Event Cards for Mike Kirby's Guide to The SYW in India

Mike Kirby's The Campaigns in India during the Seven Years War 1756-1764 is both a useful wargaming resource for gaming the Seven Years War (SYW) in India, and is a resource book for V&B players wanting to game the period.

The  Boardgame Geek overview provides a very detailed summary of the publication that is no doubt already well known to a number of V&B players.

In the book Mr Kirby suggests the use of Chance Cards to capture the flavour of the period and provides details for some. I have taken these suggestions and used a Card Generator program to generate the cards.

The artwork used is either photos of my own figures, or artwork that I believe to be in the public domain. Working is largely that used by Mr Kirby.

Most of the cards are fairly straight  forward in their meaning but the card Failure of Iqbal is not that straight forward. My own clumsy research as to what the failure of Iqbal was has yielded little in the way of results.

Kirby also suggests that blank cards could be added to the pack in order to aid with the use of event cards.

I plan to print these cards out and use them for a play test. If They work well I will consider expanding the set and revisiting the art work.

Imagi-Nations WIP or What I Have Been Doing Since October

Recently I obtained from Glenn, a great deal of painted Airfix figures. Some of these figures will be able to be used for the V&B Waterloo project. The rest will be used for my Duke, Elector, King (DEK) project that I have set in the nations of the known world in the D&D setting of Mystera.

More Klantyre Highlanders.

Why? Because the known world allows for a range of both European and Non-European forces, and the nations have a wealth of background material. Of course by advancing the time line by 700 years and eliminating the high magic of the setting, allows for a great deal of flexibility in ignoring items that I dislike, or won't work for a DEK campaign. (More details are located here).

In a previous post  I detailed how I intended to use painted Highlanders surplus to Napoleonic gaming. As such the forces of Klantrye in Glantri have gained another two stands of infantry. 

Yet more Highlanders. Klantrye now has a sizable infantry force.

Included in the figures from Glenn was a collection of Airfix French Artillery that at some stage had been converted with a great deal of imagination to French Imperial Guard Foot Artillery with the addition of material to the Shako in order to make bearskins.  Given that I already have plenty of purpose built figures for that unit, I decided to do something very different.

Big headgear, bright colours, and a dedicated gun! 

I decided to model an elite unite of Himaya (warriors) from the Mumlyket of  Kadesh. Kadesh has a long traditional of military excellence, so it makes sense for them to adopt the latest military systems and equipment into their army.

The gun was produced by Plastic Soldier as a game component for their remake of 'Hold the Line'.

Both units would be rated as having shock, but the dedicated gun probably gives the Kadesh troops the edge. 

I purchased years ago a set of  German G.M. 0024"British Army in Egypt: Madras Regt". PSR reviews a similar set of figures here, and their comments about the material the figures are made from is rather generous. The material crumbles easily and should not be used to make figures!

Not all modern troops in the Sind region are in the employ of the local rulers!

.These figures (and the other two stands I hope to make from the set) I plan to use both as East Indian Company Sepoys and as Sepoys of the Minroth East Sindindian Company stationed in Sambay, Mumlyket of Jalawar.

Thyatis is the major military power of the background, and I have arbitrarily decided to give the majority of their infantry white coats. This is largely due the fact that I like the look of Ancien Régime troops in white coats!

Airfix British Hussars in use as Thyatian Light Horse face some WIP Shire militia.

WIP stand of Thyatian infantry.

While Thyatis is a major military power with all the trimmings, The Five Shires are not. They are a smaller power that doesn't have a large standing army. Rather they rely on trained bands and militias raised as required. Also, they are a nation of Halflings who call themselves the Hin.

WIP FDM 3d Printed Hin troops.

Same from the rear. 

Despite being classed as militia, many of the Shire Regiments do not suffer from being treated as militia as per the V&B rules. Rather they are often treated the same as regular linear infantry. 

A Regiment of Shire troops

Glantri and the Shires enjoy less than cordial relations.

DEK has provision for naval forces, so naturally I decided I needed ships. Rather then get ships in a sensible scale, I decided to make a cartoon scale navy using a mishmash of scales unrelated to either my figure or ground scale. This has frigates in 1/144 scale, 1st Rates at 1/180ish scale, and other ships at box scale.

A 3D printed 1/181 1st Rate Ship of the Line

A rather nice view of the stern

This is not a clever approach, but it is a fun one! I have been enjoying enlarging 1/700 scale STLs to larger sizes as I have always wanted big ship models!

The Mayflower under new management!

I am still figuring out exactly what ships go where, but I am definitely enjoying myself! The Mayflower was apparently a Fluyt design, so I am planning on using her as a generic vessel of the class.

1/83 Scale Revell Mayflower next to 1/144 scale HMS Southhampton

And since I have so many ships, I clearly need a Pirate Fortress. Below are my WIP planning photos for remodeling a rather broken and gutted Tracey Island Kat purchased for me.

A toy pirate ship which could be a ketch with asperations to greatness!

The island can host multiple V&B urban areas. 

It will need defenses to cover that nice beach...

Thank you for looking, and hopefully I will have some finished items soon to post on the blog!

Airfix Imagi-Nation Highlanders

 One of the side effects of playing Volley and Bayonet (V&B) with 20mm plastic figures is the accumulation of certain types figures in excess of what you can use. A classic example is that of Scottish Highlanders in British Napoleonic forces. 

Command stand for a Klantyre force

Given the scale of the standard game, it is extremely unlikely that you would need more than two brigade stands of Highland infantry, and even then, the Highlanders would typically only represent one of the battalions in each brigade.

Klantrye has a proud military tradition

Over the past twenty five  years  I have acquired a number of painted and unpainted sets of Airfix (and other brands too) Waterloo Highlanders (Click here for the PSR review) in excess of my requirements. Naturally I have hoarded these figures as they might be useful one day.

As I have been building forces for use with my Duke, Elector, King (DEK) 18th century imagi-nation campaign, I have been trawling through my collection of painted and partially painted figures looking for something suitable. Upon discovery of these painted Highlanders, I was struck by the thought that they could be used as well, despite being technically the wrong period.

The original painter's attempt at a tartan pattern is very subdued in these photos 

Indeed, one of the advantages of DEK is being able gloss over imperfections in uniforms as long as it has the right vibe. And since I have recently decided on the campaign background for my DEK campaign, these figures will work perfectly, and in numbers in excess of those normally needed for games of V&B in the Napoleonic era.

A proud regiment of Klantrye: The Glenmoorloch Borderers

The original painter made quite a nice impression of a tartan on these figures

And while perfectly nice sets of 18th century Highlanders exist, these figures have the advantage of me already having them, having a good range of poses that work well for making V&B stands of regular infantry, and of being quite forgiving of my restoration techniques.

Yet More Airfix Imagi-Nation Figures

 Recently I refurbished some more Airfix British Grenadiers figures into stands for use with Duke, Elector, King. (Previous posts relating to this can be found here and here) 

Blue coats with green facings

The majority of the figures are blue coated, so currently there is a distinct imbalance towards blue coated troops with fur hats. Once I finish the recycling of the previously painted figures, I will start painting white,yellow, and red coated figures.  

Blue coats with pink facings

Blue coats with purple facings

Green coats with yellow facings. The base still needs flocking.

Frontal view of the green grenadiers

Green and blue coated skirmish stands

A group shot of the work completed in this batch

The last of the blue painted grenadiers. They should yield another three V&B stands.

The last of the green grenadiers - only one stand left to go!

Once these are completed I will start looking at my unpainted figures and figuring out what figures I can use for cavalry, artillery, militia, and regular infantry.

More Figures for Duke, Elector, King

 As a means of avoiding painting up more figures for my V&B 100 Days Campaign, I have continued to produce V&B stands for use with Duke, Elector, King (DEK).

Blue coats and yellow facings inspired by the box art of the Airfix Washington's Army set

The figures used are primarily from the Airfix British Grenadiers set (PSR review here). The blue coated ones had previously been painted in an attempt to represent grenadiers from Napoleon's Imperial Guard. The quality of the paint conversions ranged from bad to ok in quality, so I decided to repaint them as generic 18th Century Fusiliers with blue coats and a variety of facing colours.

At this stage I am leaving the flag as a plain block colour

Rear quarters view from the front

The process involved painting out detail such as splashes of red paint on the shoulders to represent epaulettes, repainting details such as white belts, and touching up missing paint from coats, muskets and bearskin hats. 

I kept the red facings for this stand

I also took the opportunity to base up some skirmish stands in order to use up painted figures that I hadn't been able to justify using on regimental stands as either they were left overs from creating a previous stand, or to use them would require me to paint additional figures in the same paint scheme

A mix of Airfix and Atlantic figures

The first of these skirmish stands has been painted and based in a similar style to the first of the fusilier stands above. The prone musketeer is from the Airfix Washington's Army set, while the kneeling rifleman is from the Atlantic Davey Crockett set (PSR review here). 

The view from the rear

The second stand consisted of to figures that I painted up, but didn't use in the production of my first stand for DEK (click here for details). It also gave me the opportunity to use more of the autumn leave flock that I like!

The third skirmish stand consists of three of the Airfix British Grenadier figures painted with forest green coats and trousers with green facings.  The webbing and pouches have all been painted black. The paint job on these three figures had largely flaked off so it had to be entirely redone.

A trio of not riflemen

The green coats and trousers, coupled with the black leather equipment, makes me think of British Riflemen of the Napoleonic Wars. I suspect that AWI British Legion units may also have been an source of inspiration for the original painter.

The black works well with the green

The final group of figures painted and based up is the last of my Lucky Products Hessians that I started painting back in 2013. The first group I painted up as Grenadiers of the Hesse-Cassel Regiment Von Rall (click here for details).

Lucky Products AWI Hessians

This group I decided to paint up in a similar style but without the stripped mattress ticking breeches of the previous group. I did decide to paint the drummer in reverse colours though. While Hessian troops of the AWI didn't have their musicians in reversed colours, I felt that it would be quite pleasing for an imagi-nation force.

While not the prettiest of sculpts, they do have a certain charm

If I ever get more of the Lucky Products Hessians I would be tempted to paint them as 18th Century Persian or other eastern, troops as the mitre of the Lucky Products figures would lend itself to a paint conversion to other similar conical headgear.

The entire group (almost) 

I still have some additional stands to repaint - both blue and green coated regiments - and once they are completed I can start work on painting tricorn infantry stands.