"King Matar of Paneer's Indian army" Topic

I'm in the process of finishing a TtS! Indian army for a tournament on September 4th and another on the 25th; it's a tight deadline but most of the minis have already been painted for me by Dan Toone and Shaun McTague, so it's just highlighting, basing and flocking.

Above are the chariots, light longbows and compulsory rubbish cavalry. Below is a closeup of the spearmen, I've hand-painted most of the shields.

The bulk of the army are elephants and longbows, of course, I'll post images of them, later on. There's a bit more about them (and the tournaments) on t' blog:
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that's a nice looking army. In WHAB my Indians kicked butt.

Holi sheet, that looks amazing! The jagged-edged bases are uber cool too.

Thanks chaps!

I like to think I invented the "wobbly-edged" base- the great think about them is they are much less visible on the table than are straight-edged bases. I sell them in the BigRedBatShop.

Ahh so another commercial promo!

Nice painting, a bit worried by the weird muscular figures… and err, not sure you have any 'Indians' in your area, but they are not pale flesh coloured peoples. They are very dark caramel to deep black/brown colouration, so yours are a bit under-done.. so to speak.
cheers

I know quite a few Indians, and their skin tones are very variable- some are lighter than my own. The next batch I'm doing is a deeper brown, though, I plan to mix them in.

Some of the figures may be a touch pale, though photography can change the actual shade.

There is, though, a very wide range of skin tones in India. The Ancient Greeks compared the skin tone of northerners to Egyptians and the southerners to 'Ethiopians'. Northern Indians I work with are far paler than 'dark caramel'.

Using modern people as an example is complicated as even the kshatriyas would spend a good deal of time out in the fields. But then most ancient Northern Europeans would also spend more time outside than modern types, and probably ought to be painted as much more tanned than they usually are. I have thought about doing bare chested or naked Celts with tanned face*, hands and arms, but with the body pale or even pink.

*Though still paler than Italian Romans.

Swampster wrote:
"I have thought about doing bare chested or naked Celts with tanned face*, hands and arms, but with the body pale or even pink.

*Though still paler than Italian Romans."

I've been thinking on exactly the same lines as my (cisalpine) Gauls inch their way closer to the top of the queue. I'll do a trial one first to ensure it doesn't look silly . . .

Re Indians, although there is a lot of variation in skin tone, it tends, as Swampster also noted, to be regional, so too much of a mix, especially in the same unit,may not be the most accurate. The Hydaspes river (now called Jhelum) is in Norther Punjab, so the people there would tend to be fairer, likely more alike to Afghan people. I don't think yours are too far off what they should be, perhaps a touch pale for outdoor workers. The king should probably be quite pasty! :-)

Cheers,
John

Cheers,
John

"that's a nice looking army. In WHAB my Indians kicked butt."

Apparently you faced opponents who forgot their artillery :)
WAB Indian elephants and chariots had some artificial advantages based on the core rules. Shooting twice and stable platforms made these mobile troops into stationary artillery batteries. It was hard to come up with actual points values for these things that combined are more effective than the scattered parts.

I always felt that horse archers elephants and chariots should have half ranges- since none of them operated as stand off missile troops except in one reference in Persian armies by Xenophon in his historical novel about Cyrus.

No matter what I did to try to get people to make balanced Indian armies of all arms, they ended up building hill hugging Wespe and Hummel batteries supported by massed longbow barriers.

In the end there were ways that fixed it- which I included as options (ie counting the Indian cane bows as regular bows rather than the WRG mandated long bows based on fantastical anecdotes).

But nobody plays that way. I have and it makes a much more historical game and those extra units help make the game look bigger.

Steady progress- now every man is on a base, although most of the bases need finishing. The single figures are heroes who can influence a melee, in To the Strongest!. I've incorporated a few priests in the army as they literally add colour!

More on t'blog link

It's great to see the army on bases, at last, some of the minis were painted as long as three of four years ago.

Yes but does the missus know you're using her oven trays for THIS!?

Well I'm acquainted with many Indians also, and my comments are not related to 'modern' features. This paleface actually had two Indian partners, both ethnically different and religions- go figure!

Whilst you can say they were not all the same, it isn't like [now] and units in fact would have been mostly tribal and regional, and therefore more alike than not.

Yes you can compare dark Tibetans scorched by the dry mountain sun, Southern Telegu nearly black with bluish highlights and every shade of caramel from spaces in between- the tragic tradition and desire to be for women to be 'whiter' still a problem there today.

Still like the figures ;-)
d

Here's the army, mostly done, and now with their first tournament under their belt.

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Here are some in-action images of the cheesy Indians at the recent Chalgrove tournament.

More on t'blog:

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