Royal Gashant Corps

On of the purposes of this blog is to share with you, the reader, some of the things we Red Captains are doing with our interpretation of Space 1889. In doing that let me share a little more about us. We are all historical miniature gamers. Mark does WWI in Palestine and the French and Indian War, I do the American Revolution and the War of 1812, Scott and Dale are into ancients, Chris does World War I and naval miniatures, and Gene does whatever the rest of us are doing. I think we do our Martian adventures because of the possibilities it allows us. We've used the Chadwick universe as a framework, but we've very much made it our own. We've written our own history, created our own timeline, and even created some of our own troop types. If you are an orthodox Chadwickian, more power to you, but I think we all gave up orthodoxy in any thing years ago.

This is the first of many entries that shows off some of our troop types and models. Most of the articles are written by Mark Waddington, and they also feature his photos. If there is something purposeful for me to add, I will do so.

The Royal Gashant Corps

The Royal Gashant Corps or “RGC” was formed soon after the British arrived on Mars. The lack of water and appropriate fodder limited the range and abilities of the few horses sent from earth. To correct this issue volunteers were asked to form a new unit mounted solely on the Martian equivalent of a horse called a Gashant.

The Gashant stood half again as tall as a horse and weighed over twice as much. They are temperamental beasts but once tamed are quite loyal to their rider. They can maintain very fast speeds over difficult terrain and minor wounds seem not to affect them at all.

As the new unit was envisioned as mounted rifles the majority of the original volunteers were from the infantry. There are many humorous stories centered around the first few weeks of training as the recruits were first introduced to their new mounts. Once the unit had settled in it quickly started to establish a name for itself.

Its first action was deep in the Martian desert north of Parhoon as the unit surprised a strongly protected caravan of illegal spice. (The British considered the spice market to be under their control and did not want to share the profits with anyone else). The troops guarding the caravan had little idea how to defend against the fast moving and well trained tactics of the earthen troops and after a short but sharp fight surrendered. From then on the reputation of the new unit grew in leaps and bounds.

Note that the unit is not meant to be cavalry and has little shock value in a charge. Instead it was designed to get rifle and lightly equipped troops to their destination as fast as possible as scouts or even as blocking units that would hold a vital pass or area until relieved.

Even the British command took note of the successes of the RGC and have kept them busy with a constant string of tasks to accomplish.

The pictures show a small section of the unit both mounted and dismounted. The Gashants are from the original Space 1889 figure sets and can now be purchased direct from RAFM. The soldiers (mounted and dismounted) are from Redoubt .