Major Ballsup's Hobby Shed

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...

That's June gone.  I've continued making steady progress, completing a further 11 28mm figures (88 done out of the 128 that I started the year with).  I've made a decent start on the 15mm Early Imperial Rome project now as well.  I also played another two games, giving two rulesets I've long wanted to play a try.  Overall I'm very satisfied with my hobby year at this halfway point.  Completed I didn't have too much on the table to finish off at the end of May: In the first week of June I finished the Victrix Armoured Late-Romans.  I completed these as a unit of noble Germanic warriors.  You can see more  here . 28mm Print Minis Bitter Nightshades. These are some 3D printed figures I picked up last year and the first real Sci-Fi figures I've ever painted.  Packed with detail, just as I thought I'd finished them I'd see something else to do so they took awhile!  I'll do a post detailing these when I get time. In progress 15mm Cromarty Forg...

It's 80 years since the launch of Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union. Without question this was one of the key events of World War 2 and world history. To mark this I decided to play a small game of Bolt Action representing a German unit feeling its way forward in the first days of the operation. This was a great chance to use a lot of the new stuff that I've been working on. It was the debut for my Red Army platoon, KV-1 and Pz-111, which were my first lockdown projects last year,  and also for the German Heer platoon I built a couple of years ago. It was also the perfect opportunity to get my newly based trees out for a game and use the artificial turf mat that my wife kindly picked up for me a few years ago. And I got to use the Bolt Action dice I made earlier in the year. The battle at the end of Turn 1 It's been awhile since I played so I went with small 550 pt forces each side, giving four teams/order dice for the Germans and six teams/order...