Creating the armies for a 1930s Imagi-nation

This is something of a no-brainer in many respects as the 'imagi-nations' in question are those two old adversaries of Rusland and Fezia. The historical situation as I envisage it is centred around a longstanding border dispute - longstanding as in centuries old. The rationale behind using this as a kind of causus belli is that when I tackle the 19th century the spade work in terms of the campaign map etc will already be in place.

The forces for the 1930 version of this continuing struggle are going to be very much in the nature of an experiment. To begin with I am using possibly the cheapest figures I have ever found and in a scale that does not lend itself well to such things as vehicles, artillery etc. Irregular Miniatures produce a large amount of usable kit in their 20th century range but, if I am honest, I rather fancy knocking it up myself. The tanks will be quite small in any event - machine guns and light calibre main guns at best - and I reckon that making a suitably generic series of simple vehicles should be easy enough - the figures are very crude so the models do not need to be super detailed. Artillery is a little more problematic but I shall only need a field gun and possibly a small calibre anti-tank gun in any event. Bob Cordery drew my attention to the Airfix 20mm 5.5" gun and suggested that with a wheel change and the addition of a simple shield would suffice for a infantry type gun. With the barrel cut down it should provide sterling service. It certainly got me thinking I can tell you.

Mental note: I must source some wheels scaled for 40mm - perhaps a call to that very nice Ian Kay at Irregular Miniatures may be in order!

Mortars and machine guns could be scratch built as well and I am thinking along the lines of something akin to a Hotchkiss for the Fezians and a Maxim for the Ruslanders - not sure about the wheeled version though!

The first order of business though is to get the infantry ready and I have spent some time on this today despite having hit a minor snag. Originally I had based the figures on a 3cm square plastic base from Peter Pig. It is a little on the large size so I decided to round off the corners. This has involved cutting off each corner and then rounding it off using a file. It is not difficult, just messy and time consuming and also has made my still recovering hands ache somewhat. The end result looks a lot better though and so I will be able to start the serious job of painting over the next few days.