Posted on by maenoferren22 · 3 Comments

North African Buildings

I decided to have a go printing some buildings.Both of these came from Thingiverse.

The one on the left is from Jonnybrokenbones, I have this one and a two story one from him too.

The one on the right is a free sample from a set by Terrain4Print:

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/216710/Modular-arabic-village?manufacturers_id=11761

Now what can we say about them. Both of the took about two and a half hours.

The one from Jonny is a nice simple design with a roof that drops in. It doesn’t have a door (it is from the other house) I just stood one up against the hole to see what it looked like. It has a full base too. This one is designed for 15mm miniatures.

The other one by Terrain 4 Print was a reduced sized from 28mm. I dropped it down to 60% size. This one is a hollow shell with a complete separate roof just below the exposed beams.

It comes with separate doors and window shutters. In the free one it comes with a domed roof too. This one is really well detailed. It can’t be seen that well in the basic black PLA, but the render has ‘fallen off’ in a few places. The roof is also textured.

I checked up on the bought version…Basically 6 different buildings and a couple of separate walls (however if they are mirrored then it takes it up to 12).

Now if I were a total skinflint I could make 4 ‘free’ buildings from this set, plus another few free ones from Thingiverse. But you know what, of the two I really do like the one from Terrain4Print. A lot of work has gone into the design of these buildings and it only seems fair that I help out the designer. I will purchase the set of six and tip the other designer from Thingiverse.

I want these for a desert themed board for ‘What a Tanker’ If you look at the pic below you can see how big the buildings are compared to both a tank and a 15mm figure.

I reckon I will reduce the size down a bit more to 50% as the buildings look just a bit too big still.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 5 Comments

Somuaaaaaaaaa

Somua ah ah

Print the tank and drink your tea…..

Somua ah ah print the tank and make coffee…

sorry was listening to Black Lace there….

Anyway tis’ done.

Here he is the little rascal, all printed and ready to go.

I moved positions on the build plate and he worked fine. I did manage to rip the back of the turret off when I was removing the support struts…which was quite a pain in the backside. You can just about see the line. I now have two Char B and the Somua.

I would like some of the little Renault FT tanks if I can find some.

I would have printed up another Somua or a Panzer MKII or even a British MKVI Light tank (or was it a MKIV) but decided to print up a small desert house. It is 2 hours into a 3 hour print. I have also got a two story one but that will take over 5 hours to print.

I managed to get some more paint onto the dwarves…

Still a long way to go but getting there.

I actually haven’t opened the submarine game box all evening. How about that for self control😖

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 5 Comments

So Excited!!!

It has arrived!

As it was only my second Kickstarter I was worried that something horrible was going to happen, but nope, a couple of months delay and it is here.

The sub is 90cm long and comes with 16 crew miniatures.

Colours relate to player roles:

White – captain

Blue – first officer

Green – navigator

Brown – chief engineer.

I also got a plethora of Kickstarter goodies… resin parts for the sub as well as equipment and condition tokens. These include leaks, fires etc.

There are some nice plotting sheets, I.D. Sheet and an enigma code sheet.

Each player gets a baseboard and crew roster board, this is double sided to show first and second watch.

Lots of counters 😂

But the ship ones are replaced by the resin ones I got….

These little ships are plotted on the squared part of the Navigator board above. His target track device can be seen in the three disks above (this needs assembling).

The sub itself needs to be punched out then assembled. It will fit inside the box as it comes in three segments.

If I felt the urge I could add in my own insignia

I reckon it might take a while to decide on which one.

Finally the game works with a downloadable app that works in real time…

Based on the rules this is not a ‘learn it in a night’ kind of game, and it isn’t meant to be. The rules aren’t actually that complicated, but as an example, the Navigator has to understand, enemy course and bearing bearing as well as his own course. He/she must be able to plot a suitable firing solution…

Each assigned tole has a cheat sheet and it also comes with a tactical guide of 18 pages covering

The Rules themselves are only 50 pages, so not a hefty tome by any stretch of the imagination. There are also videos of gameplay and rules support online.

The production value on this game is excellent. I am not sure how the Kickstarter version differs from the retail one. But they certainly cracked their target. They were after £65,000 and ended up with £686,000. So a very successful campaign.

Am I excited, yes I am. I even forgive the delivery guys for not shutting the back door properly. Luckily it didn’t rain and the sheep didn’t get in and the the dog didn’t escape.

It does however mean that I have even less chance of finishing off my elves 😱

I have a crew planned for an inaugural mission coming soon.

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Printing Tanks II

So tonight I decided to get the Somua S35 completed.

A nice French Medium tank…

Nice flowing lines etc….

Sadly I returned to this!

To be fair there are some nice flowing lines in there too…it must have popped off the bed the second I left the room. Interestingly enough. I tried again, instant failure. I decided to give another Matilda a go…

Worked fine, I went for another Char B… last time I looked at it an hour in, all systems were go.

The one that failed was front left, the ones that succeeded rear left. It could be that the front left has lost the level or that it is a bit greasy. Either way I will give it a wash and a re level tomorrow.

As can be seen from the photo above the Char B came out spot on! Below is how it came off the plate.

As with some of the other tanks the 37mm gun was a little fragile and snapped off.

So tomorrow we try the Somua again (possibly in a different place 🤔).

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Printing Tanks

A Matilda to start with….

A picture of how it came off the plate.

You can really see the support network to help it print properly. I have always printed it vertically before (like the turret). This is the first time on the tracks and to be honest, there is less chance of it getting knocked over, the down side is a lot more waste.

Here you can see the stuff that has been pulled away from both bits…weight wise not really very much, it just adds to the time required.

And finally… here she is all trimmed up and ready for a run into the paint shop.

I am printing off a CharB just now with a Somua to follow.

To be honest I don’t know what theatre of operations or date to go for. At the cost of these I can print of a fair few different ones and see what catches my fancy.

I did consider the desert war. The advantages are that I have some palm trees etc as well as some 6mm buildings. I also have a terrain mat and some desert style hills.

I reckon I can print some 15mm buildings and off I go!

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 6 Comments

More Dwarves

Well, I finished my first three dwarves and took them outside for a photo shoot…

I then decided to print a couple more to see if I could make them look a bit different.

I think I achieved my goal of changing their look. The beard and fur was made from Greenstuff the plastic bits and bobs are from the original Mordheim plastic sprue.

I added a bit to the back too…

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Painting Dwarves

Well I got a bit more paint on the printed dwarves and they are beginning to get there.

I am quite pleased with them so far. Once they are shaded and highlighted a bit more then I think They will look spiffy 😉

I will try and get them finished tomorrow.

I have now found my theme tune (after a crap week at work… well actually make that a fair few months)… please do not listen if you are easily offended. It is very rude!

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Friday’s Forgotten Forces

Well another Friday has arrived and it was another freezing cold foray into the shed to depress myself at how much untouched stuff is in there.

Today we have Skelingtons, as my kids used to call them

Command units, cavalry and spears…

Next up missile troops and zombies (and half a chariot)…

And finally the swords…

I must have started on these a year and a half ago at least. I got them as another force to play HOTT with my daughter and they kind of got forgotten about. They are now in the big shed where I do my painting so hopefully they will get finished sometime soon… 🤞

These came from Alternative armies from their 15mm HOT fantasy list.

These have a nice skeletal bagpiper as part of the command group… question is how does he play it without any lungs… to be fair I am being a little trite… I am willing to accept reanimated corpses shuffling about, but not magical bagpipes. It is simply one of those things that niggle me 🤔

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Painting Again

I managed a smidge more painting tonight.

I really think I have too much on the go at once…

I spent 5 minutes looking for the Superglue in the middle of the photo!

I would have got further but we had a bit of Dad/daughter quality time shouting at each other when we kept dying in the Lord of the Rings … War in the North 😱