Empress Miniatures: Jazz Age Imperialism Range!

Hi, I just found out that Empress Miniatures has released a new range called "Jazz Age Imperialism" and to be honest what a strange name for an interesting period in history. So I directly googled the strange name and this is what I found online: "The Jazz Age was the period roughly coinciding with the 1920s ending with the The Great Depression when Jazz musicand dance became popular. This occurred particularly in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and other countries. Jazz played a significant part in wider cultural changes during the period."

As you can see these three packs can be the beginning of a splendid range filled with more interesting and brave characters and units to represent this great era of adventure and conquest. The first three packs consist out of the irregular Afghan army drawn from tribesmen and some deserters from British controlled militias. Although sounding like a bunch of untrained rabble, these irregular forces were better equiped and better trained in this type of warfare then the regular Aghan Army which lacked experience in mountain and guerilla warfare. The tribesmen however were familiar with brutal tribal conflicts over land and cattle. And willing to risk their lives to destroy the foreign armies throughout history. I found this description of the Afghan Army from a British officer online: "Afghan regular units...were ill-trained, ill-paid, and probably under strength. The cavalry was little better than indifferent infantry mounted on equally indifferent ponies. Rifles varied between modern German, Turkish and British types, to obsolete martin-Henry and Snyder rifles. Few infantry units had bayonets. Artillery was ponydrawn, or pack, and included modern 10cm Krupp howitzers, 75mm Krupp mountain guns and ancient 7 pounder weapons. There were a few, very old, four-barrel Gardener machine guns. Ammunition was in short supply and distribution must have been very difficult. For the artillery much black powder was used, both as a propellent and bursting charge for shells. The Kabul arsenal workshops were elementary and mainly staffed by Sikh artificers with much ingenuity but little real skill. There was no organised transport and arrangements for supply were rudimentary"

These packs are now available at Empress Miniatures at £7.00 a pack which is a real steal for these excellent Paul Hicks sculpts! In the picture you can see the content of the command packs which included a looted Lewis gun team and a very characterful Afghan drummer and commander. As you will notice you swill need hordes of thes tough fellows: "In support of the regulars, the Afghan command expected to call out the tribes, which could gather up to 20,000 or 30,000 fighters in the Khyber region alone. In stark contrast to the regulars, the tribal lashkars were probably the best troops that the Afghans had, being of excellent fighting quality, well armed, mainly with weapons that they had made themselves or stolen from the garrisons and with plenty of ammunition"