I Pity the FOO

 Not entirely unrelated to my post from yesterday, I knocked out an Italian Forward Observation Officer "conversion". 

Conversion is in quotes because all i did was lop off his original hand and replace it with a hand holding binoculars, taken from an Armies in Plastic British officer. The AiP hand is slightly too large. with a thicker thumb, but close enough for government work.

Bayonet & Spade (the Bolt Action WWI adaptation that I like) allows the Italians to take an artillery observer. Contemptible Little Armies doesn't allow them any kind of off-table artillery that would use one, but in the Main European Fronts army list supplement, they are allowed Defensive Barrages, which can use an FOO or the C-in-C.

Amusingly, they are allowed Counter-Battery Fire (no FOO required), which was most definitely *not* an Italian strong suit.

Paisan.

Below is a side-by-side comparison with the existing commander figure, to illustrate the difference in raised hand. However, while taking the picture I was struck by what appeared to be an apparent size difference in the figures.

Paisans.

At first, I thought it was an optical illusion ("Q: Which of these two rainbows is bigger?" "A: They are the same size!)", but upon further inspection, they are indeed different.

I have multiple sets from Waterloo 1815, two purchased new in box and one jumble of figures purchased from eBay. The latter are a harder plastic, with better detail (albeit covered in badly flaking bright blue and red paint from a previous owner). I do not believe either of these come from that pile of plastic (most of them are awaiting stripping and painting). 

Instead, I think these come from two different boxes of the softer, and, I believe, more recently manufactured figures - purchased from two different sellers.

That said, there is a slight difference to the pose as well with the angle of the head being the most obvious. Perhaps a retooling? Counterfeit? (seems like an odd thing to counterfeit)

So, it's a mystery to me.

I also painted up a couple of swarms to inhabit the trenches in the Weird World War I games or dungeon crawls for RPGs. These are, like so many of my recently painted figures, from Reaper. 

I have several more to paint, plus some individual large bugs and spiders. Although intended for 28mm (or heroic 28mm or 32mm or whatever size they are calling it), they're pretty big even for 1/35 and 1/32 figures to deal with.

Spiders on the left, beetles on the right. I am applying matte varnish to my 28mm figures and my 1/35 WWI figures, but not to the bugs! I think they look creepier with a wet/shiny look.

As I am working on my own WWWI system, I am thinking of using the swarms as a trigger for random events (monster, "Treasure", narrative, etc.), as what is a crawl through an abandoned trench but a a dungeon crawl?