So after last night little foray into Greenstuff fields for the hex tiles I decided to have another go this evening but with an added farmhouse done in3D Builder. I messed it up a bit in that I didn’t push the whole thing down far enough so then there was an edge visible which looked a bit naff. So I covered it in Greenstuff fields and a dodgy hedge.
On the Bleurgh front, I think I will be back to work again tomorrow. Not exactly 100% but enough to get going again.
Today was another day pretty much spent in bed going bleurgh or other noises associated with feeling crap. But I did manage to go and hit print on the printer again. Unfortunately we had a power cut and guess what happened? Yep the printer stopped mid print. Now I had the option to carry on the print and I did consider it, even going as far as starting to heat up the bed and nozzle.
But then it struck me. I wanted to add some fields in Greenstuff to a flattish tile, and providence had provided a pair of them.
I quickly hit stop print and got them off the build plate. Now they still had holes where hills and woods were meant to go, so that became the basis for my field location.
So without further ado, I give you three crop rotation in small scale…
Now this idea is in no way, shape or form my idea. It came from a very talented chap by the name of Adam Clark over on the Hexon Hills Facebook group. He did something similar a good while ago and he very kindly sent me a link to a tool he has produced over on Thingiverse…- https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4603809. You can see his villages on there too.
Now when he first started he used wire wrapped around a block. I couldn’t find a block or wire so used a round lollipop stick and some nylon string.
Now it is, to be fair a little crude, but it did do the job… I do intend to print the stamp very soon. Once I feel a bit better I will mess around in 3D Builder and nab some buildings to make small hamlets to go with the fields.
I managed to get a bit of work done on the wights too…
They will soon be finished. Unfortunately I cannot print any more as the resin printer is still sulking and Anycubic have unfortunately not replied, problem is, they haven’t even sent a holding email to say “whoops, Sorry we are snowed under!” therefore I don’t know whether anyone has received my plaintive email full of woe.
So after sleeping until pretty much late afternoon I managed to drag myself out of bed and before heading back there I decided to try and get a bit done on the wights… I succeeded in getting some paint on them.
Not a lot to be honest, but a bit of progress is still progress.
Now one thing on these that is puzzling me is that there are radiating layer lines on the bases and on the miniatures themselves, I am not sure why. It will be a setting in the slicer, but as yet I am not sure what or why.
The printer is still Kerfucktenbuggerd as they say (or not say) in Germany. I have got onto Anycubic to see if they have any answers. Hopefully they will come back with one soon.
I managed to get a couple of sets of roads printed as well.
The roads are the six at the front, I still need more, but it’s a start.
So we have 33 tiles in the coffee colour and about 60 I think in the pink. Quite a little world so far.
Well I just got the last two off the printer and they have come out fine. There was some stringing between the peaks but to be honest it was to be expected with the increase in temperature. So that is now one of everything printed. The increase to 10% infil on the mountains certainly made a difference to the rigidity of them.
Tonight I was a bit pooped so just sorted out my mountain hexes. By sorting out please read filling in all of the gaps. I kind of forgot that the temperature had fallen a fair bit so I think it caused some lines. I don’t think it was a blockage as the lines really only appeared in certain places.
I used the tried and tested superglue and bicarbonate to add a solid top layer. The one thing I noticed was that I was missing a mountain tile. This is being printed as I type this (along with the volcano). I have bumped the temperature up by 10 degrees to see if that will make any difference, if it doesn’t then I reckon I do have a blockage. Once these two are done then I reckon I have got one of each tile that I intend to use.
On the resin front, it is still sitting idle but I do have a pile of new miniatures from the new Patreon that I need to download and get going with. I thought I might as well wait until my wash and cure device arrived, that way It will be a heck of a lot easier to clean them up, not to mention cure.
The printer has been busy again and I have printed all fifteen road tiles.
Not that you can see them really. This has got a nice selection of roads and some towns and buildings built in.
The set comes with the tiles for villages and town hexes…
Although they are great, I really think they are too large, but the roads set has smaller ones which fit much better scale wise (still very large if the tiles are a few miles across).
These will become my towns and villages on the map. The full tiled versions will become cities I suppose. My plan is to use these for my RPG’s as well as wargames campaign maps. The biggest surprise for me is that each tile tells me which one it is. I was coming up with extremely complicated ways to to record the tile numbers and tonight I noticed this…
Yep village in the woods is tile AR10, the inn is AR11 and the castle on the hill is AR12!
Doh!
I think I have half a dozen mountains to print and then I have one of each tile (that I want). Then I just have to wait for the stretch goals and print some more of these ones that I want.
Tonight I finished off my river collection, the more numerically astute of you will no doubt notice that there are in fact fifteen. This is because the undercoated one has a repeat.
I will need to print a good number of straights and gentle bends, this will allow me to make a nice river system. This evening I have started printing the first six road tiles.
All of these are before the stretch goals are available. This is going to be one mighty map!
A bit of a short one tonight as I am a bit pooped. Hopefully something will happen Paint wise, sadly I got drawn into a) watching the various antics of the slo mo guys and secondly started watching YouTube… never a good idea for productivity.
I have been working on the building project all day today and what with the physical workout and mental workout too I am knackered. So instead of even attempting to paint anything I used the time instead to slice the rest of the Hexon Hills tiles. There are actually 14 river Tiles. I already printed six so tonight I printed a couple (13 and 14) and started printing 7 to 12. Hopefully they will be ready when I get up tomorrow morning.
There are fourteen roads to print out. A few of them have trees so will take a long time to print. I reckon a few more days and I will have all of the ones I want to have. Some of the location tiles don’t interest me at all, so apart from the volcano I haven’t bothered slicing them.
The filament printer has been a bit busy of late, whilst the resin one sits idle. I have pretty much been printing the hex tiles. I am doing one of each, as I said in an earlier post. Once I have got them all done then I will have a useable reference point to work from. As with all of my prints I keep a record in my little grey book. This allows me to work out how long things are going to roughly take.
Now as you can see, I have used a 5% infil. And printed them all at 100% size. Quite a few people are dropping to 75% or lower and some even going beyond 100%. Now some I think I am going to have to bump up the infil a bit, maybe 10 or 15%. So far it is the woods and the mountains that could do with a bit of strengthening.
So I showed the rivers and plains last time, so we have the woods and towns/villages…
And then the mountains…
The built up areas are pretty funky…
So next up will be the rest of the mountains and the roads I think.
I never got anything painted tonight as my friends came over for a barbecue and I have been working on the building project…
It is getting there…
Back to work on Monday, the kids start returning on Thursday, so hopefully things up here keep on heading in the right direction Covid wise. Unfortunately Aberdeen has locked down, and guess where the ferry loads of tourists are coming from? On the up side we can lock down a hell of a lot easier than some places, if you cannot swim all the way then you have to use the ferry or planes… if they stop then we can keep people out 😂. I do however, know some kayaker’s who paddled from the North coast of Scotland to Shetland. They basically island hopped all of the way up and then all of the way back down.
Bogenwald 