Major Ballsup's Hobby Shed

During the first part of February I completed all my outstanding 20mm Second World War figures.  These are all Sgt. Major Miniatures sculpts, now sold by Battlezone Miniatures (Red Army) and Early War Miniatures (Germans).  These are the last of the five packs I picked up at Salute in 2024. Five of the Red Army are the Assault troops pack (those with body armour).  The other two were from the SMG 2 pack, all are from the Winter Russians range ( here ).  I finished them all in the so called "amoeba" camo which unfortunately you can barely make out in the photos.   These are great sculpts full of life and character.  I really like the figure holding the PPSh 41 outstretched.  Having handled one, I reckon he'd have to be very strong to do this for any length of time, but it's a great sculpt.   The Germans were from a "late-war German Grenadiers in Winter attire pack".  Unfortunately, one of the barrels of an STG44 had broken and it was...

February's first finished figures (try saying that when drunk), are this trio of Dark Ages warriors.   They're from the Victrix Ancient Germans kit.  I bought a sprue of these in 2023 with an entirely different purpose for them.  When that project was swiftly abandoned, I initially didn't know what to do with them.  However, I've managed to shoehorn six of the eight figures into my Dark Ages forces where they'll be serving as Late-Romans, Goths or Norse. All the parts are from the Ancient Germans, except for the heads.  The bare heads are from the Unarmoured late-Romans set. The helmeted head is from the Vikings.  I think all three could serve in most Dark Age armies, although I suppose if you were being picky you'd only use the helmeted warrior in a Norse force. The left hands of the javelin throwers are cut and shut jobs, with a tiny joint at the wrist.  I’m amazed they’re still attached and will have to be very careful using these in a game. ...

A new year and the first monthly hobby update.  After some family dramas to start the year, thankfully things have settled down and January has proved to be a very productive month.  Completed I'm continuing on where I left off from last year in getting stuff done: First of all I polished off a baker's dozen of 20mm Second World War Red Army infantry.  These are now sold by Battlezone Miniatures but they are Sgt. Major Miniatures sculpts.  Bread and butter work for me and a nice early success for the year. You can see more of them here .  While I was working on the above, I was also painting my last four 28mm Victrix Vikings with heads swapped  with ones from other Victrix sets.  There's more of these here . With some figures off the table, I went on to a bit of terrain work.  One of my aims for 2025 is to produce or improve at least one piece of terrain per month: I made some multiple tree bases out of a miniature Christmas tree.  You  ...

Something I've been meaning to do for ages is to add some winter trees to my terrain collection.  Very much motivated by reading about the combat in Hungary in the last winter of the Second World War I got on and did it. Two things enabled this.  The first was picking up a dirt cheap Christmas tree ornament for only £1.49, the second was being sent a free pack of suitable bases from the lovely people at Warbases as part of their marvellous Helping Hands initiative.  The bases were the real catalyst.  They were waiting for me when getting home from work on Monday afternoon and I did steps 1 and 2 that evening.  I did nothing on the Tuesday and worked on them for 15 minutes here and there during the day to finish them on the Wednesday doing steps 3 to 7.  Here's the steps: 1. Prepare the trees.  Using a pair of snippers I cut each branch as low as possible from the ornament.  This gave me 20 trees.  I also gave each tree a good hard brushing to...

My second batch of completed figures this year was a quartet of Norse warriors. These sturdy fellows are 28mm Victrix from their Viking set.  These were the last four left from this set and were the oldest outstanding plastics in the pile. I did minimum tinkering with them, just replacing the heads with ones from different sets.  The unarmoured axe wielding warrior's leonine head is from the Ancient Germans set, the other three are from the Rus set. I can only paint four or five of these Victrix figures at the same time.  Otherwise I notice the quality drops and I don't do them justice.  I've not got many to do, 12 Rus and three Ancient Germans which will be finished as Norse.  That should give me enough for a game of Ravenfeast with Rus versus Norse.