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Cost Versus Aesthetics Update 3

Today I was up with the larks to open up the school for a let and to sort out some more loft space … only to remember at 12.30 that they are in Unst today and with me tomorrow… it wasn’t too much if a buggeration as I needed to sort the loft anyway… it did give me 5800 steps . When I got back I set to work slicing  pikes, now as I am a pillock I decided to increase the size from 60% to 65% for the pikes to compensate for the difference in base height.

Here is my Pike test… I put them four deep, but could drop it down to three…see what you think….

They are a bit on the large side, but is it too much, please let me know what you think as I am actually unsure. Having had closer look at the block I have realised that it is the ommnad strips that are on the larger side, the rank and file troops are actually smaller.

This is the hand guns and cannons with the pikes and gendarmes.

I think this is going to work…

I have got some zweihanders printing now, along with some Spanish sword and buckler men as well as some mastiffs.

I also increased the size of the cannon to make it into a heavy gun. I am not sure what to do for a light gun as they were sort of giant handguns on a stand. Come to think of it the Holy Roman Empire kickstarter I backed has some in… time to do some shrinking I think.

So the shrinking has happened, both the culvern and swivel guns… however I am going to have to wait to print them as unfortunately I have had my first failure in a long time…

The sword and buckler men and dogs printed fine… I have one zweihander out of sixteen and none of the officers. I have relevelled the build plate just in case. To be honest the temperature has dropped a bit, but the hand guns had a failure in the same place twice, which makes me think level has altered over time.

So in an hour I will find out if they have printed correctly the second time around.

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Cost versus Aesthetics update 2

Mini update. I managed to print off the hand guns and cannon and they came out fine.. one gunner lost his legs, but there are five remaining, not go mention he was the least useful.

I also manged a bit of painting …

I think most of the cloth is done apart from the hats. I will get them and the metalwork done tomorrow evening.

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Cost versus Aesthetics… an update

I may have found a  compromise to my cost conundrum.

After Azael commented about 3D printing pikes I went on a bit of a hunt. I couldn’t find any historical pikes. I got a bit miffed to be honest as I can get pretty much any period. I put calls out on various groups and still nothing, then I noticed a warmaster advert and the penny dropped… so after a bit more searching and further requests…I drew a blank… no pikes to be had, but then all of a sudden the clouds parted, light streamed down and angels sang… on Thungiverse, the free place I came across a Warmaster dogs of War Pike block. I downloaded them and had a mooch.

Printed full size

Apologies for the naff photo, but these are in heavy armour on the torso and a mix of helmets and hats… success…

So I then set about trying different sizes to fit in with irregular. I started off with making them 9mm tall I included the pikes and eyeballed the figure… too small

I then chopped the Pike off to speed up print time and did one  ar 60% one at 50% and one at 40%. The larger size won. They still looked too small as the Irregular base stood at 2mm. So off I went again and made myself a 2mm base in 3D builder and stuck a couple of three’s on there.

My attempts are seen below…

As you can see the larger ones to the right of the painted minis look too small… so here they are with their bumped up base…

Another naff photo,  but they do seem to work. I will redo them with their pikes and paint them up have a look properly. Here they are from the front…

So the plan is… Irregular in the front rank and printed ones behind. This should drop the cost a fair old bit as the 32 bases of pikes were the ones bumping the costs up. So with these removed I have dropped the price to £50.00. If I remove the hand gunners and cannons and print some then the cost drops to £36.00.

The advantage with this pose is that no supports are required. They print at an hour 20 due the the height of the Pike, the cut down test was just over 30 minutes.

I am now off to print some hand guns and xannons to see what they are like.

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A Bit of Painting and a Cost Update

I got some of the 6mm printed samurai painted this evening… a simple down and dirty paint scheme…

They fiti in with the Baccus really well.

I also undercoated some of the Renaissance Pike, it didn’t seem worth it warming up the spray can for ten 6mm samurai….

I got a bit of paint on these too… I wonder whose idea was it to print Landskecht!

Regarding the Renaissance ideas. I worked out a 500 point imperial army, 250 is seen a a starter army. This was a mix of cavalry and 2 landskecht and 2 Tercio Pike blocks…with associated skirmishers, mounted and on foot, some guns and some generals… if I bought them tomorrow it would work out as £78.00. This is with two Pike on each base rather than four.

I don’t know why but it is seriously messing with my head…that is a lot of 6mm miniatures to paint… i do however reckon, even with my painting abilities, that it would look pretty impressive. I always like to get both sides in a conflict, as too many times others have dropped out of plans and all of a sudden there is an army with no one to fight. So in reality cost would be double the above.

I am going to have a think about how to go about things… thanks for the support and the ideas that came in.

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Cost versus Aesthetics

I have come across a bit if a conundrum regarding Pike blocks, now a strip of pikes costs 44 pence on its own on a 20 x 40mm base it looks naff. So I would need two on there… like this:

So here we have 88p worth… problem I am having is the gap surrounding the pikes on the base… so I could double the amount …

This looks a bit better (we’ll apart from the slight overhang on the right). Problem is double the figures is double the cost. So instead of 88p it would become £1.76 per base. This is one base out of either a unit of 8, 12 or 16 as you can see it would soon add up. A 16 strong Swiss Pike block would come in at just over £28, as it happens at two to a base would still come in at £14… quite pricey for 6mm. I thought I had better make it clear that I am not criticising the pricing policy of the miniature manufacturer here, far from it…

I think my problem is I would normally just buy an irregular army, so in this case an imperial army and a French army at about £18 each. I think the problem is the new rules, well those aren’t even the problem. It is me getting used to a new system where I need to work out points and follow a basing system, rather than my usual 20×40 and 20×30 ironically these rules use both of these sizes. It is more a unit of Pike is 8 bases strong. Heavy cavalry are 4 bases strong etc, which is rather alien to me now I come to think of it.

It will probably do me good to stretch my wings a bit and do something different.

Apologies for the rambling… probably just tired… tomorrow is another day…. having just noticed the time,I am now into the tomorrow I just mentioned .

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Glueing, Undercoating and Army lists…

Today has been hectic to say the least, I didn’t sleep well last night and wanted a lie in, only to find second kitten had been caught so we went over and picked it up… here are the little cuties…

No names yet, number two is on the right.

We then sorted out the shed some more. The knackered, bounced upon sofa, is going in there for some seating. I managed to sort out the prolapsed base as well as add in some more padding to the front, the new one was built in the lounge too.

In amongst this busyness I managed to get the Baccus Samurai undercoated. I also got the cavalry based up too…

The four in the front are messengers with their big Horo on their back. On the far side are some mounted commanders. I am going to add in some printed banners to the base.

The other thing I have been doing is working out a sort of army list for the Italian wars. I have ordered the Furioso supplement as it deals with this war and adds solo play… I did find an army in my 6mm ‘yet to do something with’ box…

These are a mix of Irregular miniatures. I bought them second hand about 20 years ago at least. The two big flags in the foreground are from the fantasy range as they have five figures in the strip… historical’s have six.

Still in two minds on 6mm or 10mm, but I have plenty of time to choose as the Samurai need finishing first.

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A Bit of Progress

This evening started off on a roll. I got the 28mm ruins from the Frostheim set sprayed their base colour. I decided to do these in browns instead of my usual grey. For this reason I went and bought a chocolate brown spray paint, which turned out to be more red than brown…

I put the can in the photo to show the difference in lid colour and final spray. The can was a nightmare, it kept clogging. At one point I had to take the top off and give it a wash. It spent more time upside down than it did the right way up.

After spraying the above I set about getting the Baccus samurai onto the sticks, ready for the white undercoat. I had just started when I got the massage to say that this little chap heeded picking up…

He is a feral kitten, that we have been waiting for for about 9 weeks. He was caught this evening, so off we went to pick him up.

We are going to be getting a second one tomorrow, if it will be caught.

When I got back I finished getting them in their sticks… I will spray them tomorrow morning ready for a bit of paint tomorrow evening.

Of course I now have a problem, everything else was in fours or a nice even number so I had either yellow sashimono or teal sashimono… I now have three units… what do I do? Nightmare scenario…. the stress, the stress… as you might be able to tell, I may be a little OCD… actually easiest thing to do would be to paint it a different colour totally.

I am going to paint these in different coloured armour, so they will likely take four times as long as the ashigaru.

The one thing that dawned on me today was that I am probably going to run out of bases. My packet of two hundred 40x20mm seemed more than enough for many armies, problem is…I have now painted many armies.

And finally… this made me laugh!

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Peasant Size Comparison

Okay that does sound like a thing a feudal Lord might do, but I would like to point out that no peasants were harmed during this experiment.

As I said yesterday, the printed ones at 100% were too small so today I did a little size comparison. I did four tests at 110%, 115%, 120% and 125%.  I then did a highly scientific test by sticking them next to a base of ashigaru and then eyeballing them here are the results…

The 120% seemed the best fit amongst the four chosen. To be honest they are a little on the large side and I technically should have gone for about 117 – 118% but with the discrepancies in base height then these fitted better

Four hours later I have the start of an Ikko Ikki force.

Front row, Samurai with swords, they have a sashimono on, but as I want them as Ronin then those will have to go. Next are the peasants with spears and beside them the peasants with agricultural weapons. At the back are a pile of sohei with naginata. I evidently forgot to order some sohei with the yumi.

My plan is to add in either some Irregular or Baccus individuals to act as prominent people.

Now printing things this small has its advantages and disadvantages. Without a banner they take about 40 minutes to print, a nobori that the sohei have took that force to about an hour-ten. The main pain in the backside is removing the tiny built in supports. They are a bit on the faffy side. Just looking at some if them now and I can see some tiny bumps on the end of spears.

Tomorrow I will give these a base and a spray and see what they look like painted.

I totally forgot to say where I got tye idea from, so here is the post that got me going Tenka Fubu . Some seriously awesome Sengoku era miniatures and terrain on this blog.

Oh while I remember today is my 18th Wedding Anniversary, we never do anything for it, I think our first wedding anniversary cemented how things were going to go… we were in France, Normandy in fact, a place of amazing food and we spent it in a Macdonald’s.

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Printing Tiny Peasants

Well I got back from the caravan trip safe and sound. I was a bit knackered, so I did a bit of painting on the Ashigaru still in progress. I then spent about 45 minutes hunting for the missing samurai then it kind of dawned on me that I hadn’t really had a look at what was left to paint… my only excuse is that they are very small and have exactly the same pose!

Samurai, Ashigaru, Samurai

Well that is that conundrum solved , well as I said yesterday that I had been shown a company that does 3D printed miniatures for samurai in 6mm. So in true Stephen style I jumped in… I wanted some peasants and monks that would fit in with my Baccu models. So here we have them at 100% next to Baccus on the left and 2D6 on the right…

They are a little in the small side, so tomorrow I am going to go for 110% Up to 120% and see what I can do. These are probably the smallest things I have printed.

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Caravan Samurai

Yesterday and today I got on with basing some of the 6mm samurai, well actually the ashigaru (both yumi and teppo). My original plan was to plonk eight miniatures per base, however they wouldn’t really fit on the 20 x 40mm bases so in the end I glued only four on each.

Above we have the teppo armed ashigaru. I have the same number armed with the yumi. So 48 bases in total.

With the same four to a base then there will be the same number of Yari armed ashigaru.

Now interestingly enough I don’t seem to have any samurai infantry. If you remember a while a go I said I seemed to be missing some cavalry . I have rechecked and there aren’t any missing. It looks like both were in the same bag. Each one is meant to have 18 minis in and I have 36… I cannot find the three packs of foot samurai, that should be there.

Now as you know, I love my 3D printer, so I was quite excited to see these…https://projectwargaming.com/collections/samurai

Lots to choose from 😉.

We had another good day today, it rained a bit so we played plenty of games. We gave Munchin Quest a go… first two monsters were a level sixteen and eighteen. Luckily for us they ignore low level Munchkins!