Thinking About the Collection

I had the draft of this post in the making for a while, pondering meaninglessly over what and how to do.

Then I reviewed its contents, and being a firm follower of the simple but effective principle, I chose to uphold myself to the things I wrote! So during the previous weekend I held one of my recurring purges, where I binned a great bunch of my unused figures, terrain and other miscellaneous things. 

Now the reason for that is I lack hobby space, and simple emotional value and "this will be good for something" mentality creates clutter. To be organized and disciplined helps keeping the right projects in focus and still allows oneself to be comfortably occupied during precious hobby time.

All of this came from the realization that I have to organize my activities better, because I have a day job, other things I like to do on a daily basis, and time is finite. As most of us are in a similar situation, I thought it would be useful advice.

So here are four things I deemed worthy of sharing that help with hobby projects in general:

1) Planning and creating logs/diaries

I currently have four major documents:

- a project diary where I organize by priority and keep relevant information in a more decentralized manner

- a monthly log where I set my goals for the month and keep track of painting and purchases

- a master spreadsheet with data on the collection, divided by scale and period

- a wishlist for things to buy

Of course this still means that I sometimes lose focus, but leisurely activities cannot be self-regulated that much. This is just a framework so that I don't become too boggled down in details.

2) Organizing storage

The next thing after binning more than five large cardboard boxes' worth of stuff was buying new plastic storage containers. The Danish furniture company Jysk carries transparent plastic boxes that are perfect for my needs and cost a fraction of RUB. I bought a bunch of 8l and 3l ones. I can stack them inside my cabinet and by being able to see what's inside, I can get the things I require out more quickly than having to browse through unlabelled or wrongly labelled cardboard boxes. This helps with knowing what to do next, and where to find it.

3) One period - one scale

I was very much guilty in this for a long while and it actually kept me away from finishing projects near the finish line. It basically boils down to a dialog like this:

- There is a new line of figures for the period I'm collecting, but in an entirely different scale? 

- Let's buy it and have four unpainted and unused armies instead of two complete ones! 

So I reduced the number of my projects and now I try to stick to heterogeneous scales throughout the collection.

For skirmish games I use 28mm figures, because there are a lot of indepentent manufacturers with good complete lines.

For large battles I buy 6mm figures because of the ease of paint and storage, good economical value and splendid overall effect when painted.

I've had a bunch of roughly 1/450 scale ships, which I also binned and turned to 1/350 instead, to go with my block galleys. I have a 1/1000 pre-dreadnought and 1/2000 WW1+WW2 naval project.

I still have two 1/72 projects, in fact I just sort of started one: WSS/GNW period (that's the new one) and late 13th/early 14th century medieval. I threw out most of my Ancient and SYW figures, and am pondering giving away my WW1 figures and vehicles.

For anything else or ad hoc, I just colour print paper figures and use them as stand-ins. These can be thrown out or reused for basically no cost at all.

4) Feng Shui-ing unnecessary objects

With this we return to the beginning of the post. Sometimes it's necessary to throw away things you just store and don't touch in years. We all have an instinct to collect Shiny Objects, be they pebbles for basing, cardboard boxes for scratchbuilding, or someting else entirely. But you don't need most of those, especially if you lack space. Focus on projects that are important to you.

My crew is big and it keeps getting bigger

The Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago plastic crewmen set is kind of useful. The figures work well with swasbuckling adventure type games, and you get a lot of spare parts per sprue in the set you can use to kitbash other things. 

While they are kind of monopose and a bit on the smaller side of 28mm, and also require more prep work than, say, a Perry plastic figure, they are on the other hand easy to paint.

The Power of the Heimudbär

These four are Heimudbär-class sea-going monitors, in 1/1000 scale, and are mostly entirely fictional. I finished them a little after the Charles Martel / ZS Lakardo.

They are sort of inspired by Norwegian/Swedish traditional monitor warships of the ironclad age, continuing to serve in various capacities well into WW1. As you can see some of them are modernized, others are not.

The small fleet will be part of the Nordsburian Navy in my imagi-nations setting, an up and coming power in the far off colonies, away from any main conflict. Their primary adversary will be the Zinqaguri Navy. At the time when Nordsbur commences a campaign of agression on Zinqaguri merchant shipping, all they have are these, a few coastal defence ships and armored cruisers. The Zinqaguri have two very capable battleships, but as Cape Zinqagrech divides the waterways between two major oceans, they have to split their forces.

The models are just pieces of 2mm balsa sanded to shape, and coated in a dark grey. Various bits of plastic offcuts were used to create the minimalistic superstructures. Most of them have short-barreled big guns, but the pair in the middle has some more modern smaller bore pieces. Were they blessed with decent speed they could be used for commerce raiding - provided there is a flat calm sea.

Painting Tally June 2025

This was a very productive month. I finally managed to gather my hobby strength and work through a bunch of projects!

As probably mentioned before, I try to focus my hobby time and set forward no more than five wargaming-related projects each month to complete. My goals for June were:

- paint 6mm figures

- continue the Trashy Fleets ships

- prepare for my 'Siege of Fortress Diken' campaign

- play at least one game

- start the 'Last Knight' space battle campaign

Of this only the Fortress Diken one hadn't got fulfilled (I counted the last two for the same game, the one of which the AAR I posted here a few weeks back).

On to the numbers:

28mm

Completed:

15x Warlord plastic TYW/ECW pikemen

8x Warlord plastic TYW/ECW shotte

10x Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago crewmen

16x Warlord plastic Landsknecht pikemen (they are varnished and glued on a unit base, so I cheated here a little bit)

Painted (not varnished or based):

1x Wargamer Octavia Piccolomini (more on that later)

Primed:

12x GBP plastic Arab light horse posing as Cossack/generic Eastern European cavalry

1x Wargamer Eloise the Musketeer

6mm

Completed:

96x Ancients infantry

42x Ancients cavalry

192x SYW infantry

72x SYW cavalry

40x SYW artillery (counting both crew and guns)

7x SYW command

Primed:

48x Ancients infantry

224x SYW infantry

56x SYW cavalry

(I came to really like the method where I just sit down with 6mm figures and prime as many in one go as I can)

Other

Completed:

1/2000 HMS Hood

1/1000 RHN Lemnos

Assembled:

A Lego Invisible Hand starship I got as a birthday gift

All this brings my Painting Unit value to 2285 for the month, which is about double of the best output of the year so far.

I don't think I'll go further than this as actually my unpainted stock is greatly reduced. Perhaps one day the unimaginable will happen and I'll have all of my figures painted?

Purchases

I made an order with Wargamer.pl for two female figures of their own design, along with a box of the aforementioned GBP Arab horsemen, mostly because they have a flat postage rate and it was thus more economical to purchase more things. Wargamer has a nice line of female figures in appropriate clothes for the 17th century period. The conversion of the GBP horsemen to Cossacks is not my idea, I "liberated" it from a Hungarian fellow wargamer. As far as I can tell only TAG and Foundry make Cossack cavalry (if you don't count the Warlord Games metal Croats which pass from a distance) and twelve plastic horsemen in a box is more bang for your buck.

Holy League Block Galley Flotilla

I managed to paint three more 1/350 scale galleys during the previous months. Being scratch-built they take a rather long time to assemble, but I think they were worth the wait. From left to right, they are: a standard Venetian galley with a single mast (sail furled), a Spanish lanterna (or the big 'un), a Maltese standard size galley.

I experimented more with colour printed decorative elements to save a bit of time on painting. Their masts, prow, forecastle and stern can all be removed from the models to show damage, so those pieces are painted in subassemblies. Making the masts removable helps with storage, too.

Steaming towards the Denmark Strait

My 1/2000 scale HMS Hood is now complete and joins the Prince of Wales to hunt for the Bismarck.

Since posting the WIP picture I added the AA suite on the main deck as it was quite featureless.

The paint job is based on the information available on the HMS Hood Association website and is mostly matching her last description before the battle. Maybe I should have added the reddish brown linoleum to the grey parts of the top deck, I'm not sure.

All I have to do is actually build the Bismarck so they could find her...

Trashy Fleets - When Life Gives You Lemnos...

I started working on the USS Mississippi-class pre-dreadnought battleship that later became the RHN Lemnos a while before the Hood and I managed to complete both at about the same time.

My main concern with US-made warships was, of course, modelling the lattice masts. This is not a problem at smaller scales as I just make a tapered conical rod and paint on the detail. However, in 1/1000 scale this was not feasible.

Delving into the internet somebody on some forum mentioned plastic nets in which they stored fruit in supermarkets as lattice mast material, so I first got some oranges and tried to use the net they were stored in, but it proved too big. Next I bought some garlic in a similar package albeit with smaller gaps in the netting, and it worked just fine!

So I know technically the Lemnos had her main mast switched to a traditional battle mast later, but for experimental purposes (and to make the pun in the title) I had mine retain both.

Battle Brother Captain Solidus Mercesius and Venerable Dreadnought Ladislaus Crassus

I finished two more of my salvaged Space Marines, bought used from the Troll Trader. They spent a few months in the stripping tub and turned out quite okay after the painting process.

They join my Turul Rangers custom chapter. I know technically the terminator guy is a lieutenant, not a captain, but he's humble enough.

The Last Knight Ep. 1. - Red Fox in the Sheep's Pen

This month I promised myself to play at least one game. Naval and sci-fi games are preferred because they require less prep work and fewer models!

On my Battle Campaigns blog I wrote a small summary for a sci-fi space battle campaign featuring the forces of rebellious Mars against the oppressive Earth Government. Thus the time has come to launch that campaign.

In this first scenario, the squadron conisisting of MSS Phoibos (Cmdr. Ian C. Nisom commanding), MSS Sub Rosa and MSS Walkyr, without fighter support, arrive at a junction point in dead space where they expect much EarthGov civilian traffic. Their goal is to hurt EarthGov shipping as much as they can, without risking their own skins.

The theme of the entire campaign is asymmetrical warfare: the Martian Sphere squadron does not get replenishments and any damage made against them is permanent. EarthGov forces are dispersed but get a lot more reinforcements during the campaign.

I use pre-made Lego ships which I built from scrap parts of multiple sets, including Star Wars ones.

I set up a simple entry/exit point system: the MS squadron enters the table first, and then each turn a new ship arrives until I exhausted my current stock. I just set my existing models in a row and picked them up in a sequence for their order of entry. There are no EarthGov capital ships in this scenario. 

The entry points are numbered one to six, starting from the bottom right corner and moving clockwise. I roll a d6 for each ship's entry point. A civilian vessel may exit the table safely by moving to the opposite entry point (so 3 to 6, 1 to 4, 2 to 5 etc.). An EarthGov Navy ship may exit via the opposite point or its point of entry. MS ships entered the table at point 6 so that's their extrication point as well.

Let's see how the scenario goes!