Major Ballsup's Hobby Shed

Here we are for the last monthly update of 2023.  I hope everyone had a great Christmas time and I wish you all the best for the New Year.  May your brushes always keep their points and may your dice roll the numbers you need.  This is quite a long update, as I've had a bit of time off and managed to crack on.  Completed I completed the following this month: I finally drilled the holes and attached the magnets for the bases of the 28mm Second World War Feldgendarmerie that I completed in the summer.  While I had the Dremel out I drilled the magnet holes for all the 25mm MDF bases that I had and also managed to get the collet well and truly stuck!   Copplestone Castings Partisans.  Sold as part of the Back of Beyond Russian Civil War range, these are great figures that I'll be using for Second World War games.  You can see more here . On the back of this I also added some new heads and weapons to two Warlord Games plastic Red Army infantryman ...

I picked up a packet of Copplestone Castings Russian Civil War Partisans at the end of November.  I'm always on the lookout for more Partisans to add to my Second World War Partisan force and these are perfect being clothed and armed just as appropriately for the later conflict. You get ten figures in the pack.  I got seven unique figures and three duplicates in the pack.  I don't like duplicates in any scale, but particularly for skirmish games so I swapped the heads on three figures.  Two of the duplicates got heads from the plastic Warlord Games Red Army Infantry set, with the third getting a head from one of the Victrix Dark Ages sets (I'm not sure which one).  There's something very tactile when painting metals, more so than with a plastic figure.  Perhaps it's the details are cut different or just they weigh more and feel better in the hand.  Certain elements are chunkier, such as the weapons but I found these to be very well proportioned.  ...

When I first embarked on my Late-Roman project a year or so ago, I bought a few sample sprues from Gripping Beast, Wargames Atlantic and Victrix.  The Victrix one was from the Late Roman Archers and Slingers set.  The quality of these convinced me to choose Victrix for the project and I duly ordered up some sets.  After working my way slowly through these I finally went back to this original frame.  These are absolutely lovely models.  There's loads of variety and they go together beautifully.  The instruction sheet which I got from the Victrix website makes a massive difference in this regard.  I really enjoyed working on these.  They were quick to assemble and quick to paint up being in a uniform of sorts.   I only have the one frame, but I took a couple of the bodies from some of the Dark Age Archers that I was working on at the same time ( here ) and added some spare arms to make another pair of staff slingers.  This worked...

In November I finally got my finger out to  finish the quintet of Victrix 28mm Dark Age Archers that had been on the table for awhile.  I really like this set as it's particularly versatile and you can make figures from Late-Romans right through to the Norse Age/early Medieval.  This is what I've done with this batch making a Gothic archer, two generic Dark Age warriors and two late-Romans.  The Gothic archer was a straightforward build.  All the bits came from the Dark Age Archers set except the head with the distinctive Germanic topknot, which came from the Ancient Germans set.   The two generic Dark Age warriors were also predominantly built from the Archers set.  The archer uses a head  from the Unarmoured Romans set and the arms for the spearman also came from that set.   At the same time I was working on these I worked on a frame of Late-Roman Archers and Slingers ( here ).  I really like the staff slingers, so I used the...

Quite a long update this month so buckle up and stick with it.  I felt that I spent last month going up a blind alley, but now I'm back on track.  I've finished a few things off and had a clear out which you can read about under Ramblings below. Completed I spent the first days of November finishing up the following: Wargames Atlantic First World War Germans.   Great War Miniatures First World War Germans Warlord Games Second World War Winter Germans repurposed as First World War.  You can see more photos and read about my thoughts on the above  here . I then polished off some more Victrix figures: I completed five more of the Dark Age Archers that have been sitting around for awhile.  I made two as generic Dark Age warriors and one as a Gothic archer.  The other two I combined with parts from the late-Roman Archers sprue (see below) to make some staff slingers.  While working on the above I made up the Late Roman Archers and Slingers sp...

I spent much of my hobby time in October and early November working on three batches of 28mm Germans for The First World War/A War Transformed.  This was six each of Great War Miniatures metals, Wargames Atlantic plastics and modified Second World War Warlord Games plastics.  I worked on them simultaneously which proved to be an interesting comparison exercise. First up are the Wargames Atlantic (WA) plastics.  I'd made 18 of these a couple of years ago and bought another frame to pimp up for A War Transformed.  However, after being less than impressed with the rules I decided to build them as straight First World War.  I compared each against the existing figures I'd made and then fiddled about with the arms and heads to make each one different.   In the main they go together well.  However, as with all plastics some arms don't really work with some bodies and there's no instructions or suggestions.  The MG08/15 arms are truly awful and I co...