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Aztecs… and He’s Off

I made a start on these tonight, gave them ten hours or so for the spray to cure a bit more.

I got a bit bored painting skin, but on the upside the contrast paint Aggaros Dunes works well for a darker skin tone.

I Love the miniatures but I really wish I had mixed up the types. For some reason, unbeknown to me, I put them on the bases as they came out of the packets. So each base has identical miniatures on it. I really don’t know whether or not I can be bothered to take them all off. The suit wearers will have different coloured suits so at least there will be some variation.

I wrote types on the bottom which was very organised of me, however I mixed up the Quachic veterans with the apprentice warriors. I just must remember to paint the Quachic veterans in their yellow suits.

I also printed off a couple of statues…

The more mathematically astute of you will note there is only one visible. That is because the sister to this one fell over at the 7 hour mark. I swore! I did learn something though, these will need a raft to help. The elbows come with built is supports, the second one’s support fell over and then in time the main body somehow collapsed as well, probably the spaghetti monster that engulfed it caused it to lift from the bed. The total print time for both was 9 hours 10 minutes.. I printed them at 70% to fit in with the 15mm minis. She is the Goddess of War, a very suitable subject. The STL files have a new version and a crumbling version as well as a damaged on too. My initial intention is to have four of them in matched pairs.

The hands are printed separately, one holds a sword the other is either a fist or an open hand. Once again this came from Terrain4Print free from Thingiverse. I will either tip him through there or become a Patron as I have a lot of his stuff.

Whilst waiting for the print to finish I made a start on the clothing on the warriors. The peasant tunics are pretty much all painted, still a long way to go on the rest.

Tomorrow shall involve more printing as well as more painting.

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Aztecs… And so it Begins

So this morning I got the DBA Aztec Army based.

There are four peasant bases on the left (two missile and two hand to hand), next are a mixed base (back) veterans (centre) and apprentice (front). Next few back to front are the priests, eagle and jaguar knights and on the right are four bases of Arrow knights. This is a bit weird having so many of the arrow knights, last time I heard, there was no actual proof of existence.

I will get them sprayed later and make a start on the painting.

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Scalians… Pretty Much Done

I got the shields stuck on today and slapped some paint on. The rims could do with a bit of a highlight, but other than the bases I reckon I am finished with these.

Apologies for the lighting, we moved our house around today, where the table ended up had pretty naff lighting. I will get them all out tomorrow for a photo shoot.

I also hunted out my Tin Soldier Aztecs. It is a DBA force so only 36 miniatures to paint. I am pretending that I haven’t seen the Box full of Black Hat Aztecs or the Tin Soldier Conquistadors that I forgot I had. I will base these up as I normally do. 20 x 40mm for them all 😂. I am playing more HOTT at the minute so they will match in with the Conquistador army I played in at the last HOTT tournament.

The printer whirred and squeaked and yodelled it’s way through som3 more bits today.

I have 5 jaguar heads, 5 pillars as well as the altar and bowl. Total time 7 hours 40 minutes (I remembered to look today). I have downloaded some more stuff from Thingiverse from Terrain4Print. I will slice them tomorrow and set it running again.

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Scalians… Temple of the Moon

After 10 hours (I think… totally forgot to check before switching off the printer) I have got my temple finished and it is, in my mind, absolutely superb.

Once again the Black PLA is helping no-one see the detail.

The piece comes from here I-Lovecraft. The stuff on there is lovely, if you have a 3D printer check it out. There are Fantasy, Meso American, Roman and Asian buildings and accessories. My favourite out is Bridgeton – it’s a modular bridge with houses built onto it. Something I think I will save up for.

Anyway back to the Temple I printed.

It comes in 5 main pieces (plus a brazier) there are four floor pieces.

These in turn hold up the Jaguar head.

Based on the hole in this, my bed needs levelling again. I will have to have a think as to whether I want these pieces overgrown and disused or have them full colour. If so it looks like Disney’s El Dorado will be coming out again as I really like the colours of the city.

So what do I think of this piece, firstly I haven’t done it justice on my printer. First off I didn’t use the hi resolution version that was available in the download, secondly I set my printer to a middling quality, I could have set it higher, but with that comes a longer print time 10 hours seemed long enough and I am impatient. I meant to get up early this morning and totally failed to do so! I only set the printer going at 11.00 am so I wanted it before I went to bed. Yesterday I was up to near as damn 2.00 am waiting for the pyramid to print. I think they are pretty awesome. Both are €12.50 in the online shop, but I got mine in the humble bundle so came in at a fraction of the cost. The thousand dollar question is would I buy them full price. Probably yes, depending on finances at the time. The MDF ones shown above were a whole lot cheaper, but and it’s a big but… these are a a whole lot more detailed and I can scale them up or down, not to mention print out two dozen if I wanted to. The temple is pretty much a single centre piece (but the separate heads are really useful to add as Scatter). I would still go for it as I couldn’t get anything as nice in resin or plastic for the same price. There was a nice resin temple for fish tanks in my local pet shop. It was nice, overgrown etc but it was £25 so even mooching about for other things still works out more expensive.

Once I get better at the 3D modelling, these could be distressed and damaged prior to printing which means even more things that can be done for the price.

So all in all, definitely worth the money. Something near to 16 hours print time, but still way faster than anything I could get delivered from the mainland.

So here they both are with a base of Scalians for Scale.

I dropped both of these to 60%. I might do another pyramid but print it full size. I reckon that would be a bit impressive on the table.

My next conundrum is how to base them, if at all. Temples like these would be part of a larger complex. A table of pyramids and temples would be cool, but it would be an absolute nightmare to try and store safely.

I could go for something like my HOTT stronghold here Temple Completed I did this on a smaller courtyard… like I say something to ponder. Tomorrow I intend to finish of painting the Scalians, print off some more bits and bobs – including some 25% sized jaguar heads to make some form of pathway to the temple and then make a start on my Tin Soldier Aztecs.

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Scalians… Something a Little Different

What with one thing and another today then I never got anything painted. Technically I went into work today to clear out my desk before starting the new job and ended up chatting to colleagues who I haven’t seen for about 10 weeks so… I will need to go in and sort out my desk another time. I then went out this evening with some of my colleagues for our regular catch up meal, just back in to get this written up.

Modelling wise my day wasn’t wasted. I got thinking of the Scalian Forces and how they would need themed terrain. So off I went to look on Thingiverse. It was then that I remembered my humble bundle I bought way back in March. Something was making me think that there were Jungly things in the pack. I fired up the computer and had a look.

Apologies for the naff photo, but it was moving quite quick and the iPad couldn’t keep up. I found two pyramids, a jaguar temple of the moon and various scatter pieces too.

The other thing I found were some 3D printable Lizardmen. I took a guess at reducing the size to 70% and I ended up with this size.

You can’t really see him properly as he is black PLA but he does fit in nicely with the general figure. He will be joined by a few more to make a unit of larger lizard warriors akin to Kroxigor in Warhammer.

I also printed off some carved disks. Because I printed them flat the detail isn’t as good as it could be had I done them vertically. Problem with a circle is that it needs a whole lot of support to go vertical.

So no painting done but still something to show at the end of the day. The lizard is from Fat Dragon Games and for the life of me I cannot remember the maker of the terrain stuff. Lizard took 45 minutes to print, whilst the pyramid is just over 6 hours.

The jaguar temple is going to be nearer 10 hours. I will set it away tomorrow morning and see what appears at the end of the day.

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Scalians…Almost There

I managed a fair bit today, only really the shields and cross guards on the swords to do.

I even painted the bases and I really, really detest basing things. Tomorrow I will paint the edges too before I get any kind of flock down.

I was a little concerned that the grey would stick out like a sore thumb beside the green ones, but to be honest I don’t think they are too bad. One thing I need to do is do a bit of highlighting on the fur on the big beastie saddle.

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Next up…. Scalians

Well I made it home at 08.00 this morning. Managed about three hours sleep last night. The seats in the bar aren’t exactly the most comfortable, but at least I could lie down… certainly beats the floor.

So this afternoon I managed a smidge of painting.

I redid the green on the bows and still missed a bit as seen by the photo. This has brow been rectified! I also gave their bellies a lighter green and then painted the flights on the arrows white then used a red on them. The red will be the common colour for all units.

The swords at the back were given a coat of grey contrast paint. Obviously they came out of a different spawning pool to the bows, these have got shields to attach to the arm. When I am ready to attach 5he shields I will scrape away the paint where the shield will go, this will ensure a metal to metal bond. The shields and or loin cloths will be where the red goes on these.

Tomorrow I will get some more done on these.

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8 hours to go…

Well that is the holiday over, apart from an 8 hour journey home.

Orkney has been great, but I knew I shouldn’t have mentioned I was there, it rained and the tents flooded. We had to spend £55 to get in the hostel for an evening.

Anyway some photos…

Precursor to the Churchill barrier, one if the actual barrier to the left of the photo.

Tomb of the Eagles

Ness of Brodgar, top photo shows the 4 metre wide wall, middle one shows an unusual and very large rectangular Neolithic building. The bottom shows the extent of the excavations to date, but basically based on geophysics, every bit of the grass that can be seen has a structure under it. Not bad for buildings 5000 years old.

They were importing goods from as far away as Cumbria (and beyond, I just can’t remember where else 🙄)

These are the stones of Stenness – these predate Stonehenge. A tenant farmer tried to blow these up with dynamite but was stopped by the local population! The two concrete blocks mark where another couple of stones stood. In 1906 one if the stones below that had fallen was replaced by 8 men and a wooden scaffold. For scale these are about 15 feet (5 metres high)

The ring of Brodgar, a famous Orkney land mark. These stones differ from the ones above in that they are not dug in as deep. They come from 19 different parts of Orkney and current thinking is that they are so shallow (around 30cm) as they were meant to be taken down and replaced by other stones. The ditch was cut into bed rock with Neolithic tools of antler picks!

I will be back in operation tomorrow evening.

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Orkney Day 2

Well the weather here has been awesome up to this evening, it has clouded over as the day drew on. Yesterday we had some Neolithic and Viking/Norse shenanigans. Today we had more pre history with a visit to the Tomb of the Eagles followed by some more Viking/Norse remains, not to forget a run along the Churchill barriers.

No pictures as my phone camera is totally shot and their is no internet at the campsite to upload pics either.

Hobby wise I have been doing so more reading on the Sudan campaign to save Gordon. Eventually I will run the campaign to do so from Suakin on the Red Sea.

We will be using my 10mm Pendraken forces and terrain to fight. The idea is that players will be officers of her majesty playing against an Umpire or two. I like the Science versus pluck rules so will use them.

The general commanding will have to organise supplies and request troops etc prior to the campaign. They will aim to reach Berber where the campaign will end.

Anyone who wants a non combat role can be a reporter for the Times.

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Off Island…

Weather for the journey South is rather pleasant

Bressay just disappearing into the Haa (sea mist)

Here we are passing the end of the Shetland mainland…

I took photos of Puffins from over there.

Four hours to go before we get off!