Kali Yuga: The Age of Conflict

Owing to being a man of the world I am aware of the Japanese term shunga which is used for the erotic themed block print art of the Edo period. This also happens to be a homophone for the name of an empire of India between185-73 BCE that sat in what is today Uttar Pradesh within the Ganga river basin. (That makes me questions why Mexican ganger chicks -cholas- were in India)

Word play and jokes aside I decided to do some army building for gaming in the gaps with more information that I gathered from an ourstanding article from the World History Encyclopedia written by Dr. Avantika Lal.

The Shunga were in a region with a varied ecology which would allow for me to field all major unit types mentioned in various texts of ancient and medieval warfare in India. Infantry, cavalry, chariots and elephants being the four elements of armies means that I’ll have more places to put thought.

I’m a sucker for sketching things out but perhaps not fully illustrating. I’ve gone and fallen off the deep end again. I am still painting my minis for regular chipping away at the Pile of Shame (Pile of Overwhelming Potential; PoOP) and have found a happy place inside my head to get things done. I am, however, finding my hobby butterfly flitting a bit as I try to stay focused. Being a creative sort of person has this disadvantage.

Knowing a scant little of the history of ancient Indian warfare and only a bit more on the modern movement to keep Indian martial arts alive I have found that the forthcoming army could use figures with talwar wielding men sporting bucklers (dhal). With only minor modification the figures to the line I found, at present, could be made to sport the image in my head but I really want to do less and get more paint out. Wargames Foundry had me covered to begin with before I kept thinking.

In that continuation of pondering I reached out to Paul, the friendly fellow at Blitzkrieg, and proposed the notion. I was happy to get a response that it was already a thought and would be worked on in future. For me this is great. I’d put forth, eventhough this is private at present, the best option would be to have a 3D print of the shield seperate which could be added later and have the sword just be a hand option attachment to lower the amount of models needed to be sculpted. I guess this is an old fashioned mindset as everything is a print on demand model of sales. Eh *shrug* options.

Some video of gatka and other visual splendor of the things I find inspiring.

Weapons of Shivaji Maharaj

After realizing the great scope possible with Saga Age of Magic I blame Gerry. There is nothing more to say about my direction in interest of Asian conflict. I will say that I also hold Warren accountable to some degree. After going into the search for his 25mm scale Asian elephants I found more than I bargained for. I developed my own case of elephantiasis of an Asian persuasion just as he did. I will also refer back to his questions about African elephants and taking tea in the XLBS to comment, that was rather silly. Its like tigers in Africa. He can keep his homage to Hannibal in future should he creep into 28mm scale. Both would be tickled by Blitzkrieg Miniatures as I was.

I already am developing my force list from the offerings Blitzkrieg has to offer on eight points. This will have the best elements of serious gaming and hardcore humor. I’ve put down point values and addendums as supplemental figures to round out the units.

2 Handed Swords x2 [1pt]

Indian Archer Regiment x1 [3pt]
Indian Command Pack x3 [supp]

Indian King x1 [warlord on foot]
Indian Parasol Command x1 [supp]

I’ll use the king the same way I did with my Arabs to stand multiple figures on a base with drummer, parasol and a commander directing with his sword.

Indian King on Elephant [warlord on beast]

Lord Boobs will rumble forth on his pachyderm pride and joy, the epic elephant, Dropapu.

I plan on running a Horde list so I’m torn on the use of spearmen. I can double their use as footsoldiers or as Levy javelineers despite the fact there are javelin throwers sold in units of four.

I think there was some tweaking of the rules for The Horde as far as abilities ao I’ll likely add some fast attack as well.

Indian Heavy Chariot (V2) [chariot-1pt]
Indian Cavalry Pack x2 [1pt]

Here we have the monsters as most of the interesting part of the list if the rest already hadn’t been noteworthy.

What’s life without more elephants?
Elephant with crew [monster-1pt]

Kali statue from “Golden Voyage of Sinbad” [monster-1pt]

I’ll need to get some work done to get a proper Harryhausen statue for this so it’ll be a while. Giftmas is coming and it doesn’t come cheap.

I’ll put more thought in later but this is my base sketch.