Major Ballsup's Hobby Shed

It's been a funny old month hobby wise.  I was away for the first week of October and since I've been back I don't feel I've achieved much. Completed Here's what I managed to get finished off: Another batch of Victrix 28mm Unarmoured Romans.  I completed these as Gothic warriors and you can see more here . I redid the bases on a Green Man and Werewolf (old AE:WW2 figures) that have been hanging around with no purpose to use for A War Transformed (well that was the original idea)!  They'll be good for Verrotwood.   In progress Here's what's currently on the table: From last month: Northstar Oathmark Elves. I finally did some work on one of these performing a cut and shut, and swapping a pair of legs from a Victrix Dark Age archer for the horrid pixie boot elf legs.  I even got it based and started painting it.  Not sure what I'll do with the other 4 as the intention for these was to use as a "wandering monster" for Ragnarok.   Warlord Games ...

Since it was first announced I've been very excited about A War Transformed (AWT), the Osprey rules for an alternative/magical First World War game.  I've always liked the idea of alternative games based on real history.   I've had Secrets of the Third Reich (SotR) and AE:WW2 since they were released and although liking parts of these rules (especially AE:WW2 Occult Expansion), I've only played AE and that for a conventional WW2 game.  I didn’t like either figure ranges too much apart from the odd great sculpt, and AE has long since disappeared.  Konflikt '47 did little to inspire me (the cost and being far too "super soldiery" for my liking) and I've been on the look out for a good "weird" war game for a long time.   From what I've seen so far AWT seems much more up my street.  I had started working on a WW2 game set in Belarus and the Ukraine which would contain a big dose of folk magic.  It'll be interesting to see what's in AW...

August has been a good hobby month.  After my return from holiday  last month  and finally grasping the nettle that was the 15mm Landsknechts I've made some steady progress.  Completed I've completed the six Victrix warriors from the Dark Age Archers and Slingers set that I'd started at the end of July.  I really enjoyed working on these, I can't praise Victrix figures enough.  You can see more of them here . 15mm Grumpy's Landsknecht officers.  These were lovely little characterful chaps.  I painted these while doing the first batch of pikemen/halberdiers, but as they are based individually I could finish them off. 28mm Wargames Atlantic Second World War German Sentries.  I knocked out a couple of sprues of these.  There's more pics and my thoughts on the kit here .   On the back of reading about the Seven Years War I had a look at my collection, specifically the terrain.  I've never been that happy with the tree sta...

I managed to get my next batch of Wargames Atlantic Germans assembled and painted in only a few days. Primed, base uniform colour on As with the first dozen I seemed to spend almost as much time fiddling about assembling them as I took to paint them. However, they were slightly quicker to do, as rather than trying to do twelve steel helmeted riflemen with as much variety as possible with the limited parts available, I wanted an officer and a few NCOs out of this batch. Therefore, I got to use different heads, which will differentiate them as NCOs on the table. I'm pleased with how they worked out, I especially like the officer and the field cap headed figures.  I'm intending to round out the platoon with Great War Miniatures machine gunners and more rifleman. Although I really like the Wargames Atlantic figures I don't think there's enough variety to get any more  riflemen that will look significantly different and I'm not keen on the one set of MG arms. But they...

I've been intending to do a WW1 project for years. I bought the Warhammer Great War and Through the Mud and the Blood rules when they came out, picked up reference books and costed out various options. But as with many projects it never got past the planning stage.  Last year I was very close, read a good few books, looked at my reference material but started a Barbarossa project instead. Earlier this year I finally got round to reading my copy of  Alistair Horne's classic The Price of Glory about Verdun and was determined to start but I couldn't decide on the figure or game scale, or rules, so the project was postponed. Then I saw that Wargames Atlantic  were soon to release a set of plastic WW1 French that looked as good as their German Stormtrooper set. Decision made. Starting with the Germans I decided not to buy a box of Stormtroopers but opted for 3 separate frames. Getting these from SGS Models they worked out slightly cheaper each frame than if I'd got the b...