Major Ballsup's Hobby Shed

I picked up a box of Plastic Soldier Company M4A3s in the summer and it's taken me until January to finish them. They're very nice little models.  Although there’s not many parts, assembly was not as straightforward as it should have been because the kit allows you to make three differently armed versions and there's no  instructions included!  To cap it all the parts sheet that I found on the web differs to how the sprues are actually made up!  At one stage I'd looked at so many pictures of M4A3s trying to figure out what's what, that I thought I never wanted to see one again.   I spent some time deciding which versions to make and I wanted to make them as flexible as possible.  This is easier said than done because although there are separate parts for the 75mm and 76mm turrets,  there are only enough .50 cal turret HMGs and hatches to make five tanks.  However, by using spare Battlefront .50 cals and being crafty by not gluing on the hatch...

Introduction For the first game of 2026 it was time to dust off Space Weirdos.  The Cordeaux, an all female biker gang and the Ceaux du desert, hardened raiders clash in the barren wastes of Ilmoral.   Starting positions -  Cordeux are at the top Round 1 The Ceaux du desert win the Initiative roll and their rifleman moves up.  He has line of sight on Crow and uses another action to Aim and then Shoots at her.  Being obscured by cover gives her a positive dice shift and the resulting rolls are the same so the shot misses.   Rifle takes a shot Crow decides to fire back.  She Aims and shoots.  Her shot is true and Rifle's roll on the Under Fire Table is 11 - he's Out of action in the first burst of action!  Seeing his comrade downed, Rocket moves up, takes Aim and Shoots at Crow.  Her luck holds as her Defence roll is far superior to the Rocket's Attack roll, and the projectile goes harmlessly over her head. Picking her way throu...

Once again I've split my Ovelists into gaming and doing ( here ).  Here's the 2026 gaming plan: And as in 2025 I've gone for periods rather than specific rules.   Fantasy  - I didn't play any games using Fantasy figures last year.  I lost all interest in the genre and mused  about selling my Warmaster armies, having little interest in the GW world.  Sword Weirdos, Warlords of Eherwon and Midgard will be the rulesets I'd use, dependant on the size of game for this genre. Verrotwood  - I'll be continuing The Awakening Campaign for it's third year. I never lose interest in this! Sci-Fi/ Post-Apoc  - I played a couple of neo-Sov post-apocalypse games last year using Space Weirdos.  Much as I like that game I'm thinking of using What a Cowboy/Cartel going forward as I can then run the games as a campaign.  I still want to give the Last Days zombie rules that I've owned for years a go. Ancients & Medieval  - This covers my Punic ...

2026 will be my third year of using the Ovelist approach to track my hobby progress.  It's working for me so why change it.  As before I've split out the doing from the gaming ( here ).  The list is mainly determined by what I've got outstanding as we start the year and then modified as I complete these items and acquire more.  Here's the starting point: The starting balance is: 28mm - 6 figures (all Verrotwood) 20mm - 45 figures, 1 gun, 1 aircraft (all French Indo-China War) 15mm - 7 afvs (all WW2) 6mm - 368 figures (11 Iran-Iraq/1980s, 33 1980s, 9 1980s afvs/aircraft; 240 Seven Years War; 84 19th C. French Colonial) All of the above are additions to my existing collections and there's a square each to cover these.  My collection covers such a wide range of periods that I have more than enough getting these rounded/finished off to last me the rest of my life, let alone starting anything new.  However, as before I’ve left a number of squares with quest...