DBA 3.0 – More Twang Dynasty – Mostly Cavalry

Following on from the last post’s rather splendid print of a Chinese heroic general leading a cavalry charge, here is my 15mm version of him from Essex, I think, with a couple of Minifigs sidekicks. The trumpeter blows his trumpet into the ear of the cavalryman beside him when ranked up. I still find that old chestnut amusing. The banner is a Ching dynasty (1615) one, but hey!

The Ch’in¹ dynasty started dressing their convict infantry in a sort of scruffy cochineal red, and this seemed to become common as a military sort of colour by the Han dynasty.² My gouache paint box has a nice set of crimson, red and orange that together give a rich red effect in 15mm.

The flag above is actually a Han dynasty one.

Pale and navy blue silk seem to have been common too, so they went into the mix. The Korean cavalry on the left are from Essex, and the Armoured cavalry on the right are Minifigs. As the Koreans maintained older traditional Chinese styles, they work for me as Chinese cavalry too.

The light horse above are all from Essex. As the dynasties progressed and dissolved into warring factions, horsemen from the north and steppes were incorporated into the Chinese military machine. That’s fine, because a lot of the cavalry that I was able to purchase were listed as Mongols and Turkomans.

To distinguish the Koreans, Green and purple shades were adopted. This makes them more visible than the usual black tunics and white under-smocks.

The peasants were painted white, which together with painting their pointy ears black and giving them white headbands, helped to disguise Peter Pig’s Goblins/Orcs as Chinese. Not painting the eyeballs red helped too. It still wouldn’t fool Legolas or Gimli though.³

1. Ch’in is rendered as Qin by Wade-Giles in their romanisation. Why? For anyone who cares, Hanyu Pinyin is probably more useful and will be used here. Suffice to say … it’s complicated, and arguments about spelling and pronunciation are  guaranteed to start bar fights.
2. The Hans also beat Darth Vader and the Waffen SS to it by adopting lacquered black armour as a cool military colour. I went with dark blue to avoid them looking as if they had just been undercoated.
3. The reason I own goblins at all is because they were going to give Trebian’s Garden Gnome army someone to fight, but somehow it just never happened. I’m not one for throwing things away, so they were repurposed. Who am I kidding? I love the little scamps, and they will eventually find their way back to a Hordes of the Things goblin army!