Friday 8 May 2020

MWWBK Boxer Rebellion

When Gordon mentioned he was painting up a MWWBK Chinese force for the Boxer Rebellion I vaguely thought of doing a complimentary force to fight them but didn't actually do anything about it. The Boxer Rebellion was a period I know little about (other than the film '55 Days at Peking') which I always viewed as rather inferior to the likes of 'Zulu' and 'Khartoum' as far as epics go.

However, when he showed me some photos of his army and the wonderful little 'Tigermen' he had painted I took the plunge and ordered some Austrian sailors from Blue Moon. When they arrived I was a little underwhelmed with the figures, they were a bit crude and the the rifles especially looked very clumsy for relatively modern weapons.

When painted up they looked a lot better (a little like manufacturers like Irregular and the old Hinchliffe figures). I did three groups of 12 sailors:

A machine gun or cannon and crew plus some single figure bases to allow casualty removal:

For a bit of variety I added some US Marines. These were nicer figures than the sailors:

Finally some armed civilians:

A cursory reading upon the period suggested that in reality there were only 'around 35' Austrian Sailors present in Peking from the SMS Zenta so the force is almost a 1 to 1 representation of reality being 36 figures strong plus the gun crew!

A painting of SMS Zenta:


This dramatic painting shows the Sailors attacking a redoubt later in the rebellion:

Just to finish a picture of Gordon's Tigermen on the painting table:

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