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Changes in Wargaming

When I found my 6mm Samurai I noticed that they were all on cardboard bases. This got me thinking as to things that have changed over the years.

I hated basing armies as you had to cut out your own bases out of either beer mats or mounting card. It took forever and I for one could never get the bases at ninety degrees all of the time. Jump forwards a few years and voila, you pay someone pennies to cut you some out of MDF. These can really be any size that you want.

Then there was the paint, highly smelly humbrol enamels. Or oil paints. I only ever tried oil paints once on a 54mm Airfix model. I don’t think it ever dried. The enamel wasn’t much better. Now we have a plethora of paints, from airbrush paints right the way through to the oils and the enamels. Of course there is my favourite go to paint in the Contrast Paints… I really must try painting with other ones again before I forget how.

Models themselves were sometimes blobs of metal or there was plastic in the terms of Airfix. My first armies were of course these. unpainted as I didn’t have the knowledge or inclinations paint them. My first ‘real’ war games army were the old Donnington 15mm Early Germans. my mate went Imperial Roman. Compared to 15mm miniatures today they are so dated… but funnily enough here I am using them and adding to them for my HOTT army.

With regards to that, here I am with Tin soldier 15mm Aztecs and conquistadors, original army sold years ago. I seem to be rebuilding all of my armies from my youth. All I need now are Museum miniatures crusaders, Two Dragon Samurai and Essex Miniatures early imperial Roman and I am there. Oh and a pile of ACW confederate troops from Essex I think.

I suppose one of the biggest changes now is the internet. I can now talk to manufactures or sellers in real time. If I want to compare miniature sizes someone out there will have done some pictures. There are so many different manufacturers out there too, so the Magpie approach to ‘my’ hobby is really bad for my wallet. It used to be the case I went to a convention and saw some great games and go and get enthused and come away with an army of Goblin Monkey riding ninja, which would end up in the bring and buy three years later …unopened! Now I can buy them whilst sat on the toilet! YouTube let’s me watch other people painting things or even playing the rules of my ‘new game’ all great stuff.

Blogging… yep it is great. I have met (virtually) some amazing people in all parts of the world. Without this here blog I never would have had the privilege of meeting them. I can honestly say that the people that are following my blog Are extremely supportive, and I hope I am for them. I have had only a couple of problems, and that is mainly people posting dodgy links as messages, they get deleted as soon as I see them.

And finally for me especially… the elephant in the room (although I haven’t printed it yet) is my 3D Printer. I remember many years ago my mate and I talking about how great it would be to get someone to make an us an army of our choosing. We talked about how much it would cost to get a sculptor to do it and then to get someone to cast them up. We did think about Prince August moulds at the time, but it never really got off the ground. Roll forward 30 years and I am printing my own miniatures and terrain in my shed. I pay for a file and print as many as I want for pennies. It gets even better than that. I can get things free and print them for pennies.

The down side of the printer is that it is sometimes too easy and cheap and I have printed so much crap that I will never use! My next consideration is to move into resin printing and give that a bash. Maybe Christmas next year.

The one thing that I do miss is going to conventions. Yeah I could go to some in time, and I did think about going to one of the Scottish ones next year just for the hell of it … If I manage it no doubt I will come back with some Goblin, Monkey riding ninja!

There are bucket loads of other things that have changed so much, but these are the ones that really just popped into my head. So what do you reckon are the big changes

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 11 Comments

Painting Miniatures

I actually managed to paint some miniatures tonight. I got going on the monster hunter miniatures again.

Well I really had to, as they had been sitting there for days. I forgot to take any photos so hopefully I will remember tomorrow.

I did remember to check the height of the buildings with the miniatures and luckily they look fine

I also painted the first 6mm miniatures in about 18 years.

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Ponds with improved Rocks

Tonight I did a lot more slicing as well as redoing bits and bobs for the Japanese themed villages. I have put four paddy fields together and filled them with rice in 3D builder.

The other thing I did tonight was to get the rocks repainted. Thankfully they look more like a base rock colour now rather than RAF blue.

I also replaced the fluid in the sonic cleaner… before and after photos follow…

Clean
And Dirty,.. I honestly didn’t pour coffee in here, or have an accident in it either!

The other news on the printing front is that the roads STL’s have been downloaded. I will do some test prints tomorrow.

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Off the Printer

My daughter’s mask (or part of it) is finished.

It fits really well

There is still the lower jaw to do but the main bit is finished. It only took 60 hours over four sessions to print. I had to cut it into four and drop the size down to 90% to make it fit on the print bed.

I did have a. It of a problem with one of the rear pieces as it fell off before the end of the print (which I had forgotten about) and as such it doesn’t meet in part of it.

The gap is clearly visible on this photo. I will fix it with some Greenstuff. Hopefully the lower jaw isn’t too hard to print!

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Samurai Army Complete

Well I now have to add… sort of.. unfortunately some pillock who shall remain nameless suddenly remembered after taking the photos that the sashimono on the Infantry were without their mon. Part of me thinks sod it, part of me thinks get them painted and a further part makes me think …buy some water slide transfers. Sadly the easy options are sort of out. First if I don’t paint them they may look a bit weird and secondly there is a lot of wisps of filament on the flat bits so any water slide transfers will be a right sod to get painted… but anyway here we go. Mon, bases and Banners withstanding. The army is done…

I am onto my next Samurai miniatures already. My mates Birthday present arrived. I want everything paint3d by next weekend so got straight on with them today.

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Black Samurai Finished

That is everything done for this army. It has taken me a bit longer than I thought it would I started on April 4th and eventually got them finished May 22nd…slow by my standards 😂

Last unit done

Okay so I just noticed I forgot to paint the bearded faces! I will get them sorted tomorrow.

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Green Samurai…Finished

So tonight I worked on the Green samurai and got them finished. I also cracked on and got up to the armour stage on the Black samurai. All things being equal I reckon that I should get the whole lot finished by tomorrow night.

The black armoured lot are hiding in the rear.

So this is what we look like now…

The army assembled
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No Painting and a big pile of Poo!

Today was caravan day. My kids decided another evening and night was to be had in the caravan. So we made burgers on the grill and ate them in the caravan followed by a game of Upwords (which I lost). Before it got too dark to see (and too cold) we plugged the caravan into the house and as I was feeding the cable through the window. I had a peep in the drain inspection pipe and saw water… A sure sign that the septic tank had backed up again.

So in trepidation I opened the lid and sure enough…it had. It wasn’t the worst it has ever been, but it was a very, very close second. An hour later we got it cleared. Luckily I have absolutely no sense of smell!

Anyway after getting cleaned up, we went back into the caravan for a game of Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit…and I won 😂.

At 23.00 those that were going into the house did so. Looks like the light nights will be here very soon.

It soon won’t be dark!

Sadly I missed most of the bits calls, but we have an Oyster catcher or two and I think a redshank with a couple of Snipe drumming. Quite a peaceful evening.

Soon we will have 23 hours of daylight and a bit of dusk. It doesn’t get dark at all really.

The down side is we won’t get to see this for a good while…

Not filtered, or fiddled with at all..

The top photo and the one above are taken in exactly the same spot. This was the sky in its green stage… I have it in the red and rainbow stages too. Just can’t find them right now.

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Torii and a Pond

So today I set the printer running to get some terrain done for my mates birthday. I decided to do him a big pond. Thankfully at about the 2hour mark I checked on the print and the front end was starting to lift. Luckily the blue tape was handy and I had enough to fasten it to too. For some reason the front of the print plate seemed to have dropped a bit. Hence the problems. It still looks okay so once I get it onto something flat then I will fill in the gap. Luckily it is where the stones are at the bottom of this image so it is hard to actually see from the top.

I printed out the accessories too and made a smaller torii gate.

My PLA order arrived today too…

It should keep me busy for a while.

I printed off some fences, another well and a Buddha to build a mini shrine for him. I will also do him a couple of farm houses too.