Harry Turtledove's Between the Wars Alternative History
My son, Rob Beattie, is working on a big game based on Turtledoves alternative history of the world. This history starts with the Confederate States winning the War Between the States. Turtledove takes the history through a second war between the North and the South and then into World War I. The Federal States of American with Germany wins that one against the Confederate States with England and France.
The post-war era has Fascism developing in the defeated countries and socialism taking hold in the FSA. Mexico has been quite stable since Maximillian took power. The Confederacy supported that regime, even buying sections of northern Mexico in the 1870's. In the mid-1920, however, nationalists in Mexico, supported by Red leaning ex-Confederate slaves have broken into rebellion. The CSA goes to the support of its neighbor, while the FSA sends "volunteers" to help the rebels. These consist of planes and tanks ("barrels" in the Turtledove history) of the Eagle Legion. Help also comes from Germany in the form of the Bismark Brigade. British fascists -- the silver shirts, French Foreign Legion and local LDS militia of the Deseret Legion who fled the FSA join the Imperialists. This game will be offered at Cold Wars and Origins. Rules will be Big Battle GASLIGHT for which Rob is a co-author.
Below are pictures of some of the troops for the game.
I had seen some great pictures on the web of soldiers in Fort Brown Texas in the 1920's that I thought would be good for this conflict.
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN12000/RUN12500/RUN12506.JPG
I wanted to model this so needed an armored car and some motorcycles.
I had the OG Austin car but it was not quite right
I removed the side turrets and shortened it a bit. Put a turret on the top to get
Someone on The Miniatures Page pointed me to the nice RAFM police cycles. These seemed convertible with some old Frontier Miniatures US Pershing vs. Poncho figures' heads
becomes
Add some Old Glory Pershing machine guns to get the whole unit
The old set of pictures also had a tank
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN00000/RUN00800/RUN00896.JPG
This is done nicely with the OG Renault tank
The British Fascists "silver shirts" come from the Back of Beyond British infantry in undershirts
The Copplestone Chinese infantry can pass for Mexican Imperial infantry too
The Deseret Legion from new Nauvoo is made by converting various Gangs of New York figures and Dixon ACW figs to create a nice looking group of farmers with modern weapons.
A German unit that will arrive by Zeppelin is the Luft Jaeger from Pulp Figures
There will be lots more and I will post them as we get closer to the event.
Painting of these figures was by Brian Langham
If you have any questions about the figures send to
Bob
beattie@umich
Questions about the game to
Rob
Rob.beattie@newhorizons.com