Major Ballsup's Hobby Shed

As often happens when I get to Autumn my thoughts turns to what I’ll be working on for the rest of this year and what new projects to look at for the year to come.  This year I’ve been quite focused, and a combination of clearing the backlog and buying very little that needs doing, has left me in a good place to start something new.  There’s a few projects that have been on the to-do list for a while, but the one I’ve decided to kick off in what remains of 2024 is a 1980s Cold War "what if?" project. Being of a certain age and long being interested in military matters, I remember very clearly what seemed the continuous threat and fear of an enemy horde advancing across Europe from the east.  Not much changes does it?  However, current events aside it did have an impact on my formative years.  Being primarily an aircraft modeller at the time I made models of lots of service aircraft like Harrier, Jaguars, Phantoms, Tornadoes and A-10s and also some contemporary t...

I was away on holiday for the first two weeks of the month.  I took some figures to clean up but didn't get round to even looking at them, so I had a complete break from normal life 😃. It's done me the world of good and I've really pushed on since being back.  Completed I've nearly finished everything that was on the table prior to my holiday:  15mm Grumpy's Landsknecht  arquebusiers and musicians.  I made life difficult for myself by priming them grey and then ended up giving then a white coat base coat so that the colours stand out.  The lesson for the next batch is just use white primer!  I found them a bit daunting at first, but as I got more colour on them I started to enjoy painting them more and more and am enthused enough to start on a new batch straight away.  Overall I'm very pleased how they've turned out and will do a post on them soon. Native American Mound Builder Shaman.  Once I put my mind to it I polished off this chap quite...

June has been a busy month.  I've been adding to existing projects and getting to a point where they are considered finished, i.e. I have enough forces for both sides to play the games I currently want to play. I've also started on a new project which has got me excited.  It's another long update! Completed The only thing I had on the go when May ended was some plastic zombies.  I finished these off early in June and they can be seen in their gruesomeness here .  Keeping with 20mm and the whole Zona Alfa/neo-Soviet vibe I completed some Elhiem modern Russians and a religious leader.  Lovely figures of which you can see more of here . Following fast on the heels of those fellas I completed some support for the Legion in Algeria, in the form of a .30 cal machine gun team and an 81mm mortar team.  More of these grognards here . The last of the completed bits was for my new project the South African Border Wars.  I ordered and completed a selection of vehi...

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...