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Cough, Cough, Cough!!

I feel the need to shout Unclean loudly and paint a cross on the door, the Nasty cough has come back big time – so instead of trying to paint intricate details on something 15mm tall I decided to shove some paint on something nearer 100mm tall instead.

I threw a lighter grey dry brush on these. It’s a bit heavy to be honest, but I am going up a few lighter shades and then add some colour to the eyes, tongue and associated metalwork.

Car is in the garage, which according to my wife was a hoot. She phoned them up to ask if they could get it in, they said they could most certainly pick it up from where it was parked … then hung up before asking for a name, the registration number or where it was parked. Luckily when the keys were dropped off, they were accompanied by a note giving the necessary info.

Regarding the printer, it is probably the motherboard or something like the cables to the motherboard. I have contacted the manufacturer through Amazon and we shall see where that leads.

It has done really well up to yesterday and I have printed lots of things. I only wish I had done more German tanks earlier on. But as I said yesterday I have got just about enough German stuff to make for a game, or indeed, I could use some of the French tanks as captured equipment. I have got enough buildings to see me into the game and to be honest I can scratch build rooftops with card if necessary to add in any more.

Hills are easy peasy so all systems are go. Just got to paint everything next.

Out of interest, I have just staggered into the lounge and my family are looking like this…

Should I be worried?

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Tanks…Absolutely No Progress

Well technically there was some progress the Panzer 38T got about 6 millimetres high before the bloody printer went and died on me.

It is, to coin a German phrase, Kerfucktenbuggered! What makes it worse is that I had just found a source of short barrelled Early Stug III not to mention armoured cars, M3’s trucks and the like… to put it mildly I am a bit miffed.

Thankfully I have got enough stuff to run a game, but not enough to have a second set to give away.

To compound my misery further my voice keeps cracking I now sound like a child whose voice is cracking and then my Wife’s car broke down in Lerwick so I had to go and pick her up, popped into the shop to get some things and good old Dale the assistant had to chat, so Captain Helium had to explain what he had been up to today.

On the up side, the garage phoned me up today to say the part they evidently ordered errr before I went to Orkney (round about the start of August) has now turned up! It is booked in next Tuesday.

I now have to decide whether to investigate to see what went kaput on the printer or get it sent back to Amazon as luckily it is less than a year old.

I will let you know how I get on.

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More Tanks… or Technically ‘More Tank’

The printer has been chugging away for three hours and four minutes this evening producing the first of the Stug III.

I am not sure what happened, but the barrel has had a bit of a wobble and has a melted lump near the middle. It seems solid enough though.

As can be seen from the photo above, I decided to give the statues a coat of dark grey. Once this layer is dry I will dry brush up through lighter shades of grey.

I didn’t get much more done as I have caught a lurgey from the kids in school. My voice has gone and I am alternating between coughing my guts up and sneezing. All in all feeling sorry for myself.

So to cheer me up please direct me to a picture of the back end of a Stug as I am not sure what is support that needs removing and what is AFV that needs to stay.

Tomorrow I will print off more AFV’s

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More Tanks…Update

Hurrah, the laptop is back and tonight has been spent slicing tanks.

Somewhere I have a set of pre sliced tanks but I cannot find them…

Sliced up and ready for printing are the following:

MkIII with a long 50mm

38T

MKII

Early Stug with and without schurtzen

I still need to slice a MkIV

I also sliced a Churchill… sadly it is a MKIII, I couldn’t find a MK1… well I could, but it was 1/72 instead of 1/100. I decided against the A10 etc as who in their right mind would want to play with one.

Just for fun, I also sliced a kubelwagen, an Austin 10 staff car and an Austin 7 Tilly. The latter is printing now.

So the allied force looks like this…

This will be split into two equal sets, one for me and one for the prize. I will print either two or four Churchill’s (I haven’t decided yet – they take over three hours each to print).

As for the Axis so far:

Yeah the Tiger would splat the allied tanks on its own, but it is for me. I might do a me against all comers with a Tiger, which might be fun…

The Panther is obviously in the wrong timeframe, but so far two MkIII’s a MkIV and two 38T’s (the MKII is a bit confused as I have a track from a C and a D on it… at least you can’t see both sides at the same time.

The buildings are mostly glued together too.

I have another half dozen that need roofs. I will have to get them printed off too. The scale is off with them, the seem more 1/72 than 1/100. In hindsight I should have reduced the size a bit more, but too late now.

The Tilly has just finished printing and here she is…

I will see what other non tracked vehicles are available, I really want a 222 as they are my all time favourite AFV.

Right I can go to bed now that the print has finished. It took a total of 1 hour 24 minutes to complete.

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More Tanks… Again….

So today involved some more tanks and giving them a spray of white undercoat so that I can use the airbrush to get some colour on. So I now have six Matilda, three Char B and four Somua (technically I have four and a bit Char B, but I need to print another turret before it is finished).

Things took slightly longer as the Somua in the middle had a bit of an accident. As I was stripping away the support I managed to pull both tracks off as well as the back off the turret. This is probably due to damp getting into the PLA causing it not to stick as well. I just need to find out what colours I have and what colours I need before I can get these painted.

I also ended up listening to this…

I remember doing a lot of Vietnam wargaming, primarily with Esci 20mm plastics and using Bodycount rules.

I then bought some 1/200 scale kit at a convention then kind of went off it again until, funnily enough, joining the Shetland club. I ran an RPG based on an Alpha team in the highlands of Vietnam. We had a hoot. Five players… a four man Alpha team and a Kit Carson scout. As all of my stuff had gone, I went for cardboard troops and flats for vehicles.

I still have the card figures…

Hopefully my good lady will bring the laptop back with her soon so that I can start on some more Germans. The other thing I will need to print are some more roofs for the buildings. Hopefully I have some suitable desert colours for the allies.

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Tanks…and yet More Tanks

So nothing painted today, but a few more tanks printed…

So here we have six Matilda, three Somua, three Char B, a Honey, a whippet and a very outnumbered MKII. I am part way through printing another Char. I have got some more early British cruiser tanks ready to go, but for that I need the laptop as they are stored on it’s hard drive.

These are destined for Games day next month. I still need to print some more honeys and some more whippets (possibly) then go daft printing more German tanks.

Each tank is taking about an hour and a half to an hour and forty five to print. Not the fastest thing to get on the bed, but to be honest some of the stuff I have printed took ten hours so by comparison these are speedy.

The buildings are already done and have been for months… April to be exact…

https://bogenwaldblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/08/desert-house-5-update/

Evidently way back in March was the last time I printed any tanks.

https://bogenwaldblog.wordpress.com/2019/03/11/printing-tanks-ii/

The rules I will be using are ‘What a Tanker’

I decided on these thanks to Mark in the States who ran some games at various conventions and his local club I think too. He must be very persuasive on his blog as I have Sharp Practice and couldn’t get on with it at all.

I purchased them and liked their simplicity…As Mark pointed out… very easy rules for a participation game.

My plan is to basically print and paint two forces, plus a couple of small villages. One shall be for the Games day and the other is as a give away. Shetland is trying to get our own MRI scanner so my plan is that if people make a donation to the cause then they get a raffle ticket to win the second set. I will have to check all of the ins and outs of this. I was going to contact the guys to see if They would donate another second set of rules to go with the tanks and terrain. I think I have probably run out of time now…

I would have printed out some German tanks, but sadly my good lady had wandered off with the laptop and forgot to bring it back.

So tomorrow, if the laptop returns then I will print out a whole pile more tanks from both sides. I might print out some armoured cars, just fir the hell of it. My favourite being the German 222. Not sure why but it is most certainly my favourite armoured car.

We shall see how many tanks (if any) I get done tomorrow…

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Random Stuff…Lizards…Again

So tonight I did a smidge more painting, I painted 4 Lizardmen.

Basically the four grey ones. Whilst feeling quite pleased with myself, I suddenly remembered that I had all of the mesoamerican terrain to paint too. I don’t know why I hadn’t remembered the statues as I have to move them every time I open the paint box lid.

It was a nice drive over to work from a meeting in Lerwick today.

Tomorrow I intend to make a start on the tanks. It was my intention to print some more off this evening, but sadly my good lady forgot to bring our laptop home with her so I couldn’t get any sliced.

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Random Stuff…Lizardmen

Not much done tonight… I am somewhat fatigued… didn’t get in until 19.00 so quite a long day…

Anyway tonight I worked on and pretty much finished the larger blue Lizardmen. The Leviadon blue is a bit dark so I did some dry brushing to lighten them up a bit (not that you can really see in the photo). The shoulder guards are actually bone coloured, but look metallic in this photo.

Tomorrow I will do the last two bases of the grey lizards. This weekend I am going to have to get going on desert war tanks as it is only a month (probably less) to the Games day and I still have loads to print and paint, not to mention building terrain etc.

The Orca were back round Shetland today, some amazing footage here…please be warned it does involve another seal hunt …https://www.shetnews.co.uk/2019/09/19/watch-as-seal-captured-on-video-being-flipped-into-air-by-orca/

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Random Stuff… Samurai (plus Textured Contrast Paint)

I have pretty much finished the Samurai, apart from all of the white I have noticed in the photo. I also repainted some white in on the lizards.

To be honest these were a joy to paint, a whole lot longer to do than the Aztecs or Conquistadors but still really easy to do especially with the Contrast Paint. As with the two other armies I am going for speed over excellence. That is not to say that I am not trying, but there is no shading or highlighting as I want to see how I get on without all of the extra bits – lazy…possibly but I am getting armies done in weeks rather than months or potentially years – possibly not at all.

Take the Aztecs, I bought them in February and never touched them I gave them a go with Contrast paint and that was them done, I purchased more and got the new lot done in just over a week.

As for textured paint –

Now, as you all probably know, Contrast Paint is a high pigment thin paint. Tonight I achieved the next iteration of the range. I am calling it Contrast Plus. It is textured contrast paint…

the reason being this…

My daughter very kindly gave me some of her home economics baking. It was indeed very nice, sadly a piece fell off straight into my pot of yellow paint. I think I pretty much fished it all out…only time will tell.

Today I spent two hours filling in a form to tell the Scottish Government that I had 4 pupils in my school’s nursery class. One of the questions wanted me to give an age of a pupil that wasn’t accurate based on the date of birth. The child was three plus seven months, however according to the dates they gave on the form she was actually meant to be four. By the end I was doubting my own ability to add up.

So I phoned up the support person who said that I really should fill it in based on the dates they gave, if I had done then it would have been inaccurate. In the end I filled it in my way, poor bloke, I must have phoned him up a half dozen times, luckily he was an ex colleague who knows I wasn’t just being an arse. The rest of the day was sorting out a school Website as we don’t have one…. ahh the dizzy heights of school management!

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Random Stuff… Samurai

A bit pooped tonight, so not much done.

I did however manage to get some paint onto the Samurai.

These are going to be as colourful as the Aztecs I reckon.

I was having a look at the HOTT lists and indeed, they have a Japanese Epic list. These are based on a legendary history, not to mention the films of Kurosawa.

Not exactly the most exciting list 😂….

Blades (Samurai)

Riders (mounted Samurai)

Shooters (err shooty Japanese types)

Hordes (Ashigsru or peasants) Personally I would have the Ashigaru as spears

Sneakers (Ninja – what else)

Lurkers (Ronin or Bandits)

I could fantasy-ise it by adding things like a Gashadokuro… basically a giant Skeleton who is made up of the bones of people who died of starvation or were unburied after a battle… not a nice chap, he bites the head of lone travellers and drinks their blood…

I could go for a unit if Oni = trolls or ogres (possibly demons), normally shown as being red.

Luckily Alternative Armies has a whole range of Japanese monsters in their Sengoku monster hunter range.

Thinking about it, and on a totally different note, I really should start printing and painting tanks for the Games Day in October!

I will make a start on them this weekend.