May 2025 hobby update

May has been a funny old month both hobby and real life wise.  There's been lots of disruption with a move of location at work, and a visit to the doctors amongst other things to disturb my equilibrium.  The hobby has taken a bit of a back seat and my motivation dipped to the point where I didn't do much hobbying at all mid-month.  Thankfully by the last week of the month I was feeling more like it.

Completed

I didn't complete too much this month:

• Four 28mm Apaches from Gringos 40s.  Very nice figures, I struggled with these as I've never been great at painting large areas of skin and I'm not sure I did them justice.  

• From something that's new to one of my oldest outstanding items, I finally finished the 15mm Hetzer that's been sitting on the table since last year.  Once I got down to work it took no time all, which makes me wonder why I didn't get it done sooner.  This was a nice little 3D print, that was a freebie  from Plastic Soldier Company, sent as an apology for sending out uncured prints that melted everywhere. 

On the terrain front I did some preparation for a 6mm Seven Years War game I want to play when I get a block of a decent few hours:

• I built some 6mm card/paper buildings.  I wanted the impression of a town for the scenario and I only have a few buildings.  These paper buildings were 10mm ones from Wargames Illustrated, I just printed them at 60%, cut them out and stuck them on card to make them a bit more robust.  I'll probably invest in some more resin 6mm buildings but these will do for the moment.  They do the job as well as any MDF building at no cost and not too much effort.  

• I checked all the terrain boards I built about 20 years ago.  Some have warped, but there's enough serviceable to give 6ft x4ft or combinations of.  I had to repaint some areas where the polystyrene was showing through but they'll last a bit longer now.  Although they don't get used very much I am loathe to chuck them after all the effort I put in making them.  I still prefer boards over mats as you can get such a better texture, but mats are so much more convenient both for storage and game set up.      

At the end of May I spent a bit of time working out what games I want to play over June and July.  I've got a shortlist and a few games roughly worked out.  I haven't got that much in the painting queue, and I want to spend more time playing over the next few months.

In progress

On the table as we end May are:

• Iranian and Iraqi MBTs and personnel carriers.  I painted and varnished all of the Heroics & Ros AFVs that I bought at Salute and a few of the sample ones I'd bought in previous years.  I would have finished them, but I've been waiting all month on the bases from to arrive.  Note to self - don't place a custom order with Warbases in May when there's two Bank Holidays and they're at three large wargames shows!  In contrast to the Apaches, I thoroughly enjoyed doing these, perhaps it was the great comforting sense of nostalgia that hit me as I was painting micro tanks with Humbrol enamels as I was 45 years ago...

• 6mm Cold War era Iraqis (Soviets) and Iranians (Brits).  These were the tester figures I got last Autumn.  They're now painted and varnished I just need to decide on basing, but that will wait until I've painted the other couple of hundred or so I bought at Salute, so it may be some time!

Lastly I cleaned, primed and based some more of the Salute purchases:

• 20mm Second World War Red Amy Command from Battlezone Miniatures.
• 28mm Commanches from Gringos 40s.  After the Apaches I decided to work on these in pairs so I can really concentrate on them. 

Gaming

I started and ended the month with a game, but in between times didn't have the time or inclination to play anything:

• Sword Weirdos Elizabethans.  This was fun as the Weirdos games always are.  I used a few of my 15mm Elizabethan collection and the house I made last month.  The AAR is here.

• Verrotwood.  Right at the end of the month I could hear the call of the dark forest so I played the next game in my Verrotwood campaign.  I haven't had the time to write up the AAR but here's some photos.

Ramblings, Reading & Research  

The one thing I had real enthusiasm for all month was reading and I read the following historical/historical fiction books :

• "The Iran-Iraq War" by Pierre Razoux .  A truly superb book, it gave a great balance of the politics, strategic, operational and tactical aspects of the war.  Lots of information with maps and overviews of all the main operations carried out, it's a fascinating subject and I'm very pleased I chose to change my mind and move from a Cold War gone hot project to this.  This one will be on constant renew from my library and I'll be looking to buy my own copy.

• "The Lady from Zagreb".  The tenth of the Bernie Gunther series of thrillers from Philip Kerr.  This time our anti-Nazi anti-hero is drawn into an intrigue involving the Yugoslav front.  I'd have preferred there to have been more set in Yugoslavia, as I am very interested in that aspect of the Second World War.  However, it was a good read as all of this series are. 

• "Revelation" by C.J.Samson, which is the fourth in his Shardlake series.  This is quite a grim one as Shardlake and Bark pursue a Tudor serial killer against the backdrop of religious strife in the later days of Henry VIII's reign.  I couldn't put this down and sped through it.  

Incoming and Outgoings

After last month's Salute's purchases I've tried not to spend too much:

• My first arrival this month was "The Men Who Would Be Kings" rules.  I've had my eye on these for awhile already owning all the others in the series.  I bought them with my 19th C French Colonial collection in mind but on flicking through see that the First Anglo-Sikh Wars is also covered.  I tried Black Powder last year and wanted to see what else was out there so I'll give these a go.

• At the end of the month the bases for The Iran-Iraq War vehicles arrived from Warbases.  These are custom bases that Martin and I spoke about at Salute and he subsequently made for me.  A  fine job he's done too.  I also received four 5L really useful box inserts in the same order.  Martin made me up three custom ones to store 6mm vehicles and figures.  I also bought an additional medium depth one.  Anything to try and impose some order!

• And as the month was ending my copy of Chain of Command 2 arrived.  I'd procrastinated for weeks as to whether to buy this or not.  Although I own the first edition, I've never played it and Battlegroup has become my Second World War ruleset.  However, the early comments on how much better presented the new edition was, how the writing and language were much easier to understand and the fact that pre-orders got a sizeable discount meant I did order it.  I went for the Veteran's bundle (which made me chuckle as I'm a CoC virgin), which was the hard copy and PDF, counters and Force Morale boards.  On first look it's a step up in quality.  Very quick despatch which is always impressive about Too Fat Lardies.  Richard Clarke is a hard working fellow, bet the poor sod is shattered after getting this one out the door.