Well I think that they are done, or at least as done as I am going to do them,with the exception of the spear points.
The Irregular ones in the background are still to finish off. I still have a whole more Baccus infantry to get started, but the army is definitely on the way to completion.
I managed to get the caravan moving again today, new springs, plenty of WD40 and a neighbour with pair of pliers and voila the brakes now work. They will need a new cable but at least I can now tow it to someone if I cannot manage it myself.
Well I have had a jolly old birthday. Got lots of brilliant presents from the kids. I also got some great maps for RPG’s from my mate. My main present is still in the post. As the old iPad has eventually given up the ghost then I decided to go for a new Android tablet as they are a whole lot cheaper.
Pressies from the kids
I had a lazy old day, eventually got the springs off the brake shoes too. I did manage to take time to flock the duellists bases…
And get another building printed…
The one on the right is from last night.
I am having to get used to slowwww print times… I went back in to check after leaving it for an hour and fifteen minutes (after the usual making sure the base layer was down)… it had got to here…
Luckily it is going over night! This new one is a two level one, hence the two separate bits.
I am also using up the resin in the vat by printing a wagon with a pair of horses. This was to take about three hours, if I can be bothered I will go and check on it in a tick.
Tomorrow I will do some more ruined buildings. They won’t be done in a hurry that’s for sure. The FDM is slow but it is a whole lot cheaper than doing things on the resin printer (if they would fit that it). I might actually do some for my 6mm Armies.
Today I actually managed to get the duellists just about finished. Still a bit of tidying up to do and bases to cover, but on the whole I am happy with them. Are the uniforms accurate to Flintloque cannon… nope not at all, well apart from the boots that is!…
I cracked on with the Cavalry command and the mounted crossbows…
Interestingly enough (and I just found this out) by the time of the Italian (Renaissance ) Wars the mounted crossbows would supposedly shoot from the saddle. Now this is something that is intriguing and I will have to look into it a bit more as it causes a lot of questions, first being how the heck do you recock the thing when you have shot your bolt? Secondly how do you stop the bolt just dropping off?
I think that is it for the miniature printing for a good old while… I pretty much have two Armies now or an army and an allied contingent. Upon saying this I want to just check on the Dwarves as they could do with a unit of light or medium infantry, plus there is the matter of the light cavalry and a giant.
it is handy having a South facing conservatory with a wide widow sill…
So instead of printing more miniatures then I decided to go for some terrain on the old filament printer. It had sat for a good while and the filament had snapped at the extruder. Luckily I managed to slot a new roll in.I took some of Iain Lovecraft’s ruins and shrank them down to 70% and set the printer away. I relevelled it a couple of times and still came back to this…
This is about the size of a cherry tomato. I was a bit miffed as it was an hour and a half into it when I went back. I set it away again, but sat with it whilst it printed the first couple of layers, this meant I could alter on the fly. It still tried stripping away at one end, so I am afraid I got the superglue out and stuck it down. Not clever I know but it was what was handy. After about 2 hours it was still delaminating so I shoved bluetack up against both sides of the bit that was threatening to cause the whole thing to come away. Hopefully it will be okay by time I go back tomorrow morning. The one thing I am not used to now is ten hour prints for a short run.
The first of my heavy cavalry came off the plate today, four are finished and two are still printing. I am doing six of these heavy cavalry…
Now with these I went for the smaller of the banners, part of me now wished that I had gone for the bigger one. In the second and third set I have printed a ‘warhound’ these came from Iain Lovecraft’s Frost civilians and are actually the rat catcher’s dog. As they had a spiked collar I thought the looked cool. I kept them at full size instead of dropping them to 75% like the rest. I reckoned they would make a passable mastiff/Great Dane type of hound.
I also got the hands glued onto the Flagellants… one is missing a left hand.. sadly I think it fell off the supports and was lost in the shed…
The top three on the right are the ‘command’ set… now these will make nice cultists as well as religious nutters. I also managed to get a photo of the Zweihanders…
And finally… I actually managed to get some paint onto the duellists…
I am pleased with how they have started, but less pleased with wood Elf. This is going to need another undercoat as the Gesso has left it shiny and the paint won’t adhere to it properly. My guess is that I really didn’t shake it enough to get the paint and medium mixed together. I did thin it down a bit with medium, but by all accounts that is what I am meant to do. Probably find I purchased the shiny version!
Yes to Post man (or Lady in this case) brought lots of goodies today.
I thought I needed some form of simple reference material and in fact I found out a load of stuff I hadn’t known before… I read it over breakfast 😂. I also got some new toys…
As I had bought Duel a good while ago I thought I might as well get some duellists too. As I was getting bases from Alternative Armies then I thought I might as well… I also got a pack of freebies… armed brains… yes you did in fact read that right… a pack of floating plains with lasers and stuff coming out of them… very weird.
Now I also got a bit of painting done…
I was mainly painting the undercoat for all of the decoration on the command horses. I also threw some paint on the reins too – I am not sure why as if someone is on a horse and they appear the size of a 6mm miniature then I won’t be able to see the reins, let alone tell what colour they are. The other thing was to get another layer of Gesso on the elf and horse. I was inspired to give one a go as the mounted archers haven’t been finished since I got them. I will see how I get in compared to the originals.
Tonight I managed to slap some paint on the samurai.
As I had been mooching about for the missing cavalry I did come across some of the Irregular individual miniatures. They aren’t too bad compared to the Baccus ones. It’s a real pity that the 2D6 ones are so tiny, they are really nice miniatures but don’t really compare to the others.
Today I got a parcel all the way from China… it was full of paint brushes, well around twenty of them. Now I honestly cannot remember ordering any brushes, apart from the ones from Wish about a year and a half ago. This leaves two options, first and most likely… I am a pillock and have a memory like a sieve, second is that I have received a random package of paint brushes from China.
On a totally different note, the printer seems to be hanging in there. The pole arms came out absolutely fine, so this evening I am printing a couple of ram cavalry… I am going for two at a time 🤞. Hopefully by tomorrow I should have four of them in total.
Well one day to go and the cough has started as well as the sniffles. Not a happy Bunny!
Tonight I wrangled with the printer a bit again and got further than yesterday. One type of halberd isn’t working so I am going to redo the slicing of it to see if that helps. It seems to be failing at the lowest point so there is something wrong with the supports… anyway enough of printers. I got a bit more done on the cavalry…
I went hunting for another pack and then realised that this was actually it… it will do as Samurai Armies didn’t have huge cavalry forces. I toyed with the idea of a different colour for the cavalry, but decided against it. Therefore we have 15 minis in each colour. In case you were wondering I painted the horses in threes, then did the armour colour. I suddenly realised that one colour would have three black horses, so I changed one to the opposite colour to allow a bit of horse variation in both forces.
I also managed to get the archers done…
Now if I remember correctly then there are two packs of yari armed troops and one of teppo. These will need to be added to the sticks and then sprayed white, but I am pretty much half way to doing the whole army.
Well after a bit of a wobbly few weeks, the printer seems to behaving itself (I know I have just doomed myself there). I relevelled yesterday and cranked the bottom layers to 7 in the hope that the model would adhere to the build plate and not the plastic… fingers crossed it is working. So far I am nine for nine on the success front. Here they are, they are going to be two separate units in the end. One unit of twelve pile and one of twelve halberdiers.
I am printing the same three pike at the minute to be the front rank. The second rank will be at attention. I will print another six random halberdiers too. Now I was having a look at Lion Rampant and this lot aren’t I. It as it seems to stop at the Wars of the Roses. I will have to have a mooch at some home brew ideas for the late Renaissance.
Now today Dave over on The Imperfect modeller had painted a very nice miniature with a Lion Rampant on the shield… I had mentioned how we see things today and how they were represented in the past… this is what I was talking about… here we see a modern representation of the flag of the Holy Roman Empire from around 1515 (I think)…
A rather funky two headed eagle, however this is an original painting from 1515… spot the difference…
Now a lad I knew from the re-enactment day’s was well into costume and has written a number of books about uniforms… he went to various museums and saw original kit from the early 19th century and made accurate representations of what he had found… no-one would buy it or was interested in it as It didn’t look good… Going back to the painting of the shield designs, I reckon not everyone was an artist… I rest my case… Lion Rampant on a shield!
One of my favourite ‘reference’ material is the ‘Morgan’ Bible here we see another Lion Rampant.
Tonight I was writing more reports so didn’t have a huge amount of time to paint anything. I carried on with the Samurai…
Now to be honest I am going down and dirty with these, I am not bothering about paint splash too much…I will have to fix some missing red and blue though. Next up is to repaint flesh, spears and sashimono white.
I got the crossbowmen cured and onto some bases.
You can really see where the swords failed on the two on the right. Other than that they are really nice miniatures. I stuck them next to some of the Perry Miniatures Hundred Years’ War French crossbowmen and they are about the same size as them.
Bogenwald 