Major Ballsup's Hobby Shed

A recent post detailed my new South African Border Wars project.  Here's my initial batch of completed vehicles.  They're all from Scotia Grendel.  I bought one of each just to see what they were like and I'm not disappointed in any way.  They're lovely models, just enough detail for the scale, well cast with little clean up needed and at a competitive price.  First up the Angolan/Cubans.  As would be expected all these vehicles are of Soviet origin.   Here we have the South Africans Defence Force (SADF) selection.  Scotia were the only manufacturer I found which did a comprehensive range of South African vehicles in any scale.   These were easy to paint.  Everything was sprayed with Humbrol White, although I ran out and had to brush prime a few with Humbrol White enamel.  The Angolan/Cuban armour was painted in Vallejo Model Colour (VMC) Russian Green, then highlighted with Army Painter (AP) White added to the Russian Gr...

As my multitude of followers (thank to all nine) will know, I’ve been waffling on about doing a small scale, larger scope game for some time now.  I felt I was getting a bit samey with a lot of my collection being for infantry centric platoon sized games with minimal support weapons. After a lot of research and consideration I’d finally narrowed it down to the following: Cold War gone hot; 1967 or 1973 Arab-Israeli Wars; the 1965 Indo-Pakistan War; or the Iran-Iraq Wars.  All of these would give me combined arms action.  Then, when reading the Centurion vs T-55 chapter in the book Battleground, I saw a picture of a South African Oliphant tank (modified Centurion) and down the rabbit hole I went.  On delving deeper into the South African Border Wars it really capitvated me. It gives me the combined arms aspect in spades.  The conflict lasted a long time, therefore the equipment used and nature of the fighting changed and developed.  This gives lots of s...

It's been a full on week work wise but I have done some hobby bits. I've finished the Stug IIIG that's been sitting on the table for ages.  There's more of it here . The regiment of 10mm Chaos Dwarf Blunderbusses for Warmaster Revolution is nearly done.  Just the command stand and some final texturing of the bases to do which I hope to do this weekend.  Research & Reading I've been watching The English on BBC iPlayer.  I think it's superb and makes me want to give the Old West collection a run out.   I've continued alternating between reading Iron Kingdoms, the history of Prussia 1660 to 1947 and Sharpe's Fortress.   Incoming! I've got a few orders on the way where I've reinvested all the money from my eBay sales and some birthday money I was given.  When these arrive they'll form the basis of my projects for a fair bit of 2023.  

I've finally finished the Sturmgeschütz IIIG that seems to have been on the table for months. This is a 1/76th resin Butler's Printed Models FFF print.  It's very well scaled and almost exactly the same proportions as my old Fujimi kits.  The FFF printing leaves a lot of marks on the model, which I'm explaining away as field applied Zimmerit!  BPM now do a High Resolution Resin version of some of their models which may improve on this.  I don't really need any more Stugs but they are my favourite German AFV of the war so I won't say that I won't be acquiring any more.

 I've had a decent week hobby wise. I've made steady progress with a regiment of 10mm Chaos Dwarf Blunderbusses for Warmaster Revolution.  Learning from my first batch of Chaos Dwarfs I split a lot of the strips as I find them easier to paint this way.  They're quirky, characterful little models which is why I chose to collect this army.  I've done more of the Stug IIIG that's been sitting on the table for ages.  Just details and weathering to do now. Dwarfs and a Stug in progress I've finished adding the magnets to my Warmachine and Hordes figures.  I like mixing this sort of practical, straightforward job with painting.  Handling the figures gives me a real appreciation of what lovely sculpts most of them are.  If I say so myself there's some decent paint jobs as well. Warmachine   Hordes I got the time to take some photos and write a post about the 10mm Ogres that I finished last week.  You can see the ugly, fat blighters  here ....