Chinese Warlords: Tibetan Matchlockmen

Not wanting my army to be entirely made up of gray clad soldiers, my Chinese forces will also be hiring on some Tibetan mercenaries. First up is a small unit of irregular infantry:

As before, these are part of Copplestone's excellent Back of Beyond range.  The figures are well sculpted and cast, with minimal clean up required for my pack (basically just mold lines to file down).  There are quite a few head variants (I had no repeats in my pack of 10), but sadly only two basic bodies. It would have been nice if there was at least a third type. I'm not sure why he didn't add a little more variety, especially since the Chinese troops in the range have more poses per pack.  However, at least you can use a variety of colors to try to hide the similarities.

While dull clothing is seen in Tibet, my online research showed that at least with modern Tibetans, the clothing is often decorated with brilliant trims and fabrics.  I thought this would be much more visually appealing, so I have incorporated it into the jackets, hats, and boots on many of the figures.

 Painting these took a lot longer than my regular Chinese, and I admit I had to step away a few times to give myself a mental break.  But now that they are done, I'm really glad I put in the extra effort and think they will look great on the table.

For anyone else that may be contemplating painting some Tibetans, I'm also including some of the photo reference materials I accumulated while painting.

Chinese Warlords: Army Command

I've decided to take a little break from my rank and file troops and get my command figures together for the army.  These two figures come from Copplestone's Mounted Command Pack.

For the horses, I've used photo references from Tibetan horse races to determine the coat colors.  I'm not sure I really got the dark, dappled legs on the white horse looking great, but then painting horses has always been a weak spot for me.

At the head of the army will be Lt. General Ma. I think this figure has enough of a pompous toad look to it to be someone promoted up the ranks based on his family connections.

The real brilliance behind the general is his second in command, Colonel "Scarface" Hu. He's a rough and tumble former tribal horseman of the plains. Unlike his boss, he's an old hand at hand to hand combat, as his face shows.

Music for Back of Beyond/ Chinese Warlords

As with most of my projects, I always enjoy having appropriate music for painting and gaming.  I've created an open Spotify station for my current Back of Beyond/Chinese Warlord project. The bulk of the music is Chinese, but I've also included material from Tibet, Mongolia, Afghanistan, and other surrounding areas, along with some appropriate movie tunes. If you're interested, the station can be found here.

Chinese Warlords: Frontier Infantry

I'm back with some more infantry for my Chinese Ma Warlord army. These represent a basic frontier infantry unit, so I've given them a more ragtag appearance than my earlier bodyguard unit. As before, there are 28mm figures from Copplestone.

Commanding Officers

Standard Bearer and Bugler

As these are Muslim Chinese, they carry  a crescent and star banner

Examples of color variants in the uniforms

Chinese Warlords: Heavy Weapons

Progress on my Chinese warlord army continues with two heavy weapons units; a machine gun and mortar.

Both  units use the excellent Copplestone figures from their Back of Beyond range.

Of the two sets, I have to say the mortar team is my favorite, and that is all down to the third figure enjoying his noodles.  It's such a quirky figure to include, but makes for a very fun vignette.

I've predominately used my earlier blue greys for the uniforms, but also decided to include some green greys for a more rag tag look.  For these tones I used Vallejo German Fieldgrey WWII 830, Green Grey 886, and Green Grey 886/Green Grey 971 50:50 mix. The machine gun was painted Dark Sea Blue 898, then drybrushed with Gunmetal Grey 863 and Fieldblue 964. For the mortar I used Brown Violet 887, Russian Uniform WWII 924, then highlighted with Khaki Grey 880 and natural Steel 864.