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The Empire Musters

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.

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The Dwarves Assemble

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.

I will let you know how we get on tomorrow.

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More Bang for your Buck

Today has been busy, busy, busy. I have hit the holidays running in terms of jobs around the house and garden. I can now see almost all of the floor in the big shed, which is quite an achievement.I did, however, have time to hit print a couple of times. so first up is the organ gun with dwarf crew (with stolen doggies from a different set)…

The dogs are ready for their game of fetch…

The second thing printed is the first pair of Reiters….

The second pair is printing now, I made a simple change by mirroring these two and changing the pistol hand. That is the beauty of Reiters, they have pistols on both sides of the saddle so can easily be firing left or right handed.

Tomorrow I will print a third pair to give me a unit of six. I will then think about some with a carbine.

I have been looking at Renaissance flags too and have a nice photo library of what I like. The dwarf banners are going to be plane coloured I think. With any distinguishing features on the shield and disk… this of course may change by time I come to paint them. Probably some form of Runic lettering.

In case you are wondering, I made some progress on the Samurai … in that I got them out, went…nahhh and then put them away again. I looked at them this evening, I didn’t yesterday so definitely some progress.

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A Night with the Printer

Tonight I decided to sort out the wash and cure pot of rather grubby ISO. This involved straining it through a funnel with a filter in. This got slower as the filter got gunked up more. I have my two settling jars, which actually work really well…. I just poured this straight into them. These leave a horrible sludge at the bottom, but I managed to get over half a litre of pretty clear ISO out of them. These are now refilled and I also have nearly a litre in a used bottle.

The Sludge is now sitting in the shed roof to get blasted by the sun. Once it cures then I will bin it.

I managed to get some more dwarves printed too. Here they are with the front rank…

I tried shrinking down the Iain Lovecraft dwarf Landsknecht to add into the dwarf force… but unfortunately, even though I reduced the size, he was still too bulky compared to the others, funnily enough the human version worked fine.

As the temperature has dropped a bit, I nicked the heater out of Esther’s office and stuck it in with the printer. I am printing a couple of sixes of light infantry (one after the other). Then I have a 10lb culvern and artillery crew to print tomorrow. After that another artillery piece and crew. I might actually get around to painting them too!

I knew I was knackered yesterday, I slept for 12 hours last night, I still feel a bit pooped just now. So it won’t be a late night tonight. Hence an early posting.

Tomorrow is the first proper day of leave, so I had better remember to turn off my alarms. I am hoping to get a really good go at the samurai tomorrow. My plan is to get going in the morning with them. I am still missing a bag of cavalry.. luckily I have a pile of leave to tidy up the shed and hunt for it.

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The Dwarves Muster

Tonight I worked a bit more on sorting out the Dwarves. So I now have a unit of crossbows, one of heavy infantry, one of ram cavalry and half a unit of medium infantry.

Part of the infantry force
Ram cavalry with a mounted commander bottom right

I have a few banners like this one too…

Dwarf heavy Infantry

I still have the light infantry to do, they are the ones in the quilted gambeson on the four bottom right miniatures. There are also a unit of hand gunners and an artillery crew too. I actually tried printing them off today along with the three bottom miniatures in the top photo. It would seem that the supports weren’t up to the task, as there was just the support left for the commander and the gunner was missing a leg. The supports were the really light weight ones, so I will do my own ones and see if that helps. You may have noticed that some of the above are a lighter grey. That is because I was running out of the original colour and poured white into the vat whist the print was going on. I have ordered some more grey, but I reckon that I will be having some white miniatures for a while until it arrives.

On a totally different note, what is thought to be the oldest evidence of a shark attack has been found in Japan. https://archit.web.ox.ac.uk/article/reconstruction-oldest-shark-attack-human-tsukumo-shell-mound-japan?fbclid=IwAR3GTHFwN96iBRHDz52dXq8N_C0_9gWiBZsSlBVad-FmeRg-hmbJb6WaVBQ

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A Bit on the Wobbly Side

I have sat for about 45 minutes trying to get the energy to get off my backside. I am hoping that I am not coming down with the thing the rest of the family has got.

For this reason I am having an early night. I am going to head off now and check how the second ram is doing on the printer, but the first one came off perfectly. Here they are…one and two. I thought I would show you the auto supports for the miniature. I tend to do an auto support then add more as necessary. In this case I think I forgot to change to light supports before slicing.

I need six in total for a cavalry unit in Dragon Rampant. These are just the same model reprinted. I will slice some more. They come with a lance, sword and mace as well as having four different bodies. A separate ram is available too. This means I could have mounted infantry. Come to think of it there might be an unarmoured ram too. I honestly cannot remember.

I am printing off another three two handed pole arms. Once these are done then I will count up what I have in terms of bodies and arms and print more arms as necessary.

Today I Went against tradition and actually bought some GW undercoat. I got lead belcher as I thought that I had a lot of armoured models to paint up. I will spray them metal and then paint the cloth and flesh white so that I can use the Contrast paint. I might totally regret this! So I will do one unit and see how I get on with it.

Two more days to go before the summer holidays. We had sports day (indoors) today and are having a leavers presentation tomorrow. Typically it is going to rain tomorrow so we might not be able to let the parents attend. I was doing it outside to allow them to see it… bloody weather has put paid to that.

My new teacher is coming for a visit tomorrow to meet the kids so that is something to look forward to.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 10 Comments

Snow, Printers and Paint

Well the expected snow and wind came and today proved to be a bad day to be a bus driver…

70mph winds and snow, never a good mix. I had t go into town to help my mother in law fix her sink and nearly had the 4WD going sideways too.

I got my first ruined building printed, this came from the Frost Kickstarter by Iain Lovecraft…

I was going to print some other things but sadly, the printer decided it was too cold. The above building comes in three bits, ground, first floor and roof. I am going to add a floor into the second level to allow for miniature placement. The whole thing took 31 hours to print. But as you can see – it is quite large.

I also managed to get some painting done this evening, not a huge amount, but there was Progress happening…

I actually tried to photograph four miniatures here!

I went back over the tentacles and spines on the Nurgle lot with white as well as giving them a layer of Contrast Skeleton bone.

I also spent some time today messing around with the old 3D Builder as well as seeing what the heck I actually had regarding the 3D Printers.

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Painting Success

So yesterday, I said that today I was going to paint something, in fact anything… well I kept to my word and actually did a fair bit. First off I sprayed various things…

Now there were some spaying annoyances to deal with, first off my grey primer turned out to be an etch primer… luckily I realised as it had a different nozzle. I gave it a try on the small ‘goat shed’ to see if it would work. Luckily I had other cans of the basic grey so the rest got done in that. Then I moved on to spaying things white. I warmed up the can, I shook the blazes out of it and it came out like a watered down version. If you look at the right hand photo above you can see what I mean on the green and orange miniatures. It eventually came good on the grey. Now it might just be a bad batch or the coloured plastic needed going over with a different colour first. I sprayed the top of the mini tower white and it seemed to work fine. I will have another play with things tomorrow.

I also managed to get these three just about finished…

I need to sort out the bases, but apart from that they are done. I really enjoyed painting them to be honest.

I also got a bit more done on the Genestealer cultists as well as some other bits and bobs, mainly the original scouts…

I also got the hole in the roof finished too, so hopefully the leak of leakyness has buggered off, only time and heavy rain will tell.

Tomorrow I have the tyres to change on the car, but I am also hoping to get a start on the lighting and then ceiling insulation.

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Madame Rides off into the Sunset

Well I got a bit of time today so I managed to get her to the almost finished stage. There are a couple of white bits that need sorting but that is about it.

I will get the grass attached to the horse hoof painted and then also add some tufts too.

Also managed to get my Nobori finished too…

As well as sorting out some more on the knight’s mount and the nids…

So I buggered my ribs again and have promised the family if they still hurt tomorrow that I will go and get them checked in A&E. Some pillock left the car lights on yesterday and foolishly tried to push it to allow for a downhill start…problem was I had to push it up hill in the car park first!

I will get my first Covid Jab on Monday morning. Looks like things are heading in the right direction. I am already doing a test twice a week so I know I don’t have the Lurgy (well I didn’t on Thursday).

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Madame is Getting There

Well it has been slow on the painting front of late, but tonight I worked on various bits and pieces and managed to get paint on a few things.

The main thing I worked on was Madame…

There is still the glaze to go over the yellow. I managed to pretty much hide the big gap, there is now a dip, but it could be a joint in the cloth.

I also got some work done on the cultists as well as the gold design on the other side of the knight’s horse.

I got the kids to watch Galaxy Quest with me this evening, they really enjoyed it. So did I, it had popped up on Netflix and as such I decided to watch it myself yesterday. I enjoyed it so much that I watched it again tonight. Hopefully I will manage to get some more bits and pieces done with the painting. I need some progress as I have a Patreon and two Kickstarter worth of printable miniatures and terrain to land in the next couple of weeks.