Major Ballsup's Hobby Shed

I knocked up another 3 sets of Bolt Action dice this week.  French Expeditionary Corps for Italy 43-44, United States and Red Army sets. I was toying with doing a separate USMC set but as I also have a US Army force I decided to do a catch all US set. You can access the template for these sets and the original three sets ( see post ) as a Word or PDF document from this  link

I can't believe that it's Summer 2016 that I first started to look at collecting Punic Wars armies. Where does the time go? As usual I gathered some books and looked into the period. Sometimes this is as far as it goes but I was enthused and cracked on. My first foray into 10mm, I  bought about 300 figures from Newline Designs in August 2016 and it took me until the end of 2018 to finish them.  True to my tangent ways I'd moved through multiple other interests and the little chaps were put away in the filing cabinet. With the increase in spare time over the last year, my thoughts have returned to these forgotten legions. At the start of 2021 I starting organising and pointing up the armies for WAB using the Hannibal source book. Inspired by the  Minihammer  ethos the infantry were based on 10mm x 10mm single or 10mm x 20mm double bases and the cavalry on 10mm x 20mm or 20mm x20mm doubles. However, this makes them very fiddly and was one of the reasons why I had never...

Another project I've been meaning to do for a long time was to rebase my 15mm FPW collection. I'm very fond of these.  They were first figures I bought when I started wargaming again in 1997/98. They're all Essex Miniatures (who appear to be a bit of a "Marmite" manufacturer for a lot of people), but I think that Essex have a fantastic offering and their FPW range is one of their best. However, when I looked at mine compared to what I can do now, they don't look great. The painting isn't too bad but the bases were my own cut out of plastic card and covered in flock and very basic! Original basing - French and Prussian The figures were based for the rules "They Died for Glory" by Dave Waxtel. They use single rank 4 or 5 figure basing which I always through was a little odd. Originally I had to adjust the bases as I couldn't fit most of the poses into the specified sizes and I did similar this time. Infantry got a 12.5mm x 12.5 mm space and ca...

The scenario and forces were covered in my previous post Little game with little men - 1ft, 1 pt Donnybrook French-Indian Wars . Turn One The deck is shuffled and the first card drawn is for the Wyandot Sachem Talks-Bull. He decides to move, throwing 2D6 due to the wooded terrain. He must be feeling clumsy as two 1s are thrown so he moves 1cm. Having moved, he can’t shoot so his turn ends. Captain Gallagher, the Ranger officer draws next. He also elects to move throwing a 2 and a 1, he moves 2cm dragging his wilful daughter with him. He also can’t shoot so his turn ends. Next card is the Wyandot war party. Their 2D6 movement die score better, a 5 and 6. They get to move a full 6cm. The lads are all fired up!  The Reload card is drawn – no one has fired so this doesn’t apply.  The unit of Roger’s Rangers finally draw their card. Their movement roll gets a paltry 1 and 2 so they move 2cm. They cautiously move forward.  The Turn End card is the final card to be drawn appropr...

I realise I'm well behind the times but I only got my copy of Donnybrook by  The League of Augsburg a couple of months ago.  I'd spent  Christmas and the New Year looking through all my rules and searching on line for a good skirmish set to do 17th Century Eastern Renaissance with. That eventually led me to Donnybrook. Taking advantage of my £5 off WI Prime subscription offer, I ordered one from NorthStar and it was duly delivered with their usual lightning response. It's a triumph of a book.  Beautifully produced and clearly written.  I wish I'd got it years ago. Anyway to my first game.  In my usual "tangent man" style I've postponed my forays into the East and dug out my QRF French-Indian Wars figures.  I can't remember which Salute I got these at, but I'm ashamed to say it's probably over 10 years ago and they've never been in battle.   The scenario The wilful Sarah Gallagher, daughter of ranger Captain Daniel Gallagher has run into th...

Apart from my 28mm Barbarossa era Red Army and Heer, all my WW2 forces are either 15mm or 20mm (1/76th). The majority of my 15mm are all old metal Battlefront (Flames of War) but I've never played that game, although I have the army books and rules (2nd edition I think). But I do play Bolt Action with them which is much more my cup of tea. I've got quite a collection for various theatres but this year I'm aiming to finish off my Far East forces. This consists of USMC, Sikh (British Empire) and Imperial Japanese Army (IJA). My IJA force only consisted of 1 infantry platoon as you can't get hold of the metal Battlefront figures anymore. However, this year I took the plunge and ordered up some figures from Eureka minis UK All the reinforcements The service was excellent and so are the figures. They are on the pricey side (60p a figure) but you can buy them as singles and can order exactly what you want. And Eureka do their best to avoid duplicate figures.  They were lovely...

I spend the vast majority of my hobby time doing (prepping, painting, basing etc) rather than actually playing many wargames. But I have played a few games of Bolt Action over the last few years. When I first got into this game I balked at buying the official order dice (around £15 RRP now) and made myself some counters. These worked but were a bit fiddly when playing.  Making my on dice was on my list of things to do but there was always something else more appealing. But with the the increase in spare time over the last year, I have finally got to a point where I  decided to do something about it and make myself a few sets of order dice.  I spent a bit of time searching the web and found some good posts where people had bought plastic dice and printed out labels. I looked into this but I still had to pay a bit for the dice and buy a pack of labels. I eventually bought a set of 120 Kurtzy Small Wooden Cubes sized 2x2x2cm from Amazon for £13.99. This works out to be about...