After I had finished painting several armies for the Saga Age of Alexander book (Macedonian, Successors, Greeks), I thought I was done with that era. I enjoy watching the games that Graham's Wargame Vault posts on his Youtube channel. One of the armies that regularly shows up is Indians. I liked the style of play, it was different from any other army I had, and I like Indian bistory. So in early 2023 I began calculating if I could build a relatively inexpensive army, even with the elephants and chariots.
My first thought was to use Old Glory for the bulk of the troops as they are less expensive than the other options. I contacted my friend Keith to see if he was going to order from them anytime soon. There is a saying among my friends that "Keith has everything". It turned out to be true in this case, he had some old RAFM Indian infantry that he was generous enough to give me. There were enough to make 2 units of 12 levy archers and 2 units of 4 hearthguard with a couple left over. Keith ordered 2 elephants and 2 4-horse heavy chariots from Old Glory for me. A couple of weeks later I had everything in hand ,except models for the general. and could start painting.
It doesn't make any difference game-wise, but I decided that I was going to model the army of Ashoka. Not the Star Wars character, the 3rd-century BC emperor of the Mauryan dynasty. I saw one of the Pillars of Ashoka erected during his reign on a long-ago trip to India.
The centerpiece of the Indian army is the Elephant General. I wanted a nice model for this, so splurged on a resin one from Aventine. It is larger than the Old Glory elephants, but that is only fitting for the general. It came with plenty of quivers, some of which ended up on the other elephants. It is escorted by 2 maiden guard that I had left over. The general figure is wearing gilded armor and a tiger skin.
There is also an option to have the general either in a heavy chariot or on foot. I liked the look of the 1st Corps chariot models, so ordered a command one from them along with some miniatures for another project. It was very easy to assemble.
The two Old Glory heavy chariots assembled easily after a bit of filing. They are made of metal, so quite heavy. The crew are packed tightly.
The metal Old Glory elephants came in two halves with separate heads. The poses are different and there is some variety in the crew so you can individualize them. This one is known as blue elephant.
This one is known as yellow elephant. I've added some more decoration to it since I took these pictures.
RAFM are older, true 25mm miniatures, still available today. I was fine with that since the focus of the army would be large models that would draw the most attention. They are clean sculpts with fair detail. There is only one pose of each type, although half of the archers had armored torsos. I grouped those together as mercenaries, which are often referred to in period accounts. The only drawback is that the archers required some assembly. It isn't unusual to have separate bows that need to be glued on. What struck me as odd was the separate heads. Separate heads that are all the same, for bodies that are all the same. Why? At least they glued on easily.
These bowmen were the first miniatures I painted for the army. You can see that I was experimenting with several different skin tones.
The armored bowmen with leather bands around the torso.
A unit of swordsmen. Unlike the bowmen, I used some color on these, going with saffron clothing and green for their quilted armor, with a red plume. They are classed as hearthguards in Saga.
I painted a unit of Maiden Guards, although they are attested later than the period I had chosen for my army. It is also unclear whether they ever saw the battlefield or only had palace duty. But I had the miniatures, so why not? Two are painted with lighter skin as Greeks from the remnants of the Indo-Greek kingdoms.
There were enough spare crew left from the 1st Corps chariot to make a general on foot as well. It is an option I probably won't use, but I like these poses, wanted to paint them, and couldn't fit them in the chariot.
My Indians made their debut in the Saga tournament at the Advance the Colors convention in October 2023. I won two games against Greek Cities and Republican Romans, then lost the third against Achaemenid Persians. Not bad for their first outing with no practice. I will have a better handle on their intricacies the next time I use them. Most importantly I am happy with how they turned out.
