So after forgetting to print a bit, not to mention printing the wrong bits too, I managed to get the house finished. I have two thatched roof options…
This one isn’t a bad size…for the skirmish type games the roof comes off so that miniatures can be placed inside…
Tomorrow I will print of a different house and make a little farmstead.
Didn’t get as much done as I would have liked tonight. I kind of got side tracked into doing nothing much really, but anyway Progress is progress…
I also printed off some carts, one is full of rice bales…
Hopefully tomorrow I will get more done, on the upside the rest of my Samurai order arrived…on the downside the rest of my Samurai order arrived. There are quite a few! Probably 50 Samurai with various weapons, about 30 Ashigaru and a dozen monks, mounted and on foot. Oh and a general and entourage.
So whilst watching Big Hero 6 this evening I managed to get these pretty much done, well apart from the bases.
I also managed to print the small farmhouse. It does look a bit on the large side, but I will show it tomorrow when the roof has printed overnight.
Yesterday I did a couple of test prints to see how the scale was looking. The fence was a bit on the large side and the buffalo a bit on the small side…See here .
So today I dropped the fence from 60% to 50%…
This seems to be better. It looks more like a farm fence than a zoo fence. I messed up by adding supports to it, so it took the same amount of time as the bigger one. These two bits took 44 minutes.
The next thing I did was to increase the buffalo from 60% to 70%…
The cows look okay too, perhaps a bit on the large side, might try 65% or perhaps I will just leave them as is. They are stage dressing for a war game table so they should be fine.
Actually when I look at the 60% water buffalo on the base with the miniatures then it doesn’t look too bad actually.
So right now I am printing off a farm house with a thatched roof. It is done at the 50% sizing. It might be a bit big for a war game dwelling when one miniature equals a number of real people. We shall see.
The advantage of having the STL’s is that I can faff around with the sizes. I want to make a 15mm Force or two for my Ronin rule sets. If the house is too big for a multi base war game then it should be fine fir a skirmish game.
The building will take four hours for the walls and then another four plus fir the roof.
So tonight I got my STL’s through from 3D Alienworlds . They are really nice files but designed for 28mm. So I decided to drop them down to 60%.
First up we have the bamboo fences.
Now I am not sure whether these are still a bit big. I would really be interested to hear what other people think.
Just for fun I printed up some water buffalo…
Funnily enough where I think the fence might be too big then I think the buffalo is a bit on the small side.
Tomorrow I will try and get some stuff painted (some more should be here by the end of the week). I will also give the fences a go at 50% . I got the farm and farm houses, wooden and stone fences so will have enough to keep me busy for a while with the printer.
Well I used the last of my white spray paint to get these undercoated…
The coloured ones are my test pieces that came with my Aztecs ages ago. I did however manage some painting this evening. I decided to start on the easy ones and went for the peasants.
Still a fair old way to go, but at least I managed to make a start.
I also found someone who does STL’s for Japanese terrain, so I spent a bit of cash and got a few sets.. mainly rural farm stuff. Hopefully I can get some of it test printed tomorrow .
Ooh I forgot why my huge two Dragon Samurai army never got their back banners… tonight I remembered!
Their helmet rims stopped them running up the back so instead I had to angle them into bits of the body where they could have some form of connection (rather than a couple of mm where it touched the helmet). I put 22 on and it took for evvvvvvver! There is more glue on me than there is on the miniatures. But never mind, these are done (guess who forgot to get any more from Tin Soldier! So it looks like it will be pins and paper for all of the foot Samurai and Ashigaru.
Some how I believed that the amount I got would be enough. Yeah right… 30 is just about enough for the cavalry, the 15 Ashigaru are going to have to wait for theirs.
The other thing I did was to add various weapons to the peasants. As with most things the weapons wouldn’t go in the gap for their hands… superglue saw to that… eventually!
My original plan to get these glued and sprayed today fell short. I will get them sprayed tomorrow and see how I get on from there.
Tonight I decided to get all of the Samurai I had put onto their bases. And … because I am me, I have just ordered some more! Well there weren’t enough foot Samurai or mounted monks or…. yeah I think you get the picture!
This lot is DBA army list 127. But because I am me everything goes on 30×40 for cavalry and all infantry on 20×40 apart from the horde who use the cavalry bases. Makes buying bases in bulk a doddle 😂.
On the left we have five bases of Ashigaru archers, with a base of Ashigaru and monks in front of them. Next big block are the peasants led by a monk (well I had one figure spare). In front of them is a champion and General. Next up a set of three bases of cavalry and then three of mounted archers with a unit of Ninja next (well you just have to don’t you 😱).
I have still to add the Sashimono to everything as well as put the various improvised weapons into the hands of the peasants.
The army is from Tin Soldier. I do like the style of these. They are a little cartoony for some people but they do work for me… the Ninja are Battle Valour Games. Luckily the UK supplier is a mate of mine and he had some in stock to buy (handy when he lives on Shetland). They fit in quite well scale wise.
The other thing I did today was to print some of the funky trees. These were done at 75% and 50% of the full size. They are shown next to the unfinished full sized one from yesterday.
I am printing a full sized one again just now. It will finish after midnight which is a bit of a pain. The 75% one took just under 3 hours and the smaller one just under an hour and a half to print. I did add a raft to help get them off the bed so they would have been quicker without.
Tomorrow I will use the remainder of my white spray to get the Samurai undercoated.
Today a little surprise came… Once again I totally forgot that I had pre ordered something.
As I have a whole host of 15mm FIW I thought I would get a set of rules that I could use with them.
Because I am stingy I didn’t purchase the cards, probably should have done. I thought they might have had them in the back of the book so that I could photocopy them… there aren’t any.
I did try Sharp Practice, but didn’t really get on with it.
So some of my FIW miniatures are below.
This is a rewrite of the post I did last night. Somehow it disappeared. If truth be told, it might have been a case of user error as I was tired and hurrying to get it finished before midnight! Update, having just nearly done it again, it is not a good idea to hit discard draft instead of update draft.
On the non hobby front, I ended up with two new jobs. The first was in the back end of May being a temporary Deputy Head Teacher (vice Principal) of one of our two High Schools. This was a secondment until I started on as the Head Teacher of one of our small Primary schools. In June and July this had a massive knock on effect on both my painting and blogging. In June I managed only six posts and about ten in July, partly for being knackered and secondly we went on our hols to Orkney. Since the start of August I have blogged every day for 148 days straight.
To be honest in the vast majority of those days I have managed to paint something, sometimes whole units and other times I might have managed to paint a bit of braid on a couple of miniatures. I have also tried to show a bit of where I live as well as giving the odd interesting story from Shetland.
So anyway, what have I painted this year?
Probably not as much as I would have liked, but yeah, life and work sometimes gets in the way. To be fair, I reckon that the use of this paint has speeded up my rate of getting things painted.
These are a case in point…
All done in a Harry Potter film. From white undercoat to Finished in one sitting isn’t too shabby, to be fair they weren’t the most complicated of miniatures to finish .
So onto the quasi list….
4 DBA/DBM\HOTT Armies
I really noticed the difference in painting these. Way back into last January I made a start on the 10mm Wood Elf Army. This was done in two parts, the first part was painted in regular GW/AP paint and took forever, there were a few posts on how slow they were. And I quote “nearly lost the will to live but pushed through the barriers of whatever was stopping me getting on with them.” The second part (See below) was done with Contrast paint and it really, really speeded things up. These were done in about 4 hours over a weekend.
I also painted up:
A Conquistador Force
An Aztec Army
A Scalian Army
I also painted up various other random 10 and 15mm minis I had lying around.
again, Contrast paint made all the difference.
I painted a whole load of infantry for Starship Troopers as well as the odd Bug
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A lot of September was printing and painting tanks and making/printing terrain
for the Games Day
Later on again in terms of 28mm, I managed to get both forces from Beastgrave painted…
Some troops and nasties for Aliens
I also painted more troops for Flintloque
And finally onto some Harry Potter minis and some GW minis too
This is not an exhaustive list, I have painted various other bits and pieces of 3D printed stuff too as well as other miniatures.
The 3D Printer has been busy this year, it has gone through three rolls of filament.
Well done if you have managed to make it to the end of this post
So rather than say what I am planning for next year, I will leave that for another post tomorrow.
Bogenwald 