June 2026 hobby update

I lost my mojo at the end of May and this continued on through June.  It happens to all of us at times.  Sometimes a change of project or emphasis is all that's needed and sometimes you just grit your teeth and push on.  Sometimes a few days away from doing anything hobby related is all that's needed.  For the first half of the month I tried the first two of those options, but by mid June I had to use the third.  I had a couple of days of hobby cold turkey, with no hobby related activity at all including not even looking at any social media.  

Then after a couple of particularly frustrating days in the real world, I felt the need to paint just to feel I was in control of something.  And that seems to have got me back on track.  I've kept up with limiting my phone use and looking at social media, news etc. and I'm finding that's helping.  There's so many arseholes out there, that even the good things can be spoilt.  

The last part of the month was unbearably hot, which gave me short windows of time to paint in before my south-facing hobby room was too hot to sit in.  I used this to my advantage, planning out what I was going to paint before each session and made some good progress.  I can end the month saying that if I'm not quite there, I'm getting there.

Completed

If you've read the above you'll understand that my output has been even lower than usual and I've only finished:

  • A trio of 28mm Warlord Games Red Army infantry.  I picked up a couple of the new Warlord Soviet frames last month and added a new LMG team to my platoon, so I can field the correct number for the Battlegroup Barbarossa rules.  However, all my research into 1941 Red Army platoon sizes points to the BG platoon sizes being incorrect, so what do you do?  The frames have only got three of the six figures in the correct early war uniform, but then the old frames had half the figures in winter uniforms!  This is my main criticism of all Warlord's sets.  They try to cover too much and be all things in the one set.  While it's good for flexibility, it therefore means that you can't field a full platoon similarly dressed and equipped to a really accurate degree and with that much variety.  Apart from that I do like them, especially the accuracy of the equipment and weapons and I enjoy building and painting them.  I'm not sure what I'll do with the rest of these.  I could build them all to make a correct sized Barbarossa era platoon, but then I'll have to buy and build more Germans (as BG B has only 3 squads rather than the 4 it should be), and I'm not sure that I want to do that.  28mm is not really my preferred scale for Second World War gaming and this is the only collection I have in that scale for that conflict.

In progress

The following are on the table as we end June:

  • 15mm Essex Miniatures late 15th C Granadan/Moor light cavalry.  I’d prepared these last month, but didn’t return to them until mid-June.  These are for my long planned Fall of Granada project, which is my principal project for this year.  I don’t paint many cavalry, so these have been a bit of a change for me which has been good, as has been the return to 15mm.  I've very much enjoyed painting them and just need to finish the bases.  I've decided to paint all the figures and then do all the basing in one go so it's consistent across all the units.

  • 15mm Essex Miniatures late 15th Spanish spearmen.  Being enthused after working on the above, I cleaned up, based, primed and painted a couple of packs of infantry for the Fall of Granada project.  These were really quick to do and gave me a lot of pleasure, taking me back to why I do the hobby in the first place.  There's something I intrinsically like about Essex Miniatures 15mm.  I need to complete the shields and bases but they're essentially done.

Gaming

I've been relatively consistent in playing at least a couple of games each month and I kept that up with another two games in June. 

  • My first game was a 6mm Force on Force game set in mid 1980s West Germany, using a similar set up to the game I started last month.  I hadn't played for so long that I was constantly referring to the rules, which didn’t make for an enjoyable experience so I stopped the previous game.  This time I had a good study of the rules  prior to playing and consequently had a better time.  I also kept to a purely infantry game which helped.  The West German mission was to delay the Soviets for at least four turns, causing as many casualties as possible.  The Soviets were trying to get to the edge of the board and keep the advance going.  The West Germans managed to cause enough casualties to slow the Soviets to achieve their objective, although their HQ was severely mauled.
  • The second game was Sword Weirdos using some of my 15mm Imperial Roman/Ancient Germans collection that I initially collected for Infamy, Infamy (yet to be played) but ended up using for Midgard.  I did start on an AAR for this will but haven't had time to complete it.

Incoming

I didn't buy or even look at buying anything this month.

Ramblings, Reading & Research 

Even if sometimes I don't have much enthusiasm for hobbying, this is rarely true for reading.  This month I read a quartet of historical fiction novels:  

  • "Sword & Scimitar" by Simon Scarrow.  This tells the tale of a disgraced English Knight, Sir Thomas Barrett, who is banished from the Order of St. John and then recalled many years later to serve in the siege of Malta.  It weaves the main historical commanders of the Knights into the narrative of the siege, with a couple of sub-plots which I won't mention as it'll spoil it.  Sir Thomas Barrett's disgrace and subsequent story is somewhat cliched and two of the main reveals were quite obvious in my opinion.  It's a good enough, easy read, I can't say much more than that really.  It's positively tame compared to Tim Willock's "The Religion" which I read earlier in the year.  

  • I stayed with the 16th Century to read "The Golden Throne" by Christopher de Bellaigue.    This is the follow up to "The Lion Room", continuing the story of Suleyman the Magnificent.  A much more interesting and satisfying read than "Sword & Scimitar", this takes the story on to the mid 1500s.  It's written in an understated way, which makes the events all the more shocking.  I look forward to reading the third instatement once it's written.  

  • "Band of Eagles" by Frank Barnard.  This is an historical novel set during the siege of Malta, but the Second World War one this time.  It's mainly the story of two fighter pilots helping to defend  the island during 1941 when the Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica were flattening the place.  I really enjoyed the book, and not long having returned from the island, it was nice to see places I'd visited mentioned.  I wasn't aware that this was the second in a series, so the side plots with related characters that were featured in the first book didn't mean much.  I can't even remember where I picked this copy up, but I'll go back and read the first in the series now though.  
  • "Prussian Blue" by Philip Kerr.  One of the Bernie Gunther novels, this has two storylines running.  One is set in Bernie's present (1956) and the main part of the book is set in April 1939.  In the 1956 story Bernie is on the run from an old comrade who is now working for the East German secret police.  And in the 1939 story he's trying to solve a murder at the Berchtesgaden,  Hitler's mountain retreat.  The stories overlap and both are equally absorbing, I found myself really wanting to find out how his escape was going in 1956 as much as his investigation of 1939.  If you've read any of these series and enjoyed them you won't be disappointed in the slightest by this one.

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