Sikh War Horse Artillery Limbers 15mm Conversions

I wanted some 15mm horse artillery limbers for my Sikh War games.  No one makes them so I thought I’d have a go at converting some.   

I was lucky and for a good price got a couple of Napoleonic RHA limbers and riders from eBay.  Minifigs, which is good as they take a head swop exceedingly well and they scale fine with QRF Bengal Horse Artillery from whence the heads would come.

The actual conversion was quite straight forward.  Heads off and heads on and leave overnight.   

Then I needed to add green stuff to build up the boots and lengthen the horse hair plumes.  

They won't be winning any prizes but I’m pleased with them. Here they are Bengal Horse Artillery limbers.

The Sikh Khalsa Horse Artillery was a bit more challenging.  I bought some Irregular Miniatures Hungarian Horse Artillery Limbers. The size was right and the figures seemed to lend themselves easily to conversion.  I needed to do three things with green stuff:

First build an imitation busby around the low shakoes the riders wore.

Second build up Sikh baggy trousers on the riders and add big beards.

Thirdly add braid to the coat of the riders and a cord to the hat.

I think the hats might be a bit big but I’ll live with it. The rest I’m happy with.  Here they are.

To Ur with Four Horse Chariots

I’ve been thinking about four horse chariots and how we might characterise them in To Ur. 

I decided to go back to basics and work from forward there. 

 

More horses made bigger carts possible and bigger carts could accommodate more soldiers. That meant more soldiers who could shoot or fight. I can think of no other reason for the introduction of the four-horse chariot.

We know the extra horse’s experiment was successful because we see representations of four horse chariots.  The four-horse chariot does not move faster than its two-horse counterpart because it is drawing twice the weight.  Therefore, I think all chariots in To Ur should move at the same rate.

The advantage of the four-horse cart is solely that it contained more soldiers. In most cases it allowed a crew combining both spear and bow armed warriors. 

In terms of To Ur that means our four-horse chariot can opt to fight with missilery or spear as circumstances dictate. It can shoot in the shooting phase and spear in the combat phase.  This would negate any advantage of an opposing spear armed cart in close fighting.

As such it offers more tactical options than either the bow only armed cart or the solely spear armed cart.  Apart from the foregoing there is no need for us to treat four horse chariots differently to two horse chariots.

You may believe that your four horse chariots should contain only extra archers.  If so, discard the spear tactical option above.  Instead, roll 4 shooting dice per chariot rather than the customary two dice per chariot.  This is because your chariot is shooting with twice the normal number of archers.

I think that should do it on the topic as far as my suggestions go.  I hope they are well reasoned, simple and clear.  As ever please let me know what you think. 

I've updated this post to include a welcome comment from the author of To Ur which gives us food for thought.  I hope readers find it as useful as I do.

Are you thinking of modifying any of the combat factors in the Hand to Hand for the spear armed chariots? If you do, then they'll have the upper hand in the Fear Test against a bow armed chariot, unless it has shot off a base before combat. You might like to think about a +1 to Fear Test if you inflicted hits on an opponent you are charging in the previous phase. It'll have to be previous phase as shooting follows movement, and Defensive Shooting only occurs after the Fear Test has been rolled.