WW1 Indian Cavalry for Mesopotamia

 

Those in the know will be aware of my deep dive into the  world of the obscure when it comes to my search for suitable figures for Cavalry for Mesopotamia and Palestine in WW1. With Brigade Games a very expensive postage charge away in the US my search has finally hit gold.

God knows how I found these, some random tinterwebnet search during a bout of insomnia probably. So these are from a Company called Newline Designs and they are hidden away deep in the depths of their website. I struggle to find them now and I've bought some in the past !

But if you can negotiate the minefield in the drive, beat the dogs and cheat the cold electronic eyes, make it past the shotguns in the hall, dial the combination to open the priest hole, you too might find these figures to by on the Newline Website.

Newline (to me anyway) are better known for their 20mm Napoleonic range, these Cavalry sit will a couple of packs of late colonial infantry all on their own. I bought and painted 6 of them a few months ago, liked how they looked and bought another 18 to make up a unit.

So if you are new to wargames and are more used to the modern skirmish style of gaming, this is what a proper unit looks like ! 24 figures is bigger than most armies these days 🤣

The figures come with metal Lances but they looked a bit small to me, I also prefer the steel wire pikes for strength and the sharp pointed ends deter anyone from picking them up in a hurry, so I cut down some 100mm pikes I had lying around. I also used a couple of sword hands I had lying around in my Crusades spares box for the officers.

I've not been able to find any pictures of these troops with lance pennants in Mesopotamia so I have left them off the models. Likewise I have left the rifles off the side of the saddle, I found that (with no pin and guide hole) the connection was very fragile and interfered with the position of the lance on a number of poses so I left them off. If it's going to break whilst I'm building it, it's definitely going to break when being moved around in game action.

So with Covid still around and us Northerners remaining in Tier 3 despite massively reduced infection rates there will be no Xmas Game this year for these guys to make their debut in. Things will be going very ancient here very shortly but I've seen that Newline are having a 25% sale in January, which could well mean another unit !