Well I think that they are done, or at least as done as I am going to do them,with the exception of the spear points.
The Irregular ones in the background are still to finish off. I still have a whole more Baccus infantry to get started, but the army is definitely on the way to completion.
I managed to get the caravan moving again today, new springs, plenty of WD40 and a neighbour with pair of pliers and voila the brakes now work. They will need a new cable but at least I can now tow it to someone if I cannot manage it myself.
Today the postie brought more goodies. My two rule sets arrived. Furiosa has got me thinking about the Italian wars in 6mm, I will have to have a proper read to see what I think.
My new tablet arrived, it is nice not going from 100% to zero in five minutes.
I also got a pile of bases and some free giant slugs…
I based up the last of the Renaissance chappies as well as getting the wagon based. I did the Frost Pikemen at 75% size (I think) …I wrote down 75% but to be honest I am not sure. The whatever size is a bit on the smaller side, but not annoyingly so.
I also managed to get a couple more ruins done today (and last night)… the bigger one took just over 15 hours to do.
Today the postie brought more goodies. My two rule sets arrived. Furiosa has got me thinking about the Italian wars in 6mm, I will have to have a proper read to see what I think.
My new tablet arrived, it is nice not going from 100% to zero in five minutes.
I also got a pile of bases and some free giant slugs…
I based up the last of the Renaissance chappies as well as getting the wagon based. I did the Frost Pikemen at 75% size (I think) …I wrote down 75% but to be honest I am not sure. The whatever size is a bit on the smaller side, but not annoyingly so.
I also managed to get a couple more ruins done today (and last night)… the bigger one took just over 15 hours to do.
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.
Today I sliced five heavy cavalry to go as a command unit with the mounted general. There are five individual miniatures in the set , so with a unit of six there is always going to be one duplicate. Somehow in printing four of the five to go with the commander then I have managed to somehow choose the same miniature every time. I am hoping that the one printing now will be different.
Here are the unit of six heavy cavalry, a pay master and his dogs…
I also managed to get some work done on the duellists, more colour and less white now…
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.
Yes to Post man (or Lady in this case) brought lots of goodies today.
I thought I needed some form of simple reference material and in fact I found out a load of stuff I hadn’t known before… I read it over breakfast 😂. I also got some new toys…
As I had bought Duel a good while ago I thought I might as well get some duellists too. As I was getting bases from Alternative Armies then I thought I might as well… I also got a pack of freebies… armed brains… yes you did in fact read that right… a pack of floating plains with lasers and stuff coming out of them… very weird.
Now I also got a bit of painting done…
I was mainly painting the undercoat for all of the decoration on the command horses. I also threw some paint on the reins too – I am not sure why as if someone is on a horse and they appear the size of a 6mm miniature then I won’t be able to see the reins, let alone tell what colour they are. The other thing was to get another layer of Gesso on the elf and horse. I was inspired to give one a go as the mounted archers haven’t been finished since I got them. I will see how I get in compared to the originals.
Bogenwald 