December 2023 Hobby update

Here we are for the last monthly update of 2023.  I hope everyone had a great Christmas time and I wish you all the best for the New Year.  May your brushes always keep their points and may your dice roll the numbers you need.  This is quite a long update, as I've had a bit of time off and managed to crack on. 

Completed

I completed the following this month:

• I finally drilled the holes and attached the magnets for the bases of the 28mm Second World War Feldgendarmerie that I completed in the summer.  While I had the Dremel out I drilled the magnet holes for all the 25mm MDF bases that I had and also managed to get the collet well and truly stuck!  

• Copplestone Castings Partisans.  Sold as part of the Back of Beyond Russian Civil War range, these are great figures that I'll be using for Second World War games.  You can see more here.

• On the back of this I also added some new heads and weapons to two Warlord Games plastic Red Army infantryman that I hadn't armed for some reason I can't now remember.  They've now been recruited into the Partisans.  One of the heads same from the Copplestone pack, the other is a Victrix Roman head.  I love it when you can reuse stuff. 

• And just to prove how indecisive I can be, I once again reworked the Warlord Games Winter Germans.  You may recall that I originally did some work to make these more suitable for the First World War/"the rules we no longer mention" (here).  With the abandonment of that project I decided that I liked the figures but didn't like  the elephantine gas mask heads (I've seen too much of them lately).  I therefore put them back onto their original bases, cut off the heads and added some of the original Warlord Heads.  My goodness they look better and they'll now be used for my partisan warfare games set in the "Bloodlands" of Belarus, Ukraine and Poland. 

In progress

• Roman Unarmoured Spearmen.  I painted up another half dozen of these lovely figures from Victrix, which are now complete bar the shields.  I've been trying to find out which legions would have been campaigning in Western Europe in the 350-375 period so I can do the shields correctly.  

• I also started prepping the last six unarmoured late-Romans which I'll get on with in January.

• Verrotwood Cultists.  I've been using various Frostgrave sprues to make my first cult for Verrotwood.  This is great fun, thinking up the concept for your cult, working out the points and then building the figures to reflect your choices.  As with Space/Sword Heroes these small figure count games really scratch my RPG itch without going fully down that route.  They're all built and will be worked on in tandem with the Late-Romans.

Ramblings, Reading & Research

As it's the Christmas season I'm going to be  kind and not ramble on too much.  Overall I've had a really great hobby year.  The 2023 summary against plan can be read here.  

Since I joined Facebook the blog views have gone up substantially.  I'm now over 50,000 views.  Small fry in the scheme of things, but I do get some nice comments which is always appreciated and makes me want to keep on improving.  For what in essence is an old git's hobby diary of some quite eclectic topics I'm amazed to have had so many views.

My reading this month has been all factual.  First of all I read A Village in the Third Reich by Angelika Patel and Julia Boyd.  I do like to read books about the social impact of warfare and picked this up when at my local library (bless all libraries).  It's a study of Oberstdorf , a village in Southern Bavaria right on the border with Austria, and how the villagers lives changed between the end of the First and Second World Wars with particular emphasis on the Nazi period.  It's fascinating, very readable and thought provoking showing the complexities of the period.  I also think that I stayed or at least visited  Oberstdorf  when I travelled around Bavaria in 2006.  Annoyingly I can't find my diary to confirm this. 

pic

I finally got round to reading Galicia Division: The Waffen-SS 14th Grenadier Division, 1943-1945, by Michael Logusz which I bought this time last year.  Although a very different book, it's in a similar vein to the above in that it discusses in detail the situations and choices (such as they were) that people lived in and had to take.  It's a big old tome with the first 200 or so pages detailing the history and situation of the Ukrainians and then the last 200 pages cover the division's actions.  It's a bit repetitive in places, quite dry and at times the text is not that easy to follow.  Whether that's down to  translations from the Ukrainians ("my MG42 has a jammage"), the US English or the author's style.  However,the background and complexities of the situation in the Ukraine is fascinating.  The action from Brodby and later in Austria could provide some excellent small unit scenarios.  I wish there was a map though as it's very frustrating trying to follow the action without seeing where it takes place.  I doubt I'll ever reread it but it's useful to have on the shelf as a reference  work. 

Incoming!

I've been deliberately restrained this month.  It's my second month without any miniatures purchased.  I've very comfortable with the hobby stash and want to work my way through what I have before adding to it.  My spending has been minimal and almost all electronic which helps with the perennial storage issue!  

• I invested in all the supplements for Verrotwood from Wargames Vault.  Being pay what you like, I could have literally paid pence to get these but I wanted to give a little something to the creators so a fiver was a worthwhile spend.

• I also got the Too Far Lardies 2023 mag.  This really is one of the best value things I've bought all year.  £7.00 for 250 pages of goodness.  There's enough here to inspire untold new projects, but on my initial readings the articles on Goths/Late-Romans for Infamy, Infamy and using the upcoming Midgard for the Punic Wars are worth the money alone.  Midgard is top of my purchase list for 2024.  I've seen it being played, spoken with James Morris (a vastly experienced gamer) and knowing how rigorous the TFL editing process is I'm confident it's going to be excellent.  

• My final PDF purchase was the quick start version of The Last War, a low model count horror game set in a never ending First World War.  I almost bought the full set back in the summer before the "rules we no longer mention" were released.  It's a very different game.  I doubt I'll ever play it but it cost pence and I was just curious as to the rule mechanisms.

• My only physical purchase was 60 25mmx3mm bases and 30 30mmx3mm.  That'll keep me going for 28mm Second World War and also Verrotwood. 

• For Christmas I was given Khalsa!, a guide to wargaming the Anglo-Sikh Wars by Helion.  I've got a brigade sized collection of models for this conflict all ready but they've never seen action.  I'm determined to change that and this book will give me the information and impetus to get them on the table.