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The Eye of Sauron is Watching You

Funniest night I have had running an RPG tonight.

The party of four having braved the Midgewater marshes, managed to successfully locate the lost barrow. After that it all went rapidly down hill. ”Twas a simple task!” Climb down a rope have a mooch about, see what all the fuss is about. Climb back out….Problems…. in the ‘One Ring’ RPG an eye of Sauron on the D12 is a bad omen. Firstly it gives one zero points for that dice and secondly it increases the knowledge of the whereabouts of the party to Sauron who will direct his power to thwart them. This can be a warband of orcs or the ‘world’ turns against them. Think Cahadras in the Lord of the Rings. The Threshold in the area they were in was eighteen…They started the session with six. Less than an hour later they were up to fourteen.

The big problem was, firstly they had to climb down a rope into the barrow. The graceful elf of Mirkwood went first. She threw her four dice (3D6 and her D12) she needed a mere 12 due to her athleticism… the eye of Sauron and a grand total of four points. Down she fell… winding herself in the process. the hobbit Hoban rushed to her aid, got another eye and fell in too… luckily he landed on something soft … the elf. The ranger managed to get in without any problems at all.

Hoban then fell through a weakened floor to a flooded lower level, nearly drowned but was fortunate enough to be rescued by the party and also managed to accidentally grab some treasure on the way out.

If you thought getting in was bad, getting out was worse. Never have I seen so many failed roles, every failure involved an eye.

A cursed rope was blamed…it was a nice normal rope to begin with but it must have somehow become tainted as they couldn’t get out of the barrow. After eventually escaping they met some baddies, beat them, rescued a major NPC and threw a lot more eyes…. the weather turned against them and the normal rule of needing was overruled meaning an 18 was required. So wet, bleeding and footsore they struggled back to Bree.

All in all a hoot of a night.

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Painting Things…

I actually managed to paint things this evening…

I got half the cloaks done on the elves as well as pouches and their base colours on the faces.

I then managed to get some paint on the mausoleum… still a bit to go on it but definitely getting there.

The mech also got some work done on it, he wanted it grey with a blue canopy… the red missiles come next.

And finally… not painted, but a bit smaller than before.

I reckon he still looks quite impressive even at 75% size.

He here is feeling like he is part of a hive…

I reckon a dozen or so more will be in order for our up and coming RPG. I just have to find some hopper bugs and a Tanker……

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In My Grey Phase

I decided to eventually get some paint onto the mausoleum and the Mech.

My son wanted his mech to be grey so who am I to argue. From what I remember he wants the cockpit glass to be blue and the rockets red.

My intention for the mausoleum is to give it a black wash once this grey is dry and then get it dry brushed up to a lighter grey. I keep thinking some kind of metallic colour for the doors but I haven’t quite decided that far ahead.

I really do like it and reckon it will come up a treat once it is finished.

I managed sod all else tonight apart from reducing the bug down to 75% size to see how it looks. It is merrily printing away as I type this. I was going to watch one of the films tonight to get a scale of the things but I couldn’t be arsed to do that.

And it looks this big….

Stick it on it’s very long legs and I think it will look fine… I will print the arms and legs tomorrow and see what I think.

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BUUUUGG!!!

Technically it should be BUUUGGGS…

but I only made one!

This thing is bloody massive. I reckon I need to drop it down to about 25% smaller at least and see how it looks. If you were wondering…the white stuff is baking powder. It causes a reaction with the superglue and sets instantly.

I had some de-lamination problems with the legs especially at the ball joints. Therefore I quasi posed it and then glued everything rigid. I printed the arms on a raft and had no problems with them so that might be the way forward if I do decide to do another one.

The one thing I forgot to mention and that is that this is a poseable bug (well it would be f I hadn’t superglued everything in place). It was designed by JOOXOE31 and again downloaded from Thingiverse.

I didn’t get any painting done this evening because of building this beastie, and various family related shenanigans… (including a stint of Ghost recon with my son. Who hasn’t quite grasped the tactical disadvantage of standing on a roof in full view of his father armed with a sniper rifle.) I also had a go at my hunting game and met the worlds first bullet proof Elk! Tracked him for 4 kilometres before I managed to bag him in the end.

Off playing Vikings in a school tomorrow so not too stressful a day 😁.

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A Bit of Painting

I threw open my painting box and cracked on with my printed miniatures.

Still a bit to do on some of them but the front two are almost finished. The very pale yellow is going to be a darker yellow. I just wanted to make sure that it would cover ok. I also have a mage in a rather nice purple robe as well as a couple of thieves ready to go. When these ones are done I will get on with the rest of the miniatures for the game.

Sadly as I was working on these my Elves got ignored for another night.

I still can’t get my head around the fact that these all started off as a long string of plastic… a bit of computer magic and voila… miniatures.

I am going to give an arachnid from Starship Troopers a go sometime soon, but for today the printer has stood silent… an unusual thing.

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3D Printer… Request from a Small Boy

My youngest wanted something printing and this is what he chose…

The printer decided not to bed some things down properly hence the gaps and Greenstuff. It is still a very nice mech. Each part is printed in two halves and then stuck together. This is a ‘House Vermeni Highborn Command Pod’ that came off Thingiverse.

Weirdly enough this was designed by Dutchmogul in 2013. My son picked this one out of all of the options available on Thingiverse. We intend to paint it tomorrow.

In total it took about eight and a half hours to print (including the 70mm base).

I was just looking at it again and it might make a nice proxy of M4A1 Grizzly (heavy suits for the mobile infantry in Starship troopers)…

I really must watch the series and CGI films again. Not to mention actually play my game I bought as well as the RPG!

Today has been a serious lack of motivation day modelling wise. By time I played with the kids, read them story fed the cat (yes evidently I am the only one that can possibly feed him) and the mooched about a bit building the mech it was 10pm and I really couldn’t be bothered to start on any form of painting.

I might try something tomorrow 🤞

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3D Printing…. A bit of painting.

I decided to start getting some paint onto my miniatures that I have printed.

These are all from Ill Gotten Games. Still a very, very long way to go. I probably would have got further, but I also painted 54 pairs of 10mm elven boots too.

I forgot to show the casualty figures…

These need a bit of work on the top layers. I will have a play around with the slicer settings and see what I can do. The STL files looked fine so it is the slicer that needs the change.

The final bit for this evening are the painted counters…

My initial idea was to paint the numbers a different colour. But as they are very clear anyway I might just save myself a job.

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3D Printer Mausoleum Finished

Well that’s the roof printed and it looks rather fab…

The one thing that isn’t obvious from this picture is that either the front or back is off the table by about a mm. It can just be seen as a black shadow below the doorway. One corner had raised a bit on the first couple of layers and got stuck back down with some pritt stick. Looks like as the build went on it separated from the base plate again. In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t really matter as it is barely noticeable but in the printer scheme it might mean a sneaky error has crept in. It could be anything from a loose belt to a too hot or cool nozzle. Looks like some more research is on the cards…

The whole thing was designed by Ecaroth and found on Thingiverse. Total print time around 15 hours. 10 plus for the base and 4 hours 11 minutes for the top. The thing is that you set it going, make sure it is going to bed down okay to the build plate then leave it to do its thing. Come back later and voila it is either finished or a nest of spaghetti.

I am hoping to get this and the other one painted up this weekend. I have a long weekend so four days of work… huzzah!

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3D Printer another Mausoleum

Yep I decided to print another Mausoleum, this time from a designer called Ecaroth. This took a whopping 10 hours 45 minutes, with an expected 3 hours 45 minutes for the roof. This is the ruined version, there is also an intact version of the same tomb.

I also downloaded some civilian ‘casualties’ from Ill gotten Games.

These are two of the upright civilians, the rest are having a bit of a lie down. They are still on the print bed. Now these all come without bases, so I decided to have another go at producing a base to attach the mini to. This is another great set. They only came out yesterday I think.

These are both on 30mm bases that I made in 3D builder and then merged the. miniature with the base. I made them 3mm thick, but may shave it down a bit.

Interestingly enough there were no whispers on these, all though I did do them individually. The wounded or dead ones were all printed together. I didn’t notice too much stringing before I left them.

I will find out tomorrow. As I was feeling a bit knackered I decided that a very early night was required. This means no elf painting….

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3D Printer… Adding Flames to Miniatures

Yep the wispy filament was an absolute sod to get rid of so drastic measures needed to be taken!

I pulled of as much as I could then set to work with a naked flame… I couldn’t be bothered to go and get the paint stripper heat gun. This is actually more controlled on a smaller front I would imagine. The down side was I had to get quite close.

I think the difference is plain to see…

Before…

And after…

Still a bit of clean up to do but a whole lot better than spider web central. They look a bit wet as I dunked them in cold water to stop the wobbly weapon syndrome.

On the plate tonight is the count …5th attempt… this time however I am adding in supports… fingers crossed he works this time. I also decided to make him a base… I was quite pleased with my circular base until I started printing it… it may be many things but circular isn’t one of them😱.

Last night I did a bit of research about the spider webbing on the prints. To avoid the print head bumping the models and knocking them off I decided to use the z hop option. This drops the plate a fraction as the print head moves from bit to bit. Seemingly this can cause more webbing than if you don’t use it. There still might be too high a temperature or over extrusion that is causing it. So instead of printing the same minis again I will print an extrusion test piece and play around with that.

Here is the count, he finished just after writing the above…

There was rather a lot of support… I may have gone overboard a bit 🤪🤪🤪

Here are a few of the recent ones undercoated…

I am rather pleased with them. I got half way through painting the mage before I realised he needed cleaning up…. whoops! The baron has a few build lines, I must have forgotten to change the layer height when I sliced him.

So … what next, well I have just started a 9 hour plus print of a ruined mausoleum… we will see how it comes out. I decided to print it at 0.2mm layers as opposed to 0.1. This speeded up the print by over an hour. The base weighs in at a whopping 85 grams… a whole £1.56 worth of PLA. That is if the printer doesn’t do something daft part way through.

I re levelled the bed again before starting on this one and the front and rear of the left hand side were a touch on the high side. Hopefully things will run smoothly overnight.

As the temperature has risen again I think I will take the printer back into the shed… it’s a bugger having to unplug the fridge every time I want a cup of tea 🙄.

I fully intended getting some more done on the elves tonight, but truth be told… I couldn’t be bothered.