Believe it or not the printer has decided to behave itself, so I have been printing pikes like they are going out of fashion. I also shrunk the command strip a bit. They now fit nicely with the pikes…
Now in case you are wondering there are 75 strips of pikes above. This in fact won’t be enough to cover my four units of Pike… each base has three ranks behind the metal front one, with two wide for each one … okay there are two spare which can be seen in the photo above. I will use these to make casualty markers.
There are twenty printing now, so still a long way to go.
When I shrunk the command strip I decided to live dangerously and didn’t support the flags as I worked on the principle that at the size they were then they should self support… thankfully I was correct in my gamble.
I also worked on some big pikes too…
They are nearly there, hopefully I will get them finished tomorrow.
Finally I got a couple of parcels, the first was this one…
The second was my Furioso supplement, which turned out to be the rules I already had, so they have gone back to AA for a swap. I was really looking forward to reading them…. hopefully they will be here soon.
Tomorrow is some more work in the house and I need to get the shed back in operation as I have a postponed game I there on Friday.
I got another ruin printed today.this onetook just over 5 hours to complete. I also printed off the multi barrelled organ gun…
As you can see there is also a pikeman sneaking into the picture. I now have a full unit of twelve, with for some reason, an extra half dozen heads… teach me to try and add up when I am tired. I also did a driver for the wagon with a pile of camp followers too. They are still in the print head now. I will show them off tomorrow.
Well I have had a jolly old birthday. Got lots of brilliant presents from the kids. I also got some great maps for RPG’s from my mate. My main present is still in the post. As the old iPad has eventually given up the ghost then I decided to go for a new Android tablet as they are a whole lot cheaper.
Pressies from the kids
I had a lazy old day, eventually got the springs off the brake shoes too. I did manage to take time to flock the duellists bases…
And get another building printed…
The one on the right is from last night.
I am having to get used to slowwww print times… I went back in to check after leaving it for an hour and fifteen minutes (after the usual making sure the base layer was down)… it had got to here…
Luckily it is going over night! This new one is a two level one, hence the two separate bits.
I am also using up the resin in the vat by printing a wagon with a pair of horses. This was to take about three hours, if I can be bothered I will go and check on it in a tick.
Tomorrow I will do some more ruined buildings. They won’t be done in a hurry that’s for sure. The FDM is slow but it is a whole lot cheaper than doing things on the resin printer (if they would fit that it). I might actually do some for my 6mm Armies.
Today I actually managed to get the duellists just about finished. Still a bit of tidying up to do and bases to cover, but on the whole I am happy with them. Are the uniforms accurate to Flintloque cannon… nope not at all, well apart from the boots that is!…
I cracked on with the Cavalry command and the mounted crossbows…
Interestingly enough (and I just found this out) by the time of the Italian (Renaissance ) Wars the mounted crossbows would supposedly shoot from the saddle. Now this is something that is intriguing and I will have to look into it a bit more as it causes a lot of questions, first being how the heck do you recock the thing when you have shot your bolt? Secondly how do you stop the bolt just dropping off?
I think that is it for the miniature printing for a good old while… I pretty much have two Armies now or an army and an allied contingent. Upon saying this I want to just check on the Dwarves as they could do with a unit of light or medium infantry, plus there is the matter of the light cavalry and a giant.
it is handy having a South facing conservatory with a wide widow sill…
So instead of printing more miniatures then I decided to go for some terrain on the old filament printer. It had sat for a good while and the filament had snapped at the extruder. Luckily I managed to slot a new roll in.I took some of Iain Lovecraft’s ruins and shrank them down to 70% and set the printer away. I relevelled it a couple of times and still came back to this…
This is about the size of a cherry tomato. I was a bit miffed as it was an hour and a half into it when I went back. I set it away again, but sat with it whilst it printed the first couple of layers, this meant I could alter on the fly. It still tried stripping away at one end, so I am afraid I got the superglue out and stuck it down. Not clever I know but it was what was handy. After about 2 hours it was still delaminating so I shoved bluetack up against both sides of the bit that was threatening to cause the whole thing to come away. Hopefully it will be okay by time I go back tomorrow morning. The one thing I am not used to now is ten hour prints for a short run.
The first of my heavy cavalry came off the plate today, four are finished and two are still printing. I am doing six of these heavy cavalry…
Now with these I went for the smaller of the banners, part of me now wished that I had gone for the bigger one. In the second and third set I have printed a ‘warhound’ these came from Iain Lovecraft’s Frost civilians and are actually the rat catcher’s dog. As they had a spiked collar I thought the looked cool. I kept them at full size instead of dropping them to 75% like the rest. I reckoned they would make a passable mastiff/Great Dane type of hound.
I also got the hands glued onto the Flagellants… one is missing a left hand.. sadly I think it fell off the supports and was lost in the shed…
The top three on the right are the ‘command’ set… now these will make nice cultists as well as religious nutters. I also managed to get a photo of the Zweihanders…
And finally… I actually managed to get some paint onto the duellists…
I am pleased with how they have started, but less pleased with wood Elf. This is going to need another undercoat as the Gesso has left it shiny and the paint won’t adhere to it properly. My guess is that I really didn’t shake it enough to get the paint and medium mixed together. I did thin it down a bit with medium, but by all accounts that is what I am meant to do. Probably find I purchased the shiny version!
So as you know, yesterday I based all of my dwarves and today I decided to do the same to the spares on the Empire side. Sadly it would seem I either cannot count or have lost a pile of bases… I would say the former.
I set to work merrily glueing down miniatures to bases then suddenly realised that I had actually run out. It would seem that my seventy 25x25mm weren’t enough. I need another 36 to base the extra handgunners I printed by mistake, then I have a dozen flagellants and also a dozen zweihanders. Hopefully I should have enough cavalry bases as I didn’t order any more of those. I should have if I only go for the heavy cavalry and demilancers, but if I also print the cuirassiers and mounted crossbows then definitely not. I bought some more infantry, ogre and cavalry bases just in case. I also ordered the Furioso rules which are Renaissance rules.
So on the left front to back… crossbows, pikes and Ogres
Centre we have the culvern and volley gun with crew for both behind them are the command miniatures with some random ‘spares’ behind that.
And on the right… heavy Infantry, hand-gunners and Reiters.
All twelve flagellants printed really well, apart from the end of a two handed flail. Luckily it didn’t affect the next lot being printed. My first six zweihanders have just come off the build plate and have had a wash. They are sitting in their basket letting the ISO evaporate before I pull the supports off and then get them cured.
I got my elf duellists undercoated this evening. I tried putting some Contrast paint over the GW wood elf that I undercoated with gesso. It is very streaky. I will try a watered down layer of paint to see if that will help.
Last night I watched Tremors for the first time in an age. I really enjoyed it. Tonight I am watching Kill Bill as I have never seen it before… I am somewhat confused so far. Hopefully things will become more obvious as I go along.
Today I decided to get all the Dwarves plonked onto bases, for two reasons, first they need them and second, I wanted to see how many I had and also to see what was missing.
So what do we have…
Well first are the two artillery pieces (one missing a crew).
Second row from left to right are a unit of light infantry, a unit of crossbows, heavy ram cavalry and a general and entourage.
Rear row are the heavy Infantry and medium infantry with a couple of spare medium infantry.
Now I need another unit of medium and light infantry and one of hand gunners (plus the missing artillery crews).
One thing that looks a bit weird is the organ gun. It is a short piece on a long base. Options I have are to cut the base in half, just buy some or l could put two cavalry bases together and fill in the gaps…
The latter would work nicely. I would fasten the two together with superglue and fill in the joints and indentations with Greenstuff. It would save waiting for another Alternative Armies order to arrive
I also did some simple work in Meshmixer to remove one ogre head and replace it with another. Luckily the designer had made it an easy thing to do. Well okay it took 25 minutes of YouTube viewing before I could manage it…. but the hard work had been done by them. I also shrunk down Iain Lovecraft’s Fey Amazon’s to 75% original size. This fits in better with the Dwarves and Imperials
Now part of me is thinking about a Fey army, they have rangers/hunters. Mounted types as well as some centaurs. So I could potentially have a small guerrilla force or an allied contingent. Of course the other option is to buy some Elves that go with the two forces mentioned. Have a look here…lots of goodies
I just got a message to say that the volley gun is nearly done, then work will start on the Giant (plus we are getting another unit for the Dwarves…pony mounted light cavalry). Now to be honest I am not sure if the extra is an add on as the main Kickstarter is getting s free Giant and Volley gun that they failed to meet the financial backing to get, so either way it is a win.
Tonight is another Dive into the Aliens RPG… excuse the deliberate pun. As they broke the submarine retrieval system and unbeknown to them they are hauling a couple of Androids on the end of the wire then they are going to have to come up with a way to get back into the monster inhabited underwater research station. Luckily one of them left a compression suit on the sub so a swim across the gap to gain entrance shouldn’t be too big a problem, unless of course the local fauna is being belligerent … Mwah Ha Ha ha… apologies for the outburst there.
Today has been busy, busy, busy. I have hit the holidays running in terms of jobs around the house and garden. I can now see almost all of the floor in the big shed, which is quite an achievement.I did, however, have time to hit print a couple of times. so first up is the organ gun with dwarf crew (with stolen doggies from a different set)…
The dogs are ready for their game of fetch…
The second thing printed is the first pair of Reiters….
The second pair is printing now, I made a simple change by mirroring these two and changing the pistol hand. That is the beauty of Reiters, they have pistols on both sides of the saddle so can easily be firing left or right handed.
Tomorrow I will print a third pair to give me a unit of six. I will then think about some with a carbine.
I have been looking at Renaissance flags too and have a nice photo library of what I like. The dwarf banners are going to be plane coloured I think. With any distinguishing features on the shield and disk… this of course may change by time I come to paint them. Probably some form of Runic lettering.
In case you are wondering, I made some progress on the Samurai … in that I got them out, went…nahhh and then put them away again. I looked at them this evening, I didn’t yesterday so definitely some progress.
Well as you know doubt guessed, I got nothing painted today, busy, busy, busy this morning and out gaming this afternoon. I did manage to hit print three times and ended up with a mighty fine cannon and crew (with another crew waiting to be cured).
I also have the (twelve miniature) unit of dwarf light infantry cured and ready for bases too. Tomorrow I think I am going to go for some dwarf artillery crews and a couple of swivel guns and an organ gun. Then I think I need to sit down and work out what I have and what I need. I will need to sort out some human cavalry as well as some more medium infantry, some flagellants and a unit of zweihanders too.
The beauty is that I have everything that I need to print them… I just need to decided, for example in the cavalry, I have demilancers, mounted crossbows (okay they are mounted infantry) Reiter’s with carbines and with pistols). Part of me now wants some elves to go with (or against) this lot. I suppose that I should put my sensible head on and paint what I have. I shall therefore be good and get them for a Christmas present.
I am going to try for an early night again tonight… as it is overcast it is a bit dusk like out there, but I shall be good and go to bed, I even turned the printer off to avoid getting sucked into messing around with that. Speaking of printers, it does seem to be behaving at the minute 🤞🤞🤞.
Tonight’s game was another hoot. The stranded crew ended up doing all kinds of weird things that upset the Working Joe’s they also found the missing NPC who had turned into some kind of weird monster courtesy of Weyland Yutani. They somehow managed to beat him, but before they could finish him off he managed to escape into the base. They then managed to steal the submarine and were last seen hurtling off into the depths… only to realise that the only way to escape is to use the long range communications array back in the base… which they sort of had to break to escape. So somehow they have to work out how to get into an undersea base that has a very angry scary monster and some working Joe’s who no longer seem that well disposed towards them… stress dice are certainly adding up… one of them has six already the other two have four…. what can possibly go wrong!
Tonight I decided to sort out the wash and cure pot of rather grubby ISO. This involved straining it through a funnel with a filter in. This got slower as the filter got gunked up more. I have my two settling jars, which actually work really well…. I just poured this straight into them. These leave a horrible sludge at the bottom, but I managed to get over half a litre of pretty clear ISO out of them. These are now refilled and I also have nearly a litre in a used bottle.
The Sludge is now sitting in the shed roof to get blasted by the sun. Once it cures then I will bin it.
I managed to get some more dwarves printed too. Here they are with the front rank…
I tried shrinking down the Iain Lovecraft dwarf Landsknecht to add into the dwarf force… but unfortunately, even though I reduced the size, he was still too bulky compared to the others, funnily enough the human version worked fine.
As the temperature has dropped a bit, I nicked the heater out of Esther’s office and stuck it in with the printer. I am printing a couple of sixes of light infantry (one after the other). Then I have a 10lb culvern and artillery crew to print tomorrow. After that another artillery piece and crew. I might actually get around to painting them too!
I knew I was knackered yesterday, I slept for 12 hours last night, I still feel a bit pooped just now. So it won’t be a late night tonight. Hence an early posting.
Tomorrow is the first proper day of leave, so I had better remember to turn off my alarms. I am hoping to get a really good go at the samurai tomorrow. My plan is to get going in the morning with them. I am still missing a bag of cavalry.. luckily I have a pile of leave to tidy up the shed and hunt for it.
