Chinese Warlords: Bodyguard Unit

Now that my African project is winding down, I've had some time to start working on my Chinese Warlord army for our forthcoming Back of Beyond Games. For my army, I will modelling the Muslim Hui forces of the Ma Clique, found in western China along the Tibetan frontier. We'll mostly be playing in the 1920's, but my hope is to have a force flexible enough to move into the 1930's when they became the 36th Division of the National Revolutionary Army.

For the initial units, I am starting with figures from Copplestone Castings. Their Chinese figures are of a reasonable size (unlike the the British in the range), so I am hopeful I'll later be able to expand the army with figures from Pulp Figures and Brigade Games. The sculpting is well done, and the casting quality is reasonable (there seemed to be a lot of flash build up behind the right arms of many figures).

 The first figures off the table are designed to represent a Warlord bodyguard unit, as specified in the Back of Beyond supplement for "Contemptible Little Armies" by Chris Peers. As these are elite troops for my army, I decided to give them a smart, more uniform appearance than the motley clothing I'll be using for regular troops.

The officer uniforms are painted Vallejo Field Blue, Dark Blue Grey, and Blue Grey Pale, while the troops are slightly lighter, using Dark Blue Grey, Blue Grey Pale, and Pale Greyblue. To keep them from looking too drab, I also added the red collar patches. This unit carries the white sun flag of the Kuomintang party, rather than the Islamic Crescent that could also be seen in this region of China.  Since the theater can be either rocky and barren or grass covered plains, I've decided to leave the bases mostly rock with just a few tufts of grass. Hopefully this will look good in either environment.