Sunday 13 December 2020

OpenLOCK City Gatehouse - More Progress

I've been progressing with my Gatehouse this week. 

I've managed to get the Portcullis mechanism completed and working. I designed this in FreeCad and Tinkercad.




I've also printed and painted furniture for all the floors. This is all just blu-tacked in place so stays where I want it, but can be moved around in the future. After all the building itself can actually be broken down into it's component parts and reconfigured so it would be odd not to allow the same with the furniture.









Also I have progressed with the base boards for the gatehouse and wall that allow it to act as a transition between the Terraformers boards for the countryside and the TT-Combat boards for the city. These were designed in FreeCad to match both sets, though magnetised like the Terraformers boards, and then 3d printed. I had to split each 1ft x 1ft board into 4 to fit on my print bed. I used several ends of filament rolls hence the varied colours. 

I've started the process of putting the texturing on top by first of all marking the edges of the walls, buildings with picture framing card. These will help ensure that the walls are located correctly when put in position. It would have been too hard to ensure this was correct at the CAD stage.




The next step is to apply some sculptamold to add texture.

Sunday 29 November 2020

OpenLOCK City Gatehouse

Two of my main 28mm scale boards are my countryside using the Sally 4th Terraformers tiles and my medieval city using Hirst Arts. I'd been planning to somehow combine these, the plan to have a city wall between the two. At the time of the original inspiration I was only working with Hirst Arts and the whole project was rather overwhelming. I decided to put it off until I retire...

With lockdown and my 3D Printers that has changed. I found OpenLOCK quite a few months ago and was very impressed with the ability to quickly clip parts together in a myriad of ways. Though each piece takes longer to print than Hirst Arts blocks there's a lot less time taken to build the buildings up. Also with OpenLOCK it's possible to try things out without committing. I have had to design a few special pieces myself as well.

So, with not too much other gaming going on I've been able to concentrate a little on a city wall and gatehouse. My two printers have been busy all the time in the background as I painted Man O'War ships or actually did some work. I do have a few spare bits I've printed and not used, but most have made it into the building.

A couple of weeks ago I finally finished printing all the parts and started painting the buildings. These are now all done so I thought I'd try them out on my boards and share the photos.







As you can see they fit in well with the Hirst Arts and MDF stuff I already have. Each floor is detailed with fully opening and closing doors. The portcullises will eventually have winding gear to raise and lower them, but I need to do some CAD to get those completed. I've started that, but got side-tracked. 








I've also got to work out exactly how I'm going to make the two board sets with different heights fit together. I think the wall will have to be raised slightly maybe. It quite possibly is going to be another 3D printing job.

I'm also going to fully furnish the interiors and have some furniture already printed.

So quite a bit to do yet!


Friday 20 November 2020

Trojan Rabbit and other Arthurian Characters

On Thingiverse there are many strange and wonderful things to print. One such is the Trojan Rabbit. There are actually a few implementations of this wonderful Siege Weapon, but I chose this to make this one.

Here we see the French guards have found their cadeux waiting outside the castle. Sir Bedevere has finally remembered that he's supposed to be inside the bunny and is trying to sneak in at the last moment. 


The miniatures are from the wonderful Medieval Mayhem range at Studio Minatures and I bought these quite a few years ago now. Having completed the rabbit I had to get them painted up as well. I have a load more on their way for a Christmas present.

Here we see the rest of the minis I have, bar Tim the Enchanter, who would probably have set fire to everything anyway (ok, ok, I forgot him). They're stood around a rather nice pavilion another 3d printed model from the same modeller as the rabbit.



Sunday 15 November 2020

Man O'War Chaos Additions - Plus everything

In my quest to get everything I have for Man O'War painted I've just completed my Chaos Fleet.

There's there's the Hellrammers and Hellslicers for the Slaanesh fleet.

And the Ironsharks for the Khorne fleet.

This brings my entire Chaos fleet to be completed.


Finally all the Man O'War ships I own are now painted. 


(There's a game of "Where's Wally" with the Lord of Change in that photo)

Friday 6 November 2020

3D Printed FDM Mini - Explorer Sample from HeroForge

For 3D printing miniatures resin (SLA) printers are the preferred choice. There's none of the lines that appear in filament (FDM) printers leave on their prints and the detail is finer.

I bought my latest FDM printer (Prusa Mini) without any intention of getting into printing miniatures, but thought I would have to try it at some point. I had been looking for something free to print and decided that the HeroForge samples would be a good choice.

I printed both of them but part of the Paladin miniature broke off during the clean-up process after the print completed. The Explorer however came out fine and wondered how well she would paint up.

She wasn't easy to paint, especially the face as I had to work out detail that would normally be visible on a sculpted model, but I am pleasantly surprised. Good enough that if I need a mini for a special purpose in the future I will look at printing one if I can't find an appropriate one elsewhere.



Sunday 1 November 2020

Man O'War Skaven

 Another week, another Man O'War fleet completed.

This time it's Skaven. I bought a few of these painted about 2 years ago on Facebook. Since then they've been sat not doing anything. A couple of weeks ago I bought a few more Deathburners and Warp-Raiders. 

Since the paint job on the 2nd-hand ships was pretty good I just decided to paint the extras in the same style. I did go back and add a slight bit extra highlights to the original ships and the whole lot has had a matt varnish since those had been quite glossy. Anyway, I'm quite pleased with how they have come out. I'll be trying them out next weekend.


The way things are going I'll soon have all the main Man O'War fleets. I have plans to make a 3D Printed High Elf fleet and once that is done I'll only have Chaos Dwarf and Dark Elf left. I guess I'll have to do those just for completeness. First though I have the last few Chaos ships to paint.


Sunday 25 October 2020

Man O'War Orcs (and Brettonnian Pegasus Riders)

Since we've been playing Man O'War for the past few weeks I thought it a good time to get some more of my unfinished fleets completed.

I have been working on three Orc Hulks for most of the week and didn't think I'd get chance to use them today as I also needed to get three Bigchukkas painted and some Wyverns. However I surprised myself by getting the Bigchukkas completed last night and the Wyverns completed this morning. So we're on for a game using Orcs my complete Orc fleet today.





Also last week I completed my Brettonian fleet with a squadron of Pegasus Riders.


Brendan chose to play Dwarves in the game this afternoon. We extended our rules to include Flyers and he chose to use some War Baloons. We both had fun dropping bombs on each other as a result. The scenario was the Treasure Fleet and the Dwarves had the treasure. I set up a defensive line of Bigchukkas supported by Hulks and the Drillakillas swept around the flank. The line proved tough for the Dwarves to get through and the Hulks, Wyverns and Drillakillas were very effective, though the Dwarves made the Orcs pay in blood for their very close Victory. This was loads of fun!




Sunday 18 October 2020

Dragonstone Castle

I've been looking around for islands to 3D print for use with Man O'War (etc).

I came across this rather wonderful and well scaled model of Dragonstone Castle from Game of Thrones.

It was the longest print I've done yet and came out brilliantly on my new Prusa Mini. The model has a recess which has allowed me to add lighting to it.

#

We used it for the first time today as the main island in the Treasure Island scenario. Brendan used Empire again, this time with the addition of the expansion ships and a Sea Dragon. I used Dwarves with a Kraken. 

Brendan set my Dreadnaught on fire in the first turn, disabling it for the entire game and landed sailors from his Wolfships on the treasure island finding the treasure straight away. He then attempted to sail away with it but my Kraken jumped on the Wolfship with the treasure and killed all its crew.

In the mean time I devastated Brendans Ironfists and Wargalleys with my Nautiluses and Ironclads, but my Monitors were all destroyed. 

In the end there was no way I could get enough battle honours to win despite having stolen the Treasure from his re-crewed Wolfship, so I conceded the game and took consolation in having at least got the gold.

A fun game as usual.

Friday 16 October 2020

Back to 1813 - Bavarians

It's been a while since I had painted any of my 1813 miniatures. I started again a couple of weeks ago, but those were just more standard French infantry and conscripts so I didn't bother photographing them.

This time however it's something a little different. Some Bavarian Infantry and Artillery for XII Corps.

6mm Heroics and Ros for use with Blücher as usual.



The whole of XII Corps.


Sunday 4 October 2020

Man O'War - Bretonnians vs Empire

Having finally finished my all-3d-printed Bretonnian Fleet it was time to try it out against my old Empire Fleet, controlled by Brendan. Since it's a long, long, long time since Brendan played we decided to play a fairly simple game, 750 points of basic ships each with a single Master Wizard each. Nothing from any of the expansions.

The Bretonnians can get a lot of the tiny Buccaneers in a 750 point fleet, which makes it actually rather powerful. They act to mask the bigger ships with the larger firepower whilst not being worth many Battle Honours themselves. My fleet has the full 12 Buccaneers in it along with 3 Corsairs and a Galleon. All are 3d printed on my FDM printer apart from the Galleon which was 3d printed on a resin printer and bought from Etsy.


The Empire fleet is the one I started Man O'War with back in the '90s. It's all original ships and all painted by myself at that time. It's a similar make-up to the Bretonnians, but because the Wargalleys are twice the points of the Buccaneers there's only 6 of them. Also there is a squadron of Wolfships and a Greatship.


Wind was very important in this game. To start with the wind changed to be in my favour and my sails filled. Brendan's ships had to switch to oars, which meant they still made progress, but left the Greatship behind. Then Brendan's Wizard cast Wind Master and changed the wind to be directly at me. My whole fleet stopped dead in it's tracks and had to try and turn out of the wind. 




Brendan's Wargalleys then reached my front line of Buccaneers and rammed them, several were sunk, but there were still loads left. Being so close did mean my catapults could not fire though.


Whilst his best way of attacking was to ram my Buccaneers with his Wargalleys he couldn't keep doing this for long and eventually he was too close to ram. After a couple of bad boarding actions he decided that the way to deal with the Bucaneers was to stay just within close range and shoot them. This was very slow progress and was pretty much a stalemate.

On the other flank I faced off against the Wolfships. To start with I couldn't get very close, though my Galleon did get a couple of good broadsides off immobilising one. But then the wind changed and I was able to break through and attack properly. I brought the Galleon around the side and destroyed another Wolfship. My wizard then got lucky and pushed the third one into the island sinking it!


The Corsairs also broke through and the Greatship became surrounded. Because of the masking that the Bucaneers had done the Corsairs and Galleon were untouched at this point and the Greatship was easily sunk. With most of his fleet in tatters and only a few Bucaneers sunk to show for it, Brendan's Imperial fleet struck it's colours.

I had warned Brendan that this Bretonnian fleet is a very tough one to crack and it proved to be so. Even though in the early stages of the action the wind was against me it proved very strong indeed. I'd be interested to see how it fares against the other races.