August 2026 hobby update

This is the longest update for quite some time, as August has been a very successful hobby month.  Although I've been very busy in the real world too, I seem to have got into the flow and organised my time better.  I haven't agonised over things and just got them done.  I've also played a few games which I find motivates me to do more.

Completed

Quite a few things finished this month:

• Essex Miniatures15mm late 15th Castilian jinetes for the Fall of Granada project.  I started these last month and got them polished off in the first week of August.  This gives me a couple of units for the 2/3rd sized units I am initially using for Lion Rampant. 

• The 20mm Indian/Afghanistan buildings that I'd assembled and textured last month were next to be worked on.  Before painting them, I'd spent some time looking at photos of Punjabi buildings, some of which were very colourful, so rather than do the usual creamy white ones, I gave these very earthy tones.  The terracotta emulsion I'd intended to use had dried up in the tin, but with a bit of improvisation and on the spot mixing up various colours from all sorts of craft, model and emulsion paints I got these done in an hour or so.   It's the texture that I added that gives them interest as I just splodged the paint on, and dried brushed and stippled varying shades over the top.  The hot weather helped as the paint was drying very quickly.  I think they're a bit dark but we'll see. I've got another two of these to do and am looking forwards to that.

• When I was sorting out my figures for the Battlegroup Barbarossa game (see below), I realised a couple of the Soviets could be better used with different equipment.  I swapped one figure's arms from an SMG to a semi automatic rifle, and a prone rifleman's weapon for a pair of binoculars. When I built this platoon back in 2020/21 I built too many SMGs which isn't very accurate for 1941/42.  The binocular equipped figure can now be used as a spotter for a sniper team or as a forward observer.

  

• I then started on sixteen15mm Essex Moor spearmen.  These are the core of the infantry for my Granadan force.  Being very simple figures, I knocked these out really quickly and they've fitted nicely into the force I've been building over the last few months.

• It was then back to a bit of 28mm and I built a new cultist for Wisentii for Verrotwood.  The poor old Wisentii have suffered in recent games, and lost a cultist in my most recent game.  With three crossbow armed cultists, The Uncoiling are beginning to dominate, so I armed this one with a bow to try and even things up a bit.  This was a simple kit bash using the body from the Frostgrave Female Barbarians with a head and arms from the Frostgrave Female Cultists.  I only have four "spare" bodies now, but the campaign is drawing to it's conclusion so I think I've just about got enough for any replacement cultists that may be needed.

In progress

The following are on the table as we end July:

• Essex Miniatures 15mm Castilian hand gunners and Gendarmes and Granadan Noble Cavalry  These will join their respective ranks for The Fall of Granada project.  They're the last of the figures that I bought at Salute to give me initial forces.  This project was always going to grow so that I can play Midgard with it, so I'll be buying more.

Gaming

I wrote last month that "having time away from it (gaming) has been good, as I'm itching to play again" and play I did:

• First of all was a game of Battlegroup using forces from the Barbarossa book and my small 28mm collection.  This was a Squad level game using an infantry platoon, a few extras and a tank each side.  After an early success with their KV-1 destroying a German motorcyle and sidecar, the Red Army started to feel the Germans points and quality advantage.  Outflanking the Red Army force, the Pz-III managed to pin down the Red Army tank and then the German infantry wiped out two full sections of Red infantry.  The final straw for the Soviets was them having to take a Battle Rating counter to unpin the KV-1 yet again, and this pushed them over their limit and they vacated the field.  A really enjoyable game.

• The next weekend I played game 12 of my Verrotwood campaign.  This was a bit different as it didn't take place in the wood!  This was another really absorbing and enjoyable game, which you can read about here.

• My third and final game of the month was a game of Lion Rampant, for which I used my small collection of 28mm late-Romans and Goths/Germanics.  I had a fine old game and you can read the AAR here.

Incoming & outgoing

Much like Premier League clubs, I've loosened the purse strings and spent some money this month.  Unlike those fools I’ve not paid over the odds:

• "All Hell let Loose (WW2)" and "All Hell let Loose Great War" rule sets.  I've been meaning to pick up the original Second World War AHLL for a good while now, but with the release of the Great War set, they were doing a bundle on Wargames Vault which meant I got both sets in PDF format for about £18 which is a bargain.  I prefer physical rulesets, but until I've read the rules and decided I'm going to use them a PDF suits me fine.  I have access to decent printers anyway, so it's not a problem to print off a set if I decide I need them.  Charles Rowntree is a top chap so I'm pleased to support these rules.

• Inspired by the above I picked up "Russia's Last Gasp : the Eastern Front 1916-17" by Prit Buttar for less than a fiver.  This is the third of his series on the Eastern Front in The Great War.  I've read the first, owned the fourth since 2023 and at the moment can't get hold of the second for a reasonable price!  I will collect all four though.  They're invaluable resources and good reads too.

• My Battlegroup game got me thinking and the next thing I know, I'd bought a box of Warlord Games German Veterans.  I'd looked at these since they were released and was only going to get a couple of sprues, but I got a good deal on a full box so thought why not?  They're a very nice set if a bit chunky.  Thankfully I have the core of my platoon already, so I'll be using these to add extras as and when.  The thought of having to build and paint 30 28mm figures is too much for me, but I enjoy tinkering about with a few as something different.  Fair play to them, but I really don't know how people make whole armies out of plastics.

• I then picked up a reprint of the classic Edouard Detaille book "L' Armee Francaise : An Illustrated History of the French Army 1790-1885" for £4.80 at a second hand bookshop.  I'd wanted this since I returned to the hobby in the '90s, initially collecting Franco-Prussian War forces, and snapped this up when I saw it.  

• Another classic I got hold of was the "Mask of Command" by John Keegan and very much the companion to the earlier "The Face of Battle" which was the book that got me into all this nonsense.  Picked up for less than the price of a cuppa off eBay, absolute madness.  

• To conclude my spending this month I bought a pair of Helion games books.  I was looking for The First Carlist War one and found these as a pair at less than the cost of one at RRP.  They're both very good, but I was really disappointed that "A Savage and Romantic War" wasn't in colour.  Loads of glorious photographs of miniatures and it's black and white.  What possessed Helion to do that?  "All is Lost Save Honour" is in full colour and it's a stunning book, even though it's not a period I'll probably collect.

Once I'd got hold of the German Veterans I sold off the Wargames Atlantic sentries that I'd made in 2023.  They're diminutive compared to all my other 28mm Second World War and don't look right.  I've expressed my feelings on WA's World War ranges before, so I won't repeat them again.  They sold within minutes of listing for a good price and they've gone to a good home.  These paid for a reasonable proportion of my spending this month so everybody's happy.  I've now purged most of the WA figures from my collection.  I'm going to be clearing out more in the next few months.  

Ramblings, Reading & Research 

I've made much quicker progress with the late 15th Century Fall of Granada project, and that's made me think about what's next.  I have quite a bit of stuff to get on with, but it's bits and pieces and additions to existing projects, so I've been looking at potential new projects and have narrowed it down to a few options.  None of these are necessarily new to me as I've done some research on all of them before.  However, one of the options is for a period that I first collected over 45 years ago.  I'll leave it at that for the minute, tease that I am.  

On to Reading and I've read a couple of historical books this month:  

• "The Brethren" by Robert Merle.  This is the first in a fourteen, yes fourteen book series.  Alas, I think only the first four are available in English translation.  It's set in The French Wars of Religion and follows two Huguenot ex-soldiers as they acquire a chateau and become local nobility and is told from the viewpoint of one of their sons.  There's not too much fighting in it, but it's just an excellent book with superb characters, a lot of humour but also really historically good.

• "Adventures in my Youth" by Armin Scheiderbauer. This is a memoir of a young German infantry officer who fought exclusively on the Eastern Front.  It details his training and actions and subsequent imprisonment.  It's fairly balanced and doesn't make the Soviets out to be bestial sub-humans like a lot of these sort of memoirs.  I suspect it was the author's religious background which accounts for this and also his treatment as a POW seems to have been relatively good in the circumstances.  There's some good descriptions of small unit actions and is well worth a read.