back covering my other Allied forces and their Chinese adversaries, so I now need to put together a post showing all of the British Empire forces together for completeness! Watch this space!