Major Ballsup's Hobby Shed

I started my 1/76th (20mm) WW2 Eastern Front collection in 2001.  This was when you still sent off for a printed catalogue /black and white list from the manufacturer if you wanted to see what they did.  Internet shopping for niche hobbies was in its infancy. There was no Flames of War or Bolt Action.  WW2 was mostly gamed in 6mm or 20mm.  You had to read books to research your forces blah, blah, blah  Anyway enough of my old man's ramblings and let's get to the point.  My SHQ WW2 collection This was also before pre-cut MDF bases were available.  I based all my figures on 17mm washers which I felt worked well with the slim, well proportioned and cleanly sculpted SHQ figures.  I based them singly apart from lmg teams which are on 2ps and a few 3 man teams on bigger washers.  Singly based figures are fiddly to game with though. To solve this I looked at various products.  The problem was that no-one makes any movement trays to fit the 17mm washers.  There's plenty for pennies

My retail therapy is continuing.  The first delivery this week was One Faith, One Law, One King - French Armies of the Wars of Religion 1562-1598 from Helion.   I'd expressed my interest with Helion in the title prior to publication and was very pleased when I received an email announcing it was now available and offering a £5 discount.  My order was placed straightaway on Friday and the book arrived Tuesday post free.  I'm happy with that.  I've had a glance through and this sort of information is gold dust in the English language.  The colour plates aren't great but the rest of the book is.   On the same day my order of 3x1mm neodymium magnets arrived.  I've been looking at how to base all my single SHQ WW2 20mm figures so that they're easier to use when gaming and wanted to try out something using magnets.  I won't say anymore as I'll be doing a separate post on that soon. On Wednesday my order from Butler's Printed Models came.  I've been loo

It's been a busy couple of weeks but not on the hobby front.  We're about to have some significant work done with the replacement of our central heating and water system which has taken a lot of time to prepare for.  Additionally the good days of working from home permanently are over.  All this has scuppered my planned excursion to Essex Miniatures to stock up on 16th Century figures.  However, I have bought a few things online. First up was these bits for an Old West game.  I'd recently set up my Old West buildings and thought they looked a bit dull so got these bits to add some more interest and character.     The Warlord Games plastic farm animals are sadly underwhelming.  There's a good variety of different types of beasts but the two sprues are identical.  And the sprues have a lot of mould lines where you really don't want them such as down the animal's faces.  For all the prep work I'll have to do I wish I'd bought some metal figures with more ch

Since finishing the Sikh regiment I've really lost my painting mojo.  This is partly due to real world happenings but I just don't have any enthusiasm for it. However, rather than do nothing I thought I'd get on with the next phase of The Great Tree Project. This phase is all about conifers.  I've had a box of 25 Noch mixed size conifers for at least 20 years that need basing. Like the other Noch trees these have moulded on roots.  But unlike those they've  already got some texture on the trunks.  That saves some work which is always good.   I followed a lot of the same processes as before (see here , here , here , here and here ) and will only detail anything I did differently.  Large bases cut out, locating pins added and trunks painted I'd only got one large base left but on rooting through my hoard of useful bits I found some 2mm mdf board which I think was the back of a picture frame. It was easy enough to cut five more large bases using the bought one as a