I have rather bought into the concept of Faux Nostalgia since Mr Copplestone first started to talk about his Little Soldiers. In recent years with the emphasis being on ever more realistic figures and complex diorama style games I confess that some of the joy of gaming has gone out of my hobby. Yes I have still enjoyed games and many have been inspiring (expensive) and thought provoking (expensive and involving the purchase of books) but somehow the playful element has been missing. I remember knocking bits of scenery up from ripped up sponges dipped in green paint, old cornflake packests and chunks of balsa. 5 minutes later the |Airfix figures were swarming over them.
So these simple, well proportioned and elegant figures have been a joy to paint, the only delay is in completing the infantry organisations and that will depend on release 2 and the choice of rules.
I have opted for the Panovians and the Slovskans. The Berglanders are too obviously germanic for me and the the objective is to field some small nations that fell out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
They have however been swept into my own alternate version of the 1930s that perhaps owes much to the style of the film Grand Hotel Budapest, the Sally Lockheart novels of Philip Pullman, and the wonderful and half remembered BBC Puppet Theatre programme of the 50s and 60s Rubovia. Here the King and Queen dressed in the style of Queen Anne, lived in a Heath Robinson equipped palace and were followed everywhere by the pet dragon "Pongo".
So Not Panovia is now Rubovia (thanks BC), and Not Slovkia is Raskavia (thanks Philip Pullman) and I can even place them in the world with the help of the The Writer's Map, a useful book edited by Huw Lewis-Jones.
Painting was intially quite fast. The figures cleaned really easily and were given an undercoat and base coat with a suitable olive green for the Rubovians, and a olive violet drab for the Raskavians.
The high command, artillery and MGs for the Robovians look like this;
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
