The Red Sabre Beyond the Empire
Recommendations: 3
About the Project
I have been a long time fan of Mark Copplestones sculpts, ever since his Grenadier days. When he went solo and created Copplestone Castings releasing his Back of Beyond miniatures I bought quite a few and read Peter Hopkirks "Setting the East Ablaze" a truly wonderful book that reads,like a Boy's Own adventure, though historically accurate. With my love of pulp, Cthulhu, and a new found fascination for Central Asia I was hooked. Years passed and through lots of moves and changes of heart my collection dwindled. Then few a years,ago I re-read the book and bought a few adventurers and some Bolsheviks but did not do much with them. In September of 2024 a dream came true and my brother and I joined a small tour of Uzbekistan, visiting Tashkent, Bukhara, Samarkand and staying in a yurt in the desert and a mountain village. This bought the adventures back to life, and now I am determined to get a good versatile gaming set, that I will use in the "Beyond the Empire" and Setting the East Ablaze" rule sets as well as adapting the "Silver Bayonet" into the "Red Sabre" my Cthulhu inspired pulpy adaptation. I hope to also adapt so that I can enlarge the games by taking small 5 or 10 man units. Hoping I stay on track these are my adventures in the,Back of Beyond.
Related Game: The Silver Bayonet
Related Company: Copplestone Castings
Related Genre: Pulp
This Project is Active
My Nefarious Plans
Before going to Uzbekistan I already had a few characters and adventures as well as a unit of Bolsheviks painted. Having returned completely inspired by such an amazing country I am starting with building forces for the “Beyond the Empire” rules ( available from Cavalier Books).
I will aim to build four small forces. Each force will consist of one of two cavalry units of 6 men each, and up to four infantry units 10-12 men each, along with supporting characters/special units (leaders, heroes mg teams, armoured cars, planes etc) , these characters will also be chosen to represent archetypes for “Red Sabre” my ongoing adaptation of “Silver Bayonet” for this setting. I will be focusing on these characters with rules ideas and asking for help ( stars /rules for lmg’s and hmg’s???) in future posts.
The forces will be:
Bolsheviks
As I already have half a force either painted or just requiring a couple of more painting sessions this is the obvious first place to start. The force will consist of three infantry units and one cavalry plus characters/special units.
I will be using Copplestone Castings (CC) for all of these figures.
Veteren infantry – Siberian Rifles
Elite Infantry
Raw infantry – standard Bolsheviks troopers
Lewis gunners, HMG team, FT17 tank (Empress Miniatures =EM), Garfield Putilov armoured car (EM) and a Nieuport 17 biplane.
Leader.
Uzbekistan Defenders
Having been inspired again by my holiday this has to be the next force. There are no specific models that I know off so this is going to be very Pulpy. Many of the,Characters are going to be from the Artisan Designs (AD) North West Frontier Afghan models as well as using their Afghan Herati troops as the Elite Infantry Emits Guard, the other infantry and cavalry will be AM Afghan tribesmen (I will re-sculpt a lot of the turbans into Astrocan sheep will hats) along with with a unit of Mongol tribal cavalry (CC).
This force also has a unit of mercenaries, I will be using the Copplestone Mercenaries pack and Great War Miniatures Late WW1 German infantry. There were a lot of German imprisoned just outside Tashkent so these kind of make sense to me.
I will also give them a,Crossley armoured car (EM) and a Roland C..OK biplane.
The two future forces will be an Expeditionary/Archaeological force consisting of lots of characters (CC &EM) one unit of infantry (EM Jazz Age British Infantry) and an EM Model T-Ford with HMG ( I love this,model and had to find an excuse to use it).
The final force for now will be that of the Mad Baron, purely because it can be,so eclectic. Mongols, Tibetans, Ragged White Russians, Chinese Spearmen all from CC and Japanese Infantry and artillery from Tsubo.
I will probably find excuses to give both these forces a plane even though not necessarily historically accurate.
I may then expand these four forces further, or add in Warlord Chinese, Turkish and British probably a bit of both😄
I plan to scratch build a Mosque and a couple farm houses/yards.
I will also intermittently be adding various horrors and Cthulhu creatures to support the “Red Sabre” side of the project.
Sorry for the poor photographs, I have created this project on my fire tablet and the camera,is,not great, but is far easier to create project. I will work on replacing the photographs
The Bolsheviks that are painted. A unit of Elite Infantry - Siberian Rifles, FT17 tank, and characters.
Various adventurers, and clue markers, I had fun creating these.
A few "Red Sabre" miniatures. Mi-Go, Great Face of Yith, Ghoul, Sand People (Rafm), Vampire (Northstar Dracula's America- NDA) and a Hound of Tindalos (Modiphius).
The Bolsheviks raw infantry nearly finished.
Some Tcho-tcho and Copplestone gangsters/civilians that I may use.
Elite Infantry officer and two Lewis gunners (will adding the Elite Infantry pack at the end of the month). Yaks,, cavalry lancers/ standards ( not decided yet) and a Lledo can with interior detail and storage for my Archeological/ Expeditionary force which will now be called the Adventurers force from now on as it is a lot bloody easier! 
Some more Cthulhu /horrors still to be finished. 4 Ghouls, 2 Dimensional Shamblers, Ghast, Spawn of Tsathogua, Cthonion (Rafm), Werewolves (NDA), Dark Young of Snub-Niggurath, Crows ( Reaper Plastic).
