Major Ballsup's Hobby Shed

January 2026 has been a curious month.  On the downside I've had what seems like a perpetual cough and cold for almost the entirety of the month.  The weather has also been dismal.  However, where this has stopped me getting out and exercising, I have done a lot of hobby stuff, swings and roundabouts and all that.  Consequently this is quite a long update.  Here's what I completed this month: 48 Baccus Franco-Prussian War Infantry finished as French Foreign Legion for my 19th Century French Armée d'Afrique collection.  I started these early in December and they had sat on the table since.  However, once I got back to them I knocked these out quite quickly.  Lovely sturdy Baccus figures, this gives me another unit and a bit to make a total of three FFL units for The Men Who Would Be Kings.   Verrotwood Cultist.  After the bloodletting of the last game ( here ) the Wisentii cult needed a new cultist, so I bashed one together using Northsta...

I picked up a box of Plastic Soldier Company M4A3s in the summer and it's taken me until January to finish them. They're very nice little models.  Although there’s not many parts, assembly was not as straightforward as it should have been because the kit allows you to make three differently armed versions and there's no  instructions included!  To cap it all the parts sheet that I found on the web differs to how the sprues are actually made up!  At one stage I'd looked at so many pictures of M4A3s trying to figure out what's what, that I thought I never wanted to see one again.   I spent some time deciding which versions to make and I wanted to make them as flexible as possible.  This is easier said than done because although there are separate parts for the 75mm and 76mm turrets,  there are only enough .50 cal turret HMGs and hatches to make five tanks.  However, by using spare Battlefront .50 cals and being crafty by not gluing on the hatch...

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...

May has been a funny old month both hobby and real life wise.  There's been lots of disruption with a move of location at work, and a visit to the doctors amongst other things to disturb my equilibrium.  The hobby has taken a bit of a back seat and my motivation dipped to the point where I didn't do much hobbying at all mid-month.  Thankfully by the last week of the month I was feeling more like it. Completed I didn't complete too much this month: Four 28mm Apaches from Gringos 40s.  Very nice figures, I struggled with these as I've never been great at painting large areas of skin and I'm not sure I did them justice.   From something that's new to one of my oldest outstanding items, I finally finished the 15mm Hetzer that's been sitting on the table since last year.  Once I got down to work it took no time all, which makes me wonder why I didn't get it done sooner.  This was a nice little 3D print, that was a freebie  from Plastic Soldier Com...