Spanish Souvenirs

My parents were visiting "the Motherland" (in my case Spain - not to be mixed up with "the Fatherland", Germany) 😀 and as the great parents they are (the supported the beginnings of my now 20 years of wargaming madness), they brought along some items i asked for - and some i didn't even thought about asking for.

So beside some delicious sweets and candies (i have a soft spot for oreos), i got a estela de barros / stela that i wanted for the living room, along with a book about the secrets of Cantabria. My father even got me a spanish wargaming magazine (you just know me to well :D). The magazine is called Desperta Ferro! (Awake Iron), which is an medieval catalan battle cry used by the Almogavars.

It feels a lot like a localised / spanish version of Karwansaray Publishers magazines. And a short chat with Jasper, owner and head of Karwansaray, confirmed that there was a cooperation in the beginning. I hope they pick that up again, as the topics of spanish civil war and rif war / colonial wars are quite interesting. A brief teaser of the contents.

They even have two free samples you can download.

• Número cero, ¡gratis!: La batalla de los Campos Cataláunicos
• 57 a. C. La campaña de César contra los belgas, por Alberto Pérez Rubio

To stay with the spanish topic. As i recently parted with my Ancient Spaniards in 15mm for Field of Glory, i was thinking, that they might pick them up in 28mm, perhaps for Saga. The big question, what miniatures am i going to use? And while i was researching, i realised how early the Celto-Iberian / Ancient spaniards were, and that it is way off from a semi-historical setting with the Dark Ages (and by far from the Crusades). The Dark Ages, depending on where you start counting begin 600 A.D., the age of the ancient spaniards / Cantabrians goes from ~500 B.C. until they were conquered by the romans and later ousted by the visigoths (in the 5th century A.D.).

Currently only Renegade Miniatures, A&A Miniatures and Wargames Foundry offer miniatures - in a very limited way for ancient spaniards - mostly as mercenaries for the punic wars. Victrix is preparing a plastic box. Well, we will see and i'll have to wait. In the mean time, i'll continue working on my spanish crusaders.

I am continuing with the base colors and started painting the horses. There is a great guide on painting horses in one of the older White Dwarfs, the english issue #199 an 'Eavy Metal Masterclass by none other than Mike McVey goes into detail on that topic. Games Workshop used to offer that part as a download from their homepage, but somebody uploaded it to Scribd.

Thanks a lot for reading, come by again soon and leave a comment if you like this blog!