Hobby Update 08 Aug 21

My gaming seems to have come back to life a little recently, just from having a bit of time and space to get stuck in - which has made a nice change! So, what have I been up to in addition to the battle reports and suchlike I have posted?

I do actually have a fair number of 28mm figures, mainly Warhammer-type (if not necessarily from GW itself) but what I have lacked is much 28mm-suitable terrain, excepting some trees.  So over the last six months or so I have worked on making a few bits and pieces to widen the gaming possibilities I have with this size of figure.

As a first step, I dug out my old bible for making simple terrain, Games Workshop's How to Make Wargames Terrain.  It features a very wide variety of terrain.

 

Some of the SF stuff I covered in a previous update, and the stone circle featured in a recent Five Leagues... fight.  I have been working recently on some more fantasy stuff, so I did a few burial mounds:
 

...and a couple of ruined temples...

 

I quite liked how the burial mounds turned out.  The ruined temples were okay, although I have thought of some ideas for additional detailing to make them a little more visually compelling.  The book's instructions were great, really clear.

On the painting side, I now have a few Baccus 6mm Napoleonic British Congreve rockets:

A few more Grumbler Miniatures 6mm Napoleonic Prussian Fusiliers and Musketeers...

...and some bases of Baccus 6mm Thirty Years' War Commanded Shot for use in Twilight of Divine Right games

I am really hoping to get this back onto the table soon, but I am slightly fretting about the 'look'.  I am just not going to buy separately more 6mm forces to do TYW as well as WotTK, so the forces have to be used for both.  So two choices: a - I proxy, and the Swedes/French/Danes/Protestant Union will become Parliament and Bavaria/Austria/Catholics become the King's forces (with Saxony being the Covenanters?!?) or somesuch; or b - I detach the flagbearers and some of the command staff to be used as detail pieces and markers, but make the individual bases 'neutral'.  What do you think?

Anyway, a group shot to finish off with.  On the painting table now are some 6mm WW2 British paratroopers, and I am basing up some 15mm Afrika Korps infantry.  After that it is all looking fairly clear at the moment...I will be delving into the bits-and-pieces box.   Might be a good time to buy those city walls I have been talking myself into buying...

Hobby Update 27 Mar 21

It has been a very quiet period for me in the hobby recently.  I won't lie, it has been a difficult time.  Since I am mainly a solo gamer, this hasn't been directly because of COVID and lockdown, but some of the secondary impacts have been big: less time and space around the house.  Added to that my partner returning to work, more pressure on my house as my children have gotten older, plus my own busy job, then it has been a struggle.  So, like many a gamer before me, my hobby has become more "thinking about gaming" rather than "gaming".  However, hope springs eternal and I am looking forward to that changing soon.

Unlike the first lockdown period, which was very productive for me hobby-wise, this latter period has been very slow for me.  What I have managed to achieve is:

Painting a SAGA Shieldmaiden Warband:

 

Picked these up a few months back on a real whim.  There are some really nice figures in there, which my painting definitely does not justice to, but here they are at the c.90% completed stage.

28mm Terrain Items:

Long-term readers of this blog may remember my aspirations to get my 28mm figures out more for a few more skirmish games, whether that be in Fantasy, Medievals, Napoleonics or Sci-Fi.  The main obstacle to this has been my lack of suitable terrain items beyond a few hills, trees and watercourses.  With that in mind, using some of the packaging from the bairns' Christmas presents and a very old copy of the Games Workshop Wargames Terrain book, I set about hacking together some very rough but serviceable terrain items.  I have concentrated on the SF stuff first, as you can see above.  The empty plastic bottle is used since I have vague aspirations of filling it for some games with some actual industrial-looking ooze! We shall see if that comes off...

6mm Prussians:

I noticed that there is a new 6mm figures manufactures, Grumbler Miniatures, who do Napoleonics.  I picked up some of their Prussians, and very nice they are too.  They are on the painting tray at the moment, so pictures as soon as they are finished. 

Test Games:

I have played the odd test game of this and that (this one is a WRG variant using a scenario from Just Jack's blog).  One of the takeaways from this is I must sort out some more ruined 6mm buildings, and some terrain for making better all round 'urban' environments (gardens, streets, graveyards, that kind of thing).  It wasn't really suitable for writing up into a blog post though, even by my standards!

Apart from that, tabletop gaming has been very spares, limited to a couple of Fighting Wings' air warfare games and some role-playing games - write-ups soon, insha'allah!

Going forward, I am hoping to get some more Gallic War campaign games completed in the next few days, perhaps even completing that campaign.  Then the plan would be to get some 28mm skirmishes done, and some WW2 games.  But, as ever, we shall see...