WIP Catalucian guerillas

Guerillas de Santanda - still work in progress.

A couple seem to be wearing pieces of military uniform so I am painting them accordingly, the others more as armed civilians. Now got another pack of guerillas to get started so these will probably be some time till they are finished. 

Back view. Like most Flintloque figures I enjoy painting these, but have got a little bogged down in what colours to use. 

Book Review - The Imperial War Museum Book of 1914

The Imperial War Museum Book of 1914 is one of a series that has been put together using contemporary letters and diaries from the collections held by the museum by Malcolm Brown. One thing that is quite striking in this account is how few of the individuals whose accounts are used survived the war, though this is not so surprising when it is largely the original pre-war regulars who made up the BEF and would have had to survive a further 3 years of the war.

It is written from the perspective mainly of the British forces and civilians as the IWM's archives are largely from the British and Commonwealth sources though some other nations are represented. There is a mixture of the services and ranks letters and diaries used to produce the accounts which does give a range of viewpoints. There are few accounts from senior officers which is useful if you are looking for a soldier's eye view of the war.

I would recommend this book and the series to anyone who wants to see the contemporary perspectives of the First World War as we do have a very strongly mediated view of the war and it has been clear from the discussion of the 100th anniversary of its outbreak that it is highly contentious.

The great advantage of this series is that it is based on accounts from participants written at the time rather than afterwards as I suspect many memoirs produced after the war were affected by the climate of memory that they were written in. I'll have to reread The Great War and Modern Memory fairly soon as it is useful in interpreting the many works of history and literature about WWI.

Magic in Scarlet Heroes

Magic in Scarlet Heroes is very much along the standard D&D style of having spell slots per day for a spell caster with the number of slots and level of the spells that can be taken being based on character level. Spells need to be prepared and can only be prepared once per day with the caster needing to be rested, but there are not rigid rules about how long rest or how long the rituals of spell preparation will take.

The actual spells will seem familiar to players of the OSR games however they do have setting appropriate names which do add a lot to the feel of the game, for example Hand of Merciful Succor is the clerical healing spell and Amber Cloud of Somnolence the magical sleep spell. 

There are 8 clerical spells available per spell level and 5 spell levels giving a total of 40 spells. Magic Users have 10 spells per level over the 5 levels to give 50 spells included in the rules. This will probably be enough to cover a lot of situations as the use of the Fray dice will mean that a lot of weak opponents will go down quickly.  As rules for researching spells are included it would be possible to add to the these if required.

Magic users will have a limited number of spells in their spellbook that they can learn and to add to these will need to copy from scrolls, other spellbooks or be taught the spell by another wizard. The other alternative is to research spells but that is expensive and time consuming too.

This is part of the game that is not too dissimilar to other OSR role playing games in the D&D style, but I do feel that the use of the different names for the spells does give it a unique flavour appropriate for the setting.

Painting update 1 May

And some more armour. All Plastic Soldier Company kits in 20mm this time.

M5A1 Stuart






Panzer IVH - 2nd Panzer Division in Normandy




Sdkfz251/1D - 2nd Panzer Division in Normandy