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Forgotten Forces Friday

Another Week, another box…almost a song from Evita….

Well as my ‘What a Tanker’ rules arrived I thought I would seek out some tanks, I decided not to bother with the 6mm stuff and hunted for the 15’s

An ambush about to be sprung… I reckon the fleeing women should give a clue 😉. One day I may finish the houses…..

These were done for skirmish gaming hence the individual basing on the infantry.

Then onto the unpainted!

I am still in a dither about what size to go. Never mind the period.

Roughly a 15mm Tank costs £6 plus, 10mm tanks cost roughly half that. I could start with these and see how I get on, it would give me 3 tanks a side, but no options for changing tanks as the campaign progresses. The cheapest and quickest option is to go down this route…

I could have as many as a I want then, but it doesn’t feel or look the same.

Big thinks are now being Thunk…

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A Gritted Graveyard and a BBA

Couldn’t get the groundwork painted as I added some grit to the hill…

It was a very quick job to get the grit down but a very long time to let it dry. It should be okay to get a base coat on tomorrow.

As this was drying I had a mooch around the house and came across the BBA aka big bloody Alien…

The marine is there for scale… I reckon he is shouting ‘sit!’ Now I know a fair bit about the Aliens franchise of films at the very least. The only time I have seen this one appear is in the computer game (oh and the board game). Retail cost for him is normally £30. I got him for a tenner with free postage. Too good an opportunity to miss I thought.

Tomorrow is the first of Shetland’s Fire Festivals, the galley is burned on the water in Scalloway. It looks like the weather will be good. I will endeavour to get some kind of photos of the event.

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Graveyard… With Added Graves

Well a graveyard without graves is basically a yard, and a graveyard hill is a simple hill.

These are stuck down with ‘No more nails’. Normally I would just put these down with PVA, but they are in a prime spot to get knocked clean off. There are a couple more gravestones to add in the two indentations in the foreground.

I can’t get anything more done until this glue dries. Once it is done I will get the stones and grit on then get the ground base colour painted.

The big hole is deliberate, this will be shrunk a bit and some grit added at the base of the opening. The hole and slope will be filled with bones and a skull as if a rabbit or something has burrowed into where the coffin was.

I didn’t get the chance to do much else due to a small boy contracting Scarlet fever, not to mention the normal day to day Shenanigans of daily family life.

The other exciting news is that U-Boot is starting to be shipped out this month…. very excited!!! French and English are finished, other languages are in production too.

I only hope my table is big enough 😱😱😱

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Graveyard A Teeny Bit of Progress

As it says… a teeny bit of progress.

I managed to get a lighter grey onto the cliff faces…. bizarrely after putting on the light grey layer I noticed some white spots where the dark grey hadn’t covered. One would imagine that the dark grey layer would have made it more noticeable.

I didn’t get much chance to get much more done as I was messing about, trying to get the printer to print something, I managed a wheel and a half. The PLA just wouldn’t adhere to the base.

The other reason is this… I spent ages reading it from cover to cover and then working out how things worked. I got the little tokens that go with the game, six each so enough for more than one tank aside.

Mark A. Morin I am laying the blame squarely at your door 😉 I wasn’t interested in tank battles until your blog got me interested.

The question I am working on is what year and what theatre, followed by what Scale. I can run 15mm Normandy onwards as I still have some Flames of War armour knocking about. From what I remember I have three M4’S a couple of Stug’s and a Mk1V.

I do quite fancy the desert war, but that will incur extra costs. I could become really awesome at 3D printing as I have found a whole host of 1/100 scale tanks not to mention 1/56 scale too. A cheaper, quicker option is to go 10mm, I have terrain and it will fit my small house better. I might see about getting a couple of smaller tanks to see how they look.

I do have a whole host of 1944 Germans and Americans but in 6mm, but I do think they are a bit on the small side. I will give the 10mm a go and take it from there. I am kicking myself that I never bought all of those really cheap Flames of War tanks I saw on Ebay when the rules became less popular.

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Graveyard… Making Progress

The big blob of foam was trimmed down to something roughly hill shaped. This was stuck down onto the EPVC. I prefer basing on this as it won’t warp when the PVA is used.

I got a base coat of filler onto it, unfortunately it ran a bit thin as the tube was ancient and it wouldn’t mix properly. This was a bit of a bugger, so once it dried I used a thick coat of PVA to help toughen things up a bit.

When the PVA dried I got the cliff faces painted with standard Dulux dark grey with a bit of PVA mixed in.

This will be dry brushed to lighten it up then shaded with various washes.

I then tried out various gravestones in various locations. The idea for this piece is that I wanted an old overgrown graveyard. The hill is there as a line of sight blocker and raised ground (as befits a hill).

I messed around with the broken and leaning gravestones as well as a grave slab.

Off the two above I prefer the bottom one as I like the symmetry. No doubt I will forget where they go (hence the photo above). I intend to use sculptamould or more filler to bed the gravestones in. I intend the grass to be overgrown with bushes and weeds all around. The central dip on the top is to be some form of gravel path.

There will be other graveyard themed scatter pieces to go with this. I have just bought some 3D files that will be useful for the build.

I thought I would give a quick insight into my planning method…

I am totally rubbish at planning. I can’t get it down onto paper, it is all in my head but I am pleased to say that what I have on the table is kind of what I was thinking about.

The weather here is a tad blowy. Pushing 60 mph plus in the gusts. Thankfully the lights have stayed on

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Graveyard…Making a Start

Well I have indeed made a start….

To be honest, it is a bit further on than this, but this is where it started….

I also made another cart:

As I can only print various bits, then I had to improvise with the top.

3 D printed wheels and chassis and a coffee stirrer top. The one in the background is the initial cart.

3D printing is cancelled until I can get some Isopropyl Alcohol to clean the bed with. Nothing is sticking any more!

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Playing With Myself in the Kitchen

Well No-one else wanted to join in, my wife found her knitting more exciting and the kids were building things on Minecraft. So I had to go solo!

I hauled out my ancient copy of B17 Queen if the Skies. It probably hasn’t seen the light of day for twenty years. I had managed to get to the 13th mission, so I carried on. Mission 14 was a nice little trip to Amiens. The dice were with me so I managed to get there and back with a full crew and a hole in my Starboard wing where a flak shell went through it.

Fighter cover wasn’t too bad, a total of nine enemy aircraft attacked me, but thankfully they all missed, they weren’t so luck as my port cheek took out an FW190 and the Ball turret despatched a ME110.

Bomb run managed a 30 % accuracy so not brilliant, but 11 more missions and I can officially return home 😉

Fighter cover was Extreme on the way back…

We shall have to see where we get to tomorrow.

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Forgotten Forces Friday

It’s that day again, which quite frankly is a bugger because it means I am back to work on Monday….but to be honest I mustn’t grumble as at least I had time off over the holiday period and nothing happened when I was on call either…

Anyway today we travel to the hot dusty lands of Libya and members of the DAK…

These ancient chappies must be twenty years old at least. They were from my days of playing Rapid Fire and from what I remember there is a company strength’s worth in the box. As can be seen I never got round to finishing them off. The paint job is pretty naff too. Desert Yellow with a chestnut wash. Somewhere I have a 75mm infantry gun and 50mm AT gun too.

From what I remember these are Britannia miniatures purchased at the York Show in the Merchant Venturers guild. I also purchased an American Air-landing Brigade of two para and one glider force. These were sold to a mate up here, who has since moved away (I kind of reckon I left the DAK artillery in the box with them).

These are another of the ‘what the heck do I do with them’ boxes. No one up here does 20mm Desert action. Some do Bolt Action but in 28mm in the European theatre, others do the desert but in 15mm.

Part of me wants to strip them and paint them up again, but with the backlog of stuff to do and nothing to fight against, apart from the three LRDG chappies then it would mean extra expense to rekindle the campaign.

I wonder what next Friday will throw up….. so many boxes, so few Friday’s

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3D Printer Test 4

I had another mess around with the printer today. I decided to tighten the belt on the x axis. It has made a difference to the shape of the models.

The one on the left is more oval. I think that the one on the right is still out slightly but it has definitely caused a change.

I also tried increasing the temperature and got better results on the top layer of the sundials too.

This time the better one is on the right, still not perfect but better than before.

One in the graveyard would be a useful addition (well the gravediggers would need to know when to get the hole dug by).

They painted up ok ish … The build lines are really visible, but not from a distance.

I was going to make a start on my raised bit of the graveyard however it is cold and wet out there and I am wimping out going to the shed to get the necessary bits and pieces.

I had another try at printing the ladder. Successful prints: 1 and total failures: 6. Not sure what the cause is apart from the bed must have lost level as the filament was extruding ok but wasn’t adhering to the bed properly.

I really need a bed levelling print, but need to splice one on Cura to make it work. At least that way I can get it all tickety boo.

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3D Printing Painted

I decided that the cart would be a useful addition to my graveyard so I painted it up tonight along with the log pile… which isn’t much use for the graveyard unless I do a grave diggers hut!

There are still issues with the printing, but to be honest they really can’t be seen, well they can if you know where to look 😉.

As I said in an earlier post the laptop died so I can’t make any changes to the prints and can only print what I had in the card, which is very little to be honest. I could print wheels and the handles, but nothing else on the cart.

The other options to print are a short ladder, also useful for a graveyard, sundials, an altar and a water trough.