1897 - Pathan Uprising - update 19-05-2016

[Saucy Jack]

Terrain looks brilliant. That's a very nice muted earth tone you have there Saucy...looks right on the money!!

Cheers

Happy Wanderer

Thanks Happy - I have been unsure about the colour. But I think this will do.

[Hobbit]

I did quite a bit of research on the 1897 uprising about 5 years ago. During the course of that I was able to look at original copies of the 1889 and 1897 "Infantry Drill" books used by the British Army. I cannot now, for the life of me, find the notes or the photocopies that I made.

If I recall correctly the main difference between the two manuals was that "Effective" range, from the 1889 manual, for the Martini was 400 yards, 800 yards "Long" range and upto 1450 yards maximum range. For the Lee-Metford, in the 1897 manual, "Effective" was 500 yards, "Long" was 1000 yards and "Maximum" was 2000 yards (though the sights, depending upon model, were graduated for up to 2,800 yards). I'll stand to be corrected on the longer range bands but I'm almost 100% certain that the "Effective" ranges were very similar.

As to the rate of fire...although the Lee-Metford had a magazine this was almost never used in routine shooting. It was actually fitted with a special cut-off to prevent its use. In normal circumstances single shots were fired and then a new round would be loaded. The magazine was thus always reserved, fully loaded, to deal with "emergency" situations, such as a sudden charge by previously hidden Ghazis.

Hope that helps 

[archiduque]

Excellent!!

[Saucy Jack]

I did quite a bit of research on the 1897 uprising about 5 years ago. During the course of that I was able to look at original copies of the 1889 and 1897 "Infantry Drill" books used by the British Army. I cannot now, for the life of me, find the notes or the photocopies that I made.

If I recall correctly the main difference between the two manuals was that "Effective" range, from the 1889 manual, for the Martini was 400 yards, 800 yards "Long" range and upto 1450 yards maximum range. For the Lee-Metford, in the 1897 manual, "Effective" was 500 yards, "Long" was 1000 yards and "Maximum" was 2000 yards (though the sights, depending upon model, were graduated for up to 2,800 yards). I'll stand to be corrected on the longer range bands but I'm almost 100% certain that the "Effective" ranges were very similar.

As to the rate of fire...although the Lee-Metford had a magazine this was almost never used in routine shooting. It was actually fitted with a special cut-off to prevent its use. In normal circumstances single shots were fired and then a new round would be loaded. The magazine was thus always reserved, fully loaded, to deal with "emergency" situations, such as a sudden charge by previously hidden Ghazis.

Hope that helps 

Thanks Hobbit... Much appreciated

[Saucy Jack]

Had our first game yesterday - this was a Colonial debut for both me and my friend Frank, and the first time the terrain was in use.

More information and pictures on my blog: http://londonbymidnight.blogspot.dk/2016/05/1897-pathan-uprising-game.html

[TWD]

That looks great.

Hope my table and forces look half as good as that when I'm finished.

[Romark]

Yep,table looks great 

[guitarheroandy]

Looks fabulous!! Such a great period to game!!

[Saucy Jack]

Thank you for all the nice comments... must admit that I am not entirely satisfied with the board myself.

[guitarheroandy]

Thank you for all the nice comments... must admit that I am not entirely satisfied with the board myself.

Get yourself a load of the pale brown lichen and use it to conceal the transitions from hill to baseboard. Makes a massive difference!!
The pale colour stands out less than the green, suits the generally more arid NW Frontier terrain and just give the table a bit more...I dunno...'volume' I guess. Look on my blog in the 'Men Who Would Be Kings' posts to see how we do it. Your hills are far better than ours so I reckon it'd work great with your table...

[Happy Wanderer]

Some lovely looking figures there...nice terrain to.

Top stuff 

1897 Pathan Uprising...a good topic...just a little different 

[Saucy Jack]

Some lovely looking figures there...nice terrain to.

Top stuff 

1897 Pathan Uprising...a good topic...just a little different 

Cheers Happy 

[Hobbit]

Hi,

In response to you not being very happy with your terrain...I did a lot of work on this a few years ago and initially I found it very difficult to conceptualise how the represent the NWF on a tabletop. So I spent quite a lot of time looking at period maps, sketches from war correspondents and even modern satellite imagery.

First off there is no one typical NWF terrain; some areas were near desert, others described as lushly cultivated. Some showed few signs of habitation; others had lots of little villages and hamlets dotted about surrounded by patches of crops and/or little walled orchards. The cultivated areas in the valley bottoms could be quite flat (and make excellent ground for your lancers  ).

One of the key features though is, of course, hills. One of the military manuals that I looked at described the typical hill as being like the skeleton of a fish with the spine of the fish being the central ridge and lots of little ridges and ravines running off to either side. My solution (to a project that was never carried past concept stage  ) would have been to have that "spine" along one table edge with the ravines running in to about half way across the table. You could build this as a fairly huge dedicated piece of terrain (with all of the difficulties that involves) or maybe have just 3 or 4 separate ridges sticking out, like fingers, from one table edge (almost certainly far more practical from a building/storage point of view).

Hope that makes sense and is useful.