Major Ballsup's Hobby Shed

June has been a busy month.  I've been adding to existing projects and getting to a point where they are considered finished, i.e. I have enough forces for both sides to play the games I currently want to play. I've also started on a new project which has got me excited.  It's another long update! Completed The only thing I had on the go when May ended was some plastic zombies.  I finished these off early in June and they can be seen in their gruesomeness here .  Keeping with 20mm and the whole Zona Alfa/neo-Soviet vibe I completed some Elhiem modern Russians and a religious leader.  Lovely figures of which you can see more of here . Following fast on the heels of those fellas I completed some support for the Legion in Algeria, in the form of a .30 cal machine gun team and an 81mm mortar team.  More of these grognards here . The last of the completed bits was for my new project the South African Border Wars.  I ordered and completed a selection of vehi...

Over the last few weeks I've added some more French Foreign Legion paratroopers to the Algerian War project.  I took advantage of Elhiem’s pre-Salute sale to fill the gaps in my collection with some supporting troops.  With a couple of exceptions of figures that I didn’t want I think I have the whole range now. First up is this medical party.  These figures add such a nice element of narrative that within days of finishing them off I had based a game around them ( AAR here ).   I added some support in the form of this pair of snipers and a recoilless rifle gunner. And finally the Legion got some heavier support in the form of a 81mm mortar team and a .30 cal medium machine gun team. It may be something like 12 years ago since I painted the first batch of these, before the days where I kept notes.  I tried to match the colours as well as I could but they are a bit different.  I had real trouble trying to match the green of their berets, but when they’re...

On the hobby front May has been a mix of finishing and fiddling about trying things.  At first I thought I hadn’t done much but on review I have, so this is a long one! Completed I started the month making some scatter terrain for swamp/marsh areas:    I then spent some time looking at micro armour, painting up some Heroics & Ros and Butlers' Printed Models samples I've had for years.  I wrote up a comparison which you can see here . Going up a notch in scale to 10mm I painted up the two Pendraken M24s that I bought at Salute.  Lovely little models.  Not sure what I'll do with them though.  And going up to 1/72nd scale I finished off painting the H-21 and H-34 helicopters for the Algerian War project.  I also painted up the 6 helicopter pilots from Elhiem to go in them.    You can see more of them here .  Completing the 'copters got me back into the Algerian War mind set so I knocked out 4 more ALN fighters.  These were act...