Major Ballsup's Hobby Shed

These trees are made by Pegasus Hobbies bought many years ago. I painted the leaves and trunks and that was about it.  I'm in "jungle terrain build mode" so these were next for improvement.  As well as the objective of making the trees look better, the integral bases weren't that large or stable so they needed work.  I cut some larger bases from a 1.5mm plastic sheet I had lying about. The plastic card and the undersides of the trees were scored repeatedly with an old craft blade to improve the bond and then PVA'd to each other.   After a suitable drying time of a couple of hours I added household filler to the bases.  These were left to dry overnight.  If I'd have got to this stage earlier in the day they'd have been ready to work on after a couple of hours as the filler dries quickly enough.   Next day I added the ground texture mix of mixed sand, sawdust, unused dry tea leaves and scatter material that I used for the  scatter terrain ...

After completing a batch of new scatter terrain bases for jungle games , I decided to redo the original batch. the original bases These had been painted with a green base coat and comparing them to the new batch they didn't look as good.  First stage was to mix up a nice dark brown which I applied more as a wash across the bases trying to avoid the patches of flock, static grass and lichen. After drying VMC US Field Drab was then drybrushed over the top. This improved them greatly tieing them in with the new batch.  To finish off I just added a few patches of self adhesive grass and bushes to the bases that I felt needed a bit more interest. And here's both the new and refurbished old batch all boxed together. Palm trees next.

There's only one rule for terrain and that's you can never have too much.  This was very much the case when I revisited my box of jungle terrain in preparation for some French Indo-China War games that I'm planning.  I didn't have anywhere near enough for a good looking game. These were made years ago for a 15mm game of Legends of the High Seas set on a desert island.  They've not had much use but I remember spending an enjoyable afternoon making them.  I used them as templates for this new batch. The bases were cut from corrugated card and the undersides painted with cheap acrylic paint to help against warping. I used cheap household filler to fill the gaps at the edges that resulted from when I cut them out and slightly bevelled them. They were then covered in PVA and dipped in a mix of sawdust, sand and Javis urban scatter.  This gave a nice mixed texture to work over. All the bases were then painted a dark brown mixed from burnt umber acrylic craft paint wit...

As mentioned in my posts on making fields  and tree bases and hedges I've had a 6mm Seven Years War collection sitting idle for over 10 years. Disgraceful!  As well as the usual distractions of other projects  this was due to my inability to find  a set of rules that really suited what I wanted.  That was until the beginning of this year when I bought a copy of Honours of War by Keith Flint.   These are one of the Osprey blue book series.  In my experience these are a bit hit and miss, but this set is one of the best.  Good miniatures photos and some lovely illustrations from the Osprey portfolio.  The rules themselves are clearly written, seemed very playable and enhanced by clear diagrams.  They allow for all scales of figures with good support available on a dedicated website and  Keith's blog. Onto the game.  I played on a 2ft x 2ft board with a farm and some wooded areas (using all my newly made terrain bits). ...

After making some  fields  in preparation for my Seven Years War game, my thoughts turned to that staple of the wargames battlefield - trees.  All the trees bases I prepared for the Great Tree Project  are for bigger scale games and would look bizarre on the 6mm battlefield.  I had some work to do. First off I checked what I had.  I had a small collection of suitable sized trees and also a big bag of cheapo eBay trees from China.  Of course all of this stuff has been sitting about for ages maybe 20 years or more.  A major factor in basing all the large trees was to preserve my terrain boards (rather than just sticking the trees direct into the polystyrene) and also to help with game setup time and I wanted to continue with this idea.  I needed some bases.  Looking in my bases box I came across those from when I r ebased my Franco-Prussian war collection .  I'd managed to carefully prise the figures off and leave the bases in good co...

Having reduced the number of outstanding figures to only nine, yes NINE I've designated the rest of August as terrain making month. My battlefields look dull.  No hiding it.  Time to do something about it.  My 6mm Seven Years War collection has been sitting idle for over 10 years while I looked at various rules,  Now I've got a set that fits what I wanted I'm itching to play a game.  Just plonking the lovely  Timecast buildings on a terrain board doesn't cut the mustard with me anymore. Fields were needed. I found an old flannel (wash cloth for international readers which was a suitable starting point. The brown area is paint! Next using cheap craft paint purchased years ago from The Works I painted the whole thing a suitable dark brown and left it to dry overnight. Left side is brown paint, right drybrushed Yellow Ochre Then using either Citadel Goblin Green, VCG Khaki or VMC Yellow Ochre I heavily drybrushed parts of the flannel with an old brush. Next I ...

This week I've been working on a pack of Battlefront French Foreign Legion sappers which aremy oldest outstanding figures.  I'd bought them at a knockdown price from eBay back in 2019 without a clear idea of what I was going to do with them and they'd sat in a box since.  I'm a bit of a sucker for La Légion. Why do them now?  Purely for lack of any other figures to do! With these finished I have nine, yes nine outstanding figures.  Actually I have 96 others but I'm probably going to be selling these off as I've re-evaluated doing that project. Anyway back to the FFL sappers.  These are my last pack of BF figures and are metal, I don't think they do any metal anymore.  I have hundreds of metal BF figures for various theatres and nations of WW2.  Funnily enough, I've never played Flames of War although I have a fair few of the books.  I use the figures for Bolt Action which I think they work very well for.   I decided to do them ...

Hot on the heels of the British foot regiment I recently completed, here's my first Sikh unit, a regiment of dragoons. Once again these are Newline Designs figures. I'm new to this period, but Newline seem to have a comprehensive range so I can get all I need from them. Bought as a unit deal they cost £9.80. Yes, £9.80 for 9 cavalry including horses and command figures. Bargain. I did some minor conversion work on these. The officer has a head from a Sikh infantry NCO as I wanted to give him a fuller turban rather than the smaller style he was sculpted with. And three of the troopers have had their beards lengthened with green stuff. You can't have too big a beard! These seemed to take a long time to do. I stuck the riders to the horses before priming and I'm not sure if this was the best thing to do. It's been a long time since I painted any cavalry larger than 10mm and I wasn't happy with the horses, so kept fiddling with the shading and highlights. I still n...