Major Ballsup's Hobby Shed

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...

After completing some Mediterranean themed terrain pieces and redoing my figure bases it was only natural to set them all out and have a game.  I didn't worry too much about points, just using the majority of the French CEF Goumiers and German Gebirgsjäger (GJ) figures that I had.  This worked out to over 1000 points for the Goums, so I added a 20mm Flak 38 to the Germans to make them up to around 750 points.  This felt about right for  a attack/defence game based upon the Envelopment scenario from the rule book. To make it a bit more interesting I didn't initially deploy the German forces but put markers on the board.  I then rolled for each one to see which German unit was in place at that point.   Turn One  All German forces are hidden so decided to leave them as is.  All FEC Run (double movement). The Goumiers advance Turn Two For this turn I drew dice and rolled to establish the German unit positions with most of them going into Amb...

After making all that jungle terrain I was itching to use it.  In true style rather than  play a French Indo-China game which had been the original driver for making it, I gave my 15mm Burma WW2 figures a run out.  The figures are all Battlefront with a  few Eureka Japanese  which I added earlier this year.  The M3 Lee is also Battlefront, which along with the Vickers MG team had originally been painted for the Western Desert, but got a jungle paint job in spring  I also got a chance to use the Japanese and British dice I'd made.  All set up to play I settled at 800 points per side or thereabouts. I used the Meeting Engagement scenario from the rule book which was six turns and as I didn't roll a six at the end it didn't go to the extra turn.  End of turn one every order die drawn Bolt Action works well enough for solo play.  I'm still learning all the nuances and adding notes to my quick reference sheet.  Most importantly I enjoy ...

This week I've been working on a pack of Battlefront French Foreign Legion sappers which aremy oldest outstanding figures.  I'd bought them at a knockdown price from eBay back in 2019 without a clear idea of what I was going to do with them and they'd sat in a box since.  I'm a bit of a sucker for La Légion. Why do them now?  Purely for lack of any other figures to do! With these finished I have nine, yes nine outstanding figures.  Actually I have 96 others but I'm probably going to be selling these off as I've re-evaluated doing that project. Anyway back to the FFL sappers.  These are my last pack of BF figures and are metal, I don't think they do any metal anymore.  I have hundreds of metal BF figures for various theatres and nations of WW2.  Funnily enough, I've never played Flames of War although I have a fair few of the books.  I use the figures for Bolt Action which I think they work very well for.   I decided to do them ...

Apart from my 28mm Barbarossa era Red Army and Heer, all my WW2 forces are either 15mm or 20mm (1/76th). The majority of my 15mm are all old metal Battlefront (Flames of War) but I've never played that game, although I have the army books and rules (2nd edition I think). But I do play Bolt Action with them which is much more my cup of tea. I've got quite a collection for various theatres but this year I'm aiming to finish off my Far East forces. This consists of USMC, Sikh (British Empire) and Imperial Japanese Army (IJA). My IJA force only consisted of 1 infantry platoon as you can't get hold of the metal Battlefront figures anymore. However, this year I took the plunge and ordered up some figures from Eureka minis UK All the reinforcements The service was excellent and so are the figures. They are on the pricey side (60p a figure) but you can buy them as singles and can order exactly what you want. And Eureka do their best to avoid duplicate figures.  They were lovely...