My new Salamander army continues to grow. The latest part bringing me up to 1950 points of new models for the COGS of War tournament this weekend is the formation for the army, "The Whispering Scales".
For this I have two regiments of Salamander Primes, one with 2-handed weapons and a special Battle Captain.
For the Battle Captain I designed my own model using Hero Forge and then printed it on my resin printer.
I decided that I needed some chaff for my new Salamander army and at 60 points for a troop the Ghekkotah warriors look ideal. However, Mantic don't (at the time of writing) make any Ghekkotah troops. There's a few heroes, but nothing else.
I started looking around for 3D printable alternatives, but found nothing that really grabbed me. That is until I found the Warp Miniatures Bullywug Warriors. I loved these happy smiling frogs the moment I saw them and knew I had to use them.
Now you might say, those are frogs, not geckos... and you'd be right. But if Mantic can confuse salamanders as being reptiles, then I can confuse geckos as being amphibians. To be fair to Mantic, it's not their fault, but the fault of the medieval scholars who couldn't work out what a salamander actually was.
Anyway, having decided that I was going to use the Bullywugs, (which could also be Riverguard... hmmm...) I decided they needed appropriate bases. Loads of messing with 3D prints; plaster cast rocks; transparent resin, both two-part and UV; and some of the rather excellent Gamer's Grass lazer-cut plants has produced a couple of little troops I'm very proud to put at the front of my army ready to be killed first...
... and not an LED on them!
Years ago, before Covid, I used play a bit of Star Wars Armada. Not much, just a bit.
Anyway, recently we've started playing it at COGS. I've been supplying most of the stuff for it as most of the players are new to it and the game is now harder to find and often expensive.
A little while ago I bought the Corellian campaign pack as it was cheap and realised that if we were to play it then I'd need more ships. This lead me to investigate into 3D printing ships for the game. There's quite a few designs for free online and with both resin and filament printers I printed a few out.
It soon became obvious that really I needed some original ships as well to copy the base cards from and other components and so I started looking at what was available to buy cheap. This lead to some bargains, which lead to more bargains.
Then the terrain had to be 3D printed and finally I thought I better get all those squadrons painted.
Anyway, now I have enough I think... though I do have a couple more ships in the post yet... one of those is very. very large.
All the squadrons in the photo are proper ones. The ships on the black bases are the ones I've 3D printed.
Oh and I should have mentioned this before... but we won best overall participation game at Hammerhead again...
I've just completed my Salamander Clan Lord on Fire Drake.
I've used the Mantic dragon with 3D printed salamander and fire effects with LEDs.
The saddle I'm not sure about...
Rather than flitting around all the time, I've decided to concentrate on one Kings of War army each year. Last year it was my Forces of the Abyss, the year before was Sylvan Kin. This year was going to be Forces of Nature, but it's not been doing so well. I'm not sure whether I've won a single game with them yet...
So, when all the Salamander stuff appeared on the Mantic Vault I decided it was time for a change. I'd already built some Scorchwings and Fire Elementals for my Forces of Nature, and these would both act as a start to a new Salamander Force. I also had a few old GW Lizardmen I'd made as for Salamaders back in Kings of War 1.0.
So I've been busy adding new 3D printed units and going crazy with LEDs... The addition of regiments of Corsairs and Tyrants along with Firebrand has already meant I'm close to 2000pts.
The plan is to replace all the non-Mantic models with Mantic ones as I get experience with the force, but this is a good start.
I do have another regiment of Corsairs, a Clan Lord on Firedrake and a Mage Priest in progress. I'm not sure what to do after that, some troops of Ghekkotah Warriors, or a horde of Ceremonial Guard, or maybe some Ember Sprites?
As of Xmas, I now have a resin 3D printer and I've been busy printing stuff. I started with 6mm WWI, more on that as I get it painted, but since then I've been doing some for Kings of War and Deadzone.
First off some Nameless for Deadzone, from the Mantic Vault.
Next up is a Greater Fire Elemental for Kings of War. This is transparent with flickering LEDs. Again from the Mantic Vault.
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The Blood and Plunder "Raise the Black" Kickstarter was delivered a couple of months ago and I've finally finished off painting everything I had from it. (More stuff comes at Christmas!).
The last thing was the plastic Bermuda Sloop kit, which was a lot less trouble than the massive galleon. Though I did make a few modifications to the rigging.
There's also Blackbeard, Long-John Silver and a load of Spanish infantry including drummer and artillery crew.
