Major Ballsup's Hobby Shed

August has been a good hobby month.  After my return from holiday  last month  and finally grasping the nettle that was the 15mm Landsknechts I've made some steady progress.  Completed I've completed the six Victrix warriors from the Dark Age Archers and Slingers set that I'd started at the end of July.  I really enjoyed working on these, I can't praise Victrix figures enough.  You can see more of them here . 15mm Grumpy's Landsknecht officers.  These were lovely little characterful chaps.  I painted these while doing the first batch of pikemen/halberdiers, but as they are based individually I could finish them off. 28mm Wargames Atlantic Second World War German Sentries.  I knocked out a couple of sprues of these.  There's more pics and my thoughts on the kit here .   On the back of reading about the Seven Years War I had a look at my collection, specifically the terrain.  I've never been that happy with the tree sta...

I was away on holiday for the first two weeks of the month.  I took some figures to clean up but didn't get round to even looking at them, so I had a complete break from normal life 😃. It's done me the world of good and I've really pushed on since being back.  Completed I've nearly finished everything that was on the table prior to my holiday:  15mm Grumpy's Landsknecht  arquebusiers and musicians.  I made life difficult for myself by priming them grey and then ended up giving then a white coat base coat so that the colours stand out.  The lesson for the next batch is just use white primer!  I found them a bit daunting at first, but as I got more colour on them I started to enjoy painting them more and more and am enthused enough to start on a new batch straight away.  Overall I'm very pleased how they've turned out and will do a post on them soon. Native American Mound Builder Shaman.  Once I put my mind to it I polished off this chap quite...

I'm still trying to finish off anything in play before year end.   All my efforts have gone into working on the next regiment of Chaos Dwarf Blunderbusses.  When completing the first regiment I did think about having a change and doing some more Ogres, but the dwarfs were all primed and ready to go so it made more sense to crack on with them.  I'm pleased to say I've made good progress and I should be able to finish them this weekend.  Research & Reading I've finished reading The Encircling Sea, the second book of Adrian Goldsworthy's Vindolanda trilogy.  Like the first book it's been a really enjoyable and exciting read.  I'll make sure I read the last of them early in in 2023 especially as I have another trilogy waiting which is directly relevant to a new project I'll be starting in the new year. I also read a nice little book called The Battle of Lincoln 1141, which I found on my last visit to my local library.  This interested me as I spen...

After making all that jungle terrain I was itching to use it.  In true style rather than  play a French Indo-China game which had been the original driver for making it, I gave my 15mm Burma WW2 figures a run out.  The figures are all Battlefront with a  few Eureka Japanese  which I added earlier this year.  The M3 Lee is also Battlefront, which along with the Vickers MG team had originally been painted for the Western Desert, but got a jungle paint job in spring  I also got a chance to use the Japanese and British dice I'd made.  All set up to play I settled at 800 points per side or thereabouts. I used the Meeting Engagement scenario from the rule book which was six turns and as I didn't roll a six at the end it didn't go to the extra turn.  End of turn one every order die drawn Bolt Action works well enough for solo play.  I'm still learning all the nuances and adding notes to my quick reference sheet.  Most importantly I enjoy ...

Apart from my 28mm Barbarossa era Red Army and Heer, all my WW2 forces are either 15mm or 20mm (1/76th). The majority of my 15mm are all old metal Battlefront (Flames of War) but I've never played that game, although I have the army books and rules (2nd edition I think). But I do play Bolt Action with them which is much more my cup of tea. I've got quite a collection for various theatres but this year I'm aiming to finish off my Far East forces. This consists of USMC, Sikh (British Empire) and Imperial Japanese Army (IJA). My IJA force only consisted of 1 infantry platoon as you can't get hold of the metal Battlefront figures anymore. However, this year I took the plunge and ordered up some figures from Eureka minis UK All the reinforcements The service was excellent and so are the figures. They are on the pricey side (60p a figure) but you can buy them as singles and can order exactly what you want. And Eureka do their best to avoid duplicate figures.  They were lovely...