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...

Completing the hills and rocky scatter has now given me some terrain for my WW2 Italian Campaign project.  I've had a reasonable collection of 15mm Battlefront miniatures sitting about doing nothing for more years than I want to admit to.  There was no excuses now not to have a game, so it was time to get them out and take stock. My Axis force consists of: 1xGebirgsjäger platoon 1xFallschirmjäger platoon with additional command teams 1xFallschirmjäger 20mm Flak platoon 1xFallschirmjäger Mortar section 1x88mm Flak Platoon  2xSemovente 75/34 assault guns 2xHornisse tank destroyers I'd never really felt like I'd finished the bases, so I decided to bring them in-line with the terrain pieces.  I followed a simpler version of the colour scheme I used for the rock scatter terrain, with just a base coat of Dheneb Stone followed by a single drybrush of Iraqui Sand.  I finished them off by gluing on small pieces of different shades of homemade clump folia...