Major Ballsup's Hobby Shed

October started well, then I picked up a nasty fluey thing that curtailed my hobby activities for a full week.  Work has also been full on so not as much done as I'd hoped, but still a bit of progress.   Completed  Here's what I finished off during the month: I concentrated on the Heroics & Ros 6mm and got another 79 Iraqi and Iranians all based and finished.  I used the 3-2-1 scheme I explained last month ( here ).  The initial Iranian and Iraqi forces are now complete.  I'm quite pleased with that as I managed to do it within six months of buying them.  Just a few aircraft to do now and this phase of this project will be complete. I finally finished off the Italian villa that's been on the table for a while.  I spent too long thinking about how to do the courtyard and in the end used embossed plastic card, which was my original idea!  Cut to size and painted this has worked a treat.  Once this was in place I added more weather...

September has been a busy month both work and family wise.  I also got away for a week at the end of the month.  Therefore, hobby time has been limited, but the main thing is that I’ve enjoyed what I’ve worked on and my summer slump is well behind me.   Completed  Here's what I finished off during September: I made a couple of diseased warriors for a scenario I’m putting together for Verrotwood, using the bodies and heads from Victrix Ancient Germans and other bits from the Frostgrave Cultists and Barbarians sets.  And while I had the plastics box out I made up a Frostgrave Cultist as a reanimated also for Verrotwood.   6 Heroics & Ros 6mm Taliban, 60 1980's Soviet Motor Rifle (Iraqi) infantry and 60 1980's German (Iranian) infantry.   After spending far too much of my limited brain power agonising over how best to base my 6mm Moderns, I hit on a scheme with enough flexibility to work for most rules.  I have a great big box full...

Happy New Year everyone, I hope you all have a marvellous 2024.  I'm doing something a bit different this year.  Usually I split the year into three sections of four months with Salute in April being the first key point to work towards.  For 2024 I'm trying out the Ovelist approach of The Hobby Support Group.  I've chosen  nine things to work on for the whole year.  I'm still going to take those check points at April and August and revise if needed. The starting numbers for the year are: 128 28mm; 10 20mm and 152 15mm.  I started 2023 with 321 unpainted figures made up of 108 28mm, 53 15mm and 163 10mm so broadly similar, just replacing the 10mm for 15mm really.    New projects I've currently got one brand new project to work on: 1st Century. A.D Imperial Rome.  I've had the Infamy, Infamy rules for well over a year now, but could never find figures I liked as I wanted to do it in smaller scale.  I really liked Cromarty Forges' 10mm...

After what seems like an age I finally completed the exteriors of the Empires at War Spanish/Italian MDF buildings.  This last stage was working on the wooden areas such as the balcony railings and doors.  Part 1 , part 2 and part 3 show the work up to this point. I can't really say that they're finished as there's the interiors to do and I also want to make some scenic bases for them.  But I've reached a stage where I'm happy with how they look and would use them in a game. Two Storey house(L).  Large house with balcony (R)                                                          Large three storey house with balcony (L).  Small three storey house (R) Arched building (L).  Taverna (R).  Two views of the church front (L) and rear (R).  Farm (L).  Villa (R). 

With the roofs done, the next stage in the revamp was to work on covering up the unsightly MDF where the corners of each wall joined which I'd talked about here . I grabbed the remnants of a Privateer Press P3 Jack Bone pot that I've had for years and liberally coated all the corners of each building.  P3 paints are very thick, like the old Citadel Foundation range and will cover anything in one coat. Mind the gaps When doing this I noticed quite a lot of gaps at the corners where I'd not assembled the buildings very well.  I decided to fill them, using  Vallejo Plastic Putty which has got a thin applicator nozzle allowing you to be quite precise.  I used an old gift card to force the putty in the  gaps then a rag to wipe it smooth.  With hindsight I should have done this before painting.  With this done it was time to paint the corners and try to blend them into the rest of the walls.  I used Vallejo Model Colour Dark Sand as the base colour and ...

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...

As described in the first part of this series one of the main things to deal with was the roofs.  The pantiles were too dark, too plasticky and too shiny!  Luckily I had the perfect paint to hand in the form of Dulux Sumatran Melody 2, a tin of which I'd had mixed up earlier in the year when doing the bases for my Algerian War figures.   The original colours with one repainted roof First off I used a smallish brush to cut in round the edges of the roofs, trying not to get any paint on any other parts.  Then with a 1 cm decorating brush I covered all the tiled roofs.  One of the great things about using emulsions is they dry very quick.  All of the Dulux paints I've had made up have been made with a matt finish and they really do give a pleasing flat matt. This stage didn't take long to do at all. A pleasing matt basecoat The next task was to add some contrast.  I mixed up Sumatran Melody 2 with Dulux colour matched to Vallejo Iraqui Sand at appro...