Today my new painting light came, my new old one was always a bit too far away frommthe desk top so after watching Luke over at Geek Gaming talking about a one he got then I thought I would give it a punt.
As you can tell by this awesome photo a black,light against a dark background wasn’t exactly a great idea. You can however see the effect of the lighton the work surface. The light comes with three light settings that are dimmable. These are warm, daylight and white. As it is an LED light it runs from a USB plug. This is the one I went for…New light . Interestingly enough it has gone up by £6 since I bought mine less than a week ago.
I used it this evening to get various bits and pieces of 2mm painted up…
Bottom left are the elephants, with chariots to the right. In the back are a mix of Roman infantry and various types of cavalry.
I also got a pile more celts and Romans printed and cured. I also sprayed yesterday’s Romans white ready for painting. The 10mm houses are drying off, but they did come out really well…
To save on resin, I printed these hollow and remembered to put a big drain hole in the bottom. I have another few to do. Thee are 130% larger than the original stl.
I eventually got my Irregular Miniatures order in… it was a right sod as the PayPal bit kept falling over. So hopefully very soon there will be a heavy thud on the doormat.
So I am back with the 2mm again. I have done a lot of slicing today. More Celts, Romans and now Hoplites.
In the past I have sliced various things together like celtic chariots and Roman cavalry. This time I have gone for factions… I did eighteen blocks of hoplites, a mix of celtic infantry and cavalry and then a whole host of Roman troops. This should make things easier to organise when I need more of a certain faction.
I also made a start on my small hill fort…
The chieftain Vitalstatistix surveys his home to be. If this works as a proof of concept then I will make a much bigger one.
And finally I got on with some painting…
Now I know the early Romans weren’t in a uniform, it makes painting them a lot easier. Once dry I will pick out other colours for the tunics. Each legion will have different coloured shields.
Well I am back to work tomorrow, I have managed to get a whole load of things done here. Today I put a new socket in, earlier in the week I got the dishwasher plumbed in. So I am heading back to work for a rest.
Hopefully we are gaming here tomorrow evening. So there might not be much painting happening.
Today, as it is officially the last day if my holiday, I decided to just kick back and do nowt, apart fro shopping, being Dad’s taxi etc… but on the whole I had a chilled out day. I started off by working on the Woodsford the 2mm forces. I decided in some dry brushing and went for an army painter green and mustard yellow with a light Iraqi Sand top coat… I think it came out OK…
I then trimmed the chariots and friends off their supports. Surprisingly there was inky kne chariots casualty… the horses pinged one way and the chariot the other…
So from left to right we have the chariots, a whole horde of slingers and some light cavalry with shield. Next to them are some heavy cavalry… these came with the Romans. And behind them two sets of Romans with printed integral bases, which is why they are painted.
I also did a pile more work in the 6mm Italian buildings. These are pretty much finished apart from some touch ups around the window frames – basically when I painted the models I didt do the inside of the windows.
And finally this evening I downloaded more 2mm troops and just had to print the elephants. These come with either armoured armoured unarmoured elephants both with and without a howdah.
I decided to put a couple of grains of basmati rice in front of them just to show how big they are. The other thing is a 6mm ancient village I got ages ago, same time as the Ancient Galleys in fact… I had no use for it then, but now I have an interest again. So I shrank it down to 30% of its original size.
I am going to scratch build my hill fort, but as this one was sitting there I thought why the heck not.
So still to slice and print from the new stuff are some hoplites or similar, some infantry with an oval shield in a more ragged formation and some other infantry with a crescent shield.
Tomorrow I am going to try and get some of the undercoated Romans painted up.
The Blood and Honour Rules that are in the making have huge forces per base, so basically a legion per base. Now I will see how much they cost and to be honest printing the 2mm stuff in pence per printing session so it wouldn’t be too big a jump to have them as well as something else… Next thing to hunt for are some other suitable rules… someone has mentioned Scutarii as a rule set, but at £28.00 a shot then I want to find it what they play like, before jumping in.
I just remembered that I had Warmaster Ancients, and went to look it out…Strangely they don’t have Carthaginians in any of their lists. They do have celts and Numidians, but not Carthage, which as a major power of the Punic wars then you would think they would be there. Talking of books, I have ordered the WRG Punic wars book… https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1326256564/ref=pe_27063361_487055811_TE_dp_f1
I had this book years ago when I was gaming in the Newcastle club. Time for a reread I thought… especially as I am going to be wargaming the period again.
Right I am off to ogle at some teeny tiny elephants again…
Well we had a good game today, I will get it written up tomorrow… sorry but no spoilers this evening. Did Joe and I or Mr Babbage succeed? The Illustrated Gazette will reveal all tomorrow.
After plumbing in the new dishwasher today I got it installed this evening then set about painting some chariots and light infantry and cavalry.
Cavalry horses need to be a bit lighter I think as the Roman ones back left look a bit dark…
I contacted the miniature designer and he has given me all of his printer settings so I will give the Romans another bash tomorrow.
So after yesterday’s balls up with the Romans I went on a different tack today. First off I made a 3mm base in 3D builder and added two cavalry units to it. It printed off reasonably well apart from a weird bowed back, this is hapf a mil out so can be saved down or something. When I brought it in I realised my MDF bases are 2mm. But as it wasa proof of concept then it worked. Uses more resin, but miniatures come pre supported.
I then decided to try and integral base per unit, this was extremely fiddly and was sort of okay when I tested it at a 45 degree angle. I added the infantry units on their rears with supports, to be honest it was a total mess… I am not sure what went on. So back to the drawing board there. I finished the Gauls that I printed yesterday, some seem to be missing bits so are sitting at about 1.5mm. But as you can see from below it doesn’t really show en masses.
I am not sure on how many men these are meant to represent, but it does look like a fair few. So if I said 200 men to a base then this is a unit of 1000 warriors. It kind of looks like it to my untrained eye.
I also did a proof of concept for some woods using a bit of mdf and some clump foliage.
Today I ordered some light cavalry, skirmishers and some chariots. I will still work in the Romans as it is really beginning to bug me now.
Tonight I tried painting the Roman side of the equation. They painted up absolutely fine, but when I was painting them I noticed that they, for some reason, had a whole more supports. These proved problematic in getting them apart. I also noticed that the horses seemed to be missing some legs. As these are new to me it will take a while to get things right. It is basically 6ml of resin and 45 minutes of time.
As you can see the units are really broken up. I will try again tomorrow and see what I can do. They work better without a base. I have ordered some flexible resin to mix in with my normal stuff. It should help a bit.
Tonight I decided to get my finger out and do some more on the 6mm Samurai. For these actual Samurai I decided to do them lots of different colours from yellow through to black…
We went out today and found some of the lesser spotted Shetland Wallabies and a Shetland Emu…
I also got a couple more untis of the 28mm Renaissance undercoatedtoo. I went for some flagellants and some more pikes.
And finally I have printed a hundred strips of Arqubusiers for Joe and I… incidently we are having another game on Monday afternoon… huzzah!
This evening I managed to get the base ready onto the pikes and other 28mm Renaissance miniatures.
Rubbish photos again!
I also printed off forty arqubusiers, and it was then that my epiphany arrived. If you recall, a week ago I suddenly had an issue printing 6mm miniatures. Today I think I know why… It seems to be the supports, and the way they work. The bases were too close together so they formed a solid and more importantly large base.
I printed an earlier set of models that I had had partial success with and when I went back to check part of the base was hanging off the plate… suction on a large area can cause problems with the print sticking to the FEP instead of the plate…
The sticks are the remains of the supports. There is a definite bend in the back bit and you can really see in the foreground where there are ghosts of miniatures. This bit was sitting at about 45 degrees to the build plate. So I went back onto the computer and, as the pikes worked without support, I just went for it… absolutely no problem at all. Forty arqubusiers came out absolutely fine.
So lesson learned… supports on 6mm miniatures are a bit of a no, no.
Today has been hectic to say the least, I didn’t sleep well last night and wanted a lie in, only to find second kitten had been caught so we went over and picked it up… here are the little cuties…
No names yet, number two is on the right.
We then sorted out the shed some more. The knackered, bounced upon sofa, is going in there for some seating. I managed to sort out the prolapsed base as well as add in some more padding to the front, the new one was built in the lounge too.
In amongst this busyness I managed to get the Baccus Samurai undercoated. I also got the cavalry based up too…
The four in the front are messengers with their big Horo on their back. On the far side are some mounted commanders. I am going to add in some printed banners to the base.
The other thing I have been doing is working out a sort of army list for the Italian wars. I have ordered the Furioso supplement as it deals with this war and adds solo play… I did find an army in my 6mm ‘yet to do something with’ box…
These are a mix of Irregular miniatures. I bought them second hand about 20 years ago at least. The two big flags in the foreground are from the fantasy range as they have five figures in the strip… historical’s have six.
Still in two minds on 6mm or 10mm, but I have plenty of time to choose as the Samurai need finishing first.
Yesterday and today I got on with basing some of the 6mm samurai, well actually the ashigaru (both yumi and teppo). My original plan was to plonk eight miniatures per base, however they wouldn’t really fit on the 20 x 40mm bases so in the end I glued only four on each.
Above we have the teppo armed ashigaru. I have the same number armed with the yumi. So 48 bases in total.
With the same four to a base then there will be the same number of Yari armed ashigaru.
Now interestingly enough I don’t seem to have any samurai infantry. If you remember a while a go I said I seemed to be missing some cavalry . I have rechecked and there aren’t any missing. It looks like both were in the same bag. Each one is meant to have 18 minis in and I have 36… I cannot find the three packs of foot samurai, that should be there.
We had another good day today, it rained a bit so we played plenty of games. We gave Munchin Quest a go… first two monsters were a level sixteen and eighteen. Luckily for us they ignore low level Munchkins!
Bogenwald 