Major Ballsup's Hobby Shed

A bit of a funny week.  With the double bank holiday I thought I'd get a lot done but after a good start with a game of Bolt Action and working on the Mediterranean buildings it tailed off somewhat.  Gaming I played a game of Bolt Action, set in Italy 1944.  Read the AAR here .   Painting/modelling   The rest of my hobby time has been spent working on the Mediterranean buildings.  You can read about this here and here .  Research & Reading I've started reading "Jungle of Snakes: A Century of Counterinsurgency Warfare from the Philippines to Iraq".  I picked this up in March for £5.59, £2.80 of which was the P & P.  I bought it for the section on The Algerian War but the entire book looks fascinating.  I was hooked just reading the Introduction and I'm now onto The Philippine Insurrection. Incoming! I've started June in the same frame of mind as May.  I'm fast becoming the wargames equivalent of Norbert Colon the Vi...

After completing some Mediterranean themed terrain pieces and redoing my figure bases it was only natural to set them all out and have a game.  I didn't worry too much about points, just using the majority of the French CEF Goumiers and German Gebirgsjäger (GJ) figures that I had.  This worked out to over 1000 points for the Goums, so I added a 20mm Flak 38 to the Germans to make them up to around 750 points.  This felt about right for  a attack/defence game based upon the Envelopment scenario from the rule book. To make it a bit more interesting I didn't initially deploy the German forces but put markers on the board.  I then rolled for each one to see which German unit was in place at that point.   Turn One  All German forces are hidden so decided to leave them as is.  All FEC Run (double movement). The Goumiers advance Turn Two For this turn I drew dice and rolled to establish the German unit positions with most of them going into Amb...

With the Axis forces completed I turned my attention to the Allies.  My collection is split between those of the French Corps Expéditionnaire Français (CEF) and those representing British equipped troops that can be used as Brits, Canadians, New Zealanders, Poles or South Africans.   1 French/Moroccan Goumier company command with mortar team and 2 LMG teams 1 French/Moroccan Goumier infantry platoon 1 French/Moroccan Goumier MMG section British company command teams 2 British infantry platoons with PIAT and 2" mortar support teams 1 British 3in. mortar section 1 British MMG section I've also got a number of M4 and M5 tanks of various marks.  I'd had plenty of practice when I redid all the Axis bases so it didn't take much thought to do these!  I was very pleased when I'd finished the last of the 30 or so Brit bases.  That's another job I've been meaning to do for years ticked off the list. 

If you've had the endurance to wade through my previous posts ( here and here ) you'll know I've wanted to game the Algerian War for a long, long time.  The main blocker has been that apart from the Elhiem French paras, there's no specific range of figures, particularly for the Armée de libération nationale (ALN). This year I'm committed to getting on with this project.  I reviewed my books, studied what's online and took a look through my existing 20mm collection and I was pleasantly surprised how much was usable.   First are these Liberation Miniatures Moroccans bought for the French in Indo-China.  They're perfect for ALN, dressed as they are in French M47 uniforms and armed with MAS36 rifles and Thompson M1A1 SMGs.  With their small North African style turbans they don't need any work apart from refinishing the bases. Next up are these Battlefield Miniatures WW2 Moroccan Goums.  These were bought long ago to use as French Moroccan troops for ...

Part 1 of this rambling story told of how I had first become interested in the French Indo-China and Algerian Wars.  We'd left it where I had moved onto other periods specifically late World War 2 Eastern Front.   We're now into the early 2000's.  I'd been very focused on building up a collection of 1/76th WW2 figures.  True to form I went off on a tangent after discovering the splendid 1/6th action figures from Dragon and started collecting these.  It wasn't long before I started kitbashing FIC and Algerian figures using WW2 items.  Now the Internet proved useful and I was procuring from all over. This had given me an outlet for my interest but I still was yet to wargame the period.  Then a couple of things happened around the same time at the end of 2005.  A local hobby shop opened and I found a Matchbox 1/76th M24 and then I discovered Liberation Miniatures.  Praise be!  Liberation did a specific Indo-China range.  Not...

I can pinpoint when my interest in the French/First Indo-China War and subsequently the Algerian War (of Independence) began.  It was in my pre/early teens and it was down to three books. I suspect like many boys of the late '70s and early '80s I'd been reading the Wotan series of pulp novels by Leo Kessler.  These told the story of a fictional SS unit and their involvement in every campaign of WW2, which bizarrely included the desert and Cassino.  The last few books followed Sergeant-Major Schulze the anti-hero of the series, as he survives WW2 to end up serving in the French Foreign Legion in Indo-China and then Algeria. At around the same time I was given Blandford Army Uniforms since 1945 as a Christmas present.  As well as showing uniforms from current (1980) armies the sections on the earlier conflicts were those that I found fascinating.  I think it's the mix of kit that appealed to me.  When I looked at the plates I thought the French paras and legi...

I knocked up another 3 sets of Bolt Action dice this week.  French Expeditionary Corps for Italy 43-44, United States and Red Army sets. I was toying with doing a separate USMC set but as I also have a US Army force I decided to do a catch all US set. You can access the template for these sets and the original three sets ( see post ) as a Word or PDF document from this  link