1938 - A Very British Civil War

OK - these are my first squads for my 1938 British Civil War forces.

I have created two militias, one fascist and one socialist that identify themselves with their local professional football teams in their (and my) home city of Sheffield. That is not to say that all fans from these teams would have the same views as those represented below - the fans of each team would represent the views of society as a whole at the time, some socialist, some fasicst, some anglican, some anarcist, some outright criminal: in fact, some of every kind of view found in the civil war. It is just that the colours of these teams worked best for these two particular militas :)

I chose to base them on the local teams as it was a quick and easy way to give them an identity without too much effort on my part ;) Sheffield has a big culture of football, with its involvement in the foundations of the game and in this period with Wednesday having won the FA Cup in 1935 and United having lost in the final to Arsenal in 1936. The teams themselves have both declared an absolute neutrality in "The Crisis" (because when games start up again, they want to be playing, whoever 'wins') and have asked local militias not to wear replicas of their teams shirts as a uniform, which (suprisingly) has been largely agreed to.

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[b]The Fascist Owls[/b] - A BUF militia from the north of Sheffield
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[b]The Socialist Blades[/b] - One of the (in)famous socialist militas of Sheffield
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The minis themselves are from a 1/72 plastic job-lot on ebay. The socialists are Airfix 8th Army - but really badly moulded ones, which I had to carve into the semblence of men - but given the quality of the casts, I'm really pretty pleased with the way they've come out. The fascists are either Germans or Japanese (I'm not sure which to be honest. All based on 20mm cicular plywood bases from Fenris Games.

I'm also hoping to paint up other forces in the near future, including some criminal gangs (Sheffield had a serious gangwar problem in the 1920s), police units, regular army units, anglicans and mercenaries as well as more socialist and fascist militias. Some of which might even be in 20mm white metal rather than cheap and bendy fantastic plastic like these chaps!

Your comments and criticisms are most welcome :)