Indian Army Maxim Machine gun

"Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not." - Hilaire Belloc in the words of the figure "Blood" in his poem "The Modern Traveler".

After our first game of The Men Who Would be Kings, it became apparent to me that it was time to paint the Indian Army Maxim Gun based on the devastating performance of the Imperial Russian machine gun. Not only did the Russian Maxim perform historically, it was extremely effective due to its high rate of fire of causing casualties amongst infantry that had cover bonuses from Hard Terrain. Yikes!

My Indian Army Maxim machine gun is another blister pack from Copplestone Castings' Back of Beyond Range. In fact, the pack comes with two machine guns: one Sikh and one Indian Muslim. When purchasing, since I live in the USA, my go to for Copplestone is either eBay or Brigade Miniatures (no Lon Weiss did not pay me to write that!). If you are in the States, Brigade Miniatures has inexpensive and fast shipping - I highly recommend the store.

The Maxim gun is a recoil-operated machine gun invented by Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim in 1884; the weapon became the first automatic firearm in production by Vickers, which used .303 British ammunition and a recoil-operating firing system, and required water cooling. 

The Maxim gun has been called "the weapon most associated with imperial conquest" by historian Martin Gilbert, and was heavily used by colonial powers during the "Scramble for Africa". Afterwards, Maxim guns also saw extensive usage by different armies during the Russo-Japanese War, the First and Second World Wars, and are used by insurgent groups in contemporary conflicts.

In the rules The Men Who Would be Kings it is recommended that crew serve weapons have a crew of four, one of which is an officer. This officer needs a cane to get around due to an earlier battle wound and can't keep up with the Infantry at 6" (Imperial Inches of course); but he has no trouble moving at the 4" move speed for machine guns.

"No matter how many people you kill, using a machine gun in battle is not a war crime because it does not cause unnecessary suffering; it simply performs its job horrifyingly well." - Sebastian Junger, American Journalist.