Model Scale Comparison

All 3d printed, except for the 1/300 model which is from Heroics & Ros.

I've filled out a bit more of my range of scale comparison models to include one at 1/150 scale, which would be in the 12mm figure bracket  — that would cover about 1/120 to 1/160 scale, with the most common probably being 1/144. In truth, the Bishop probably wasn't the best vehicle to choose for something like this; I just sort of fell into it.

I'm pretty heavily committed to 1/100 (15mm) scale, and that's not very likely to change in the foreseeable future. I've got a whole bunch of 1/300 and 1/285 stuff as well, though I almost never use it these days.

If I was starting WWII wargaming again from scratch, I think I'd probably be going for 1/200. Big enough to see, small enough to store easily, and small enough to play satisfactory games on a relatively small table.

Dark Satanic Mill

I just finished printing and painting this factory by Paul Deeming, a freebie from his kickstarter.

The model is designed for 28mm; I've printed it scaled at 60% for 15mm.

The figures are plastic 15mm WWII Russians from PSC.

Voroshilovets For Everyone!

Everyone with a 3d printer, that is.

I've rebuilt my 15mm (1:100) Voroshilovets model for home printing, and uploaded it to https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/voroshilovets-heavy-tractor/

The canopy is a separate STL, and there are two versions of the tractor itself: one all in one piece, and the other with the tracks split off to ease printing in FDM. The split-up version includes a few other tweaks aimed at FDM printing as well, so if that's the sort of printer you have, that's the version I'd recommend you print. The one-piece model would be better suited to resin printers.

One-piece tractor

Multi-part tractor

203mm Tracked Howitzer

I finally got around to painting the Soviet B2 203mm tracked howitzer that I printed many months ago.

If I recall correctly, this is one of Bergman's 1/200 scale models, enlarged to 1/100 for 15mm games. I don't have any Soviet artillerymen suitable for heavy artillery, so I guess if I need a crew I'll just have to draft some normal infantry.

The Voroshilovets heavy tractor is a design of my own. It's available from my Shapeways shop, but I haven't yet got around to redesigning it and I've now redesigned it for home FDM printing; it's up at my wargaming3d.com shop. I'll probably add another version with the running gear separate, which should make it more straightforward to print.

Russian Bully-Boys

I'm printing Soviet T-28 medium tanks at the moment.

The left-most one is a resin and metal model from Battlefront, for comparison; the others are designed by M. Bergman, and printed by me in eSun PLA or PLA+, using a slightly modified FDG miniatures profile for the Ender 3.

The most recent print is the middle-right one, printed in plain old PLA. I dropped the temperature for that one right down to 190° — I've found that eSun PLA filaments seem to be happiest printing at much lower temperatures than those actually recommended by the manufacturer. Printing it this cool has given me much cleaner surfaces, and almost no stringing at all.

I'm intending these for the period of the Winter War, 1939-40ish, when the Soviet Union attempted to steamroller Finland and got their arses resoundingly handed to them until eventually numbers (and lack of support for the Finns) began to tell.

They should really be painted white, and I will do a couple like that, but leaving them in green isn't completely out of the question since the Russians went into Finland ridiculously unprepared. And having them green does make them more flexible in terms of their usefulness on the wargames table.

AD&D DM Screen — WiP

Page 1

 I'm very slowly making myself a new DM screen for AD&D, to replace the one I made about 35 years ago from photocopied bits of the DMG glued to bits of cardboard.

The page size is A4 (landscape), and so far I'm up to five panels. I probably don't want to go any higher than that, as it would tend to be wider than our gaming table.

The page order as shown here is only provisional, and there are a lot more bits and pieces I could include (and probably will).

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Page 3

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Page 5

SdKfz 234 Variants

This is a German SdKfz 234/3 "Stummel", an eight-wheeled armoured car mounting a short-barrelled 75mm gun. It's handy having a vehicle that counts towards a force's scouting value, while also mounting a fairly hefty gun for blowing-things-up purposes. The model is 1:100 scale, for 15mm gaming.

The model is designed by Zachary Kavulich, printed by me at 0.1mm layer height in eSun PLA+ on my Ender 3.

The crewman is one of the passenger figures from PSC's SdKfz 251C pack, and he's not ideal; I have a real shortage of figures suitable for crewmen for this sort of vehicle. That's one of the reasons why I'd like to get myself a resin printer, so that I could design and print figures for this sort of purpose.

This one is the SdKfz 234/4. Rather than the low-velocity howitzer of the 234/3, this one mounts a 75mm PaK 40, an excellent German anti-tank gun capable of handling almost any Allied tank right up until the end of the war.

This model was designed by M. Bergman, and the crew figures are a couple of 15mm German artillerymen from Peter Pig.

Leaky Roof

This is one of the 3d printable buildings from Printable Scenery that I printed some time ago in 15mm scale, their French House-Shop.

I've taken the roof component and remixed it to show some damage, and I'll use this roof in exchange for the original undamaged roof piece, when I want to indicate an "unstable" building in our WWII Chain of Command games.

An "unstable" building may (or may not) collapse at the end of any given turn, potentially killing everyone still inside.

Hawker Hart

To make a change from tanks and trucks and things, I've put together this model of a Hawker Hart light bomber in Blender.

I started this quite some time ago, but I really didn't have a handle on how to deal with smoothly curved shapes in Blender. I'm a bit better at it now, so I've finished it off.

The Hawker Hart was the RAF's best and most effective light bomber of the 1930s, being substantially faster than any of the biplane fighters in service at the time (such as the Bristol Bulldog, for example). It was so good that a single-seater fighter was developed using pretty much the same airframe, the Hawker Fury, and the first biplane fighter to break the 200 mph barrier (223 mph (359 km/h) at 16,500 ft (5,000 m).

Neither the Hart nor the Fury made it into WWII except in a very small way.

I thought that I had been modelling the Hart in 1/144 scale, which is the scale I've been using for all of my other 15mm wargaming aircraft. However, it turns out that it's actually 1:100 scale, which is the scale I use for all my ground vehicles and guns.

I think there's probably enough leeway in the thickness of the various members that I can resize it without too many problems, but I might have to bulk up the struts a bit. We shall see.

This print is 1:100, and it printed OK. Not spectacularly well, but OK. I tilted it forward on its nose at about 45°, so the wing supports were clustered along the leading edges. Unfortunately they also wrapped around the wing struts a bit, and I broke a couple of them trying to remove the supports.

I might try splitting the aeroplane right down the middle and printing it in two pieces; that has worked well for me in the past with aircraft models.

The 1/100 scale model is available printed by Shapeways at http://shpws.me/Rq8O for $US22.00 in their white nylon material, or $US25.00 in black.

If you have access to a 3d printer of your own, you can get the STLs at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/hawker-hart-light-bomber/

Nashorns Galore

Battlefront's offering,
assembled and painted many years ago

I've been taking advantage of Zachary Kavulich's prolific 3d modelling labour to print some mid- to late-war German tank destroyers.

The Nashorn (pronounced naas-horn), or Rhinoceros, was first called Hornisse, or Hornet. It mounted a honking great PaK 43 88mmL71 anti-tank gun in a fairly lightly armoured superstructure on a Pz.IV hull, and could penetrate the frontal armour of any Allied tank of the war up to 1,000 metres away.

I've printed it in two formats: first, as originally released by Zachary, as a single-piece model, and then in four pieces: hull, superstructure and gun, and left and right running gear.

The multi-part print required much less in the way of supports, gave me better definition in the tracks, made cleanup a lot easier, and dropped the print time from about 14 hours to about 10. Sure, it required post-printing assembly, but that was easy-peasy, and a small price to pay for overall better results.

Now, I don't actually have a pressing need for Nashorns, and I'm very unlikely to need three on the table at once even if and when I get around to wargaming the Italian campaign, but I don't see that as a valid reason not to have some.

One-piece print

Multi-piece print

Interwar Soviets

SU-18

T-18

Here are a couple of Interwar Soviet vehicles I've made in 15mm (1:100). 

https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/t-18-light-tank/
https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/su-18-spg/

The links lead to downloadable STL files for home 3d printing.

The figure is a 15mm plastic Soviet commissar/officer from PSC.

Vickers Light Tank Mk.V (2 pdr)

In the latter half of the 1930s, experiments were made with mounting a 2 pounder anti-tank gun in an open-topped box turret on a Vickers Light Tank Mk.V, to create what would later be known as a tank destroyer.

It would have had the advantages of being relatively cheap, small and easily concealable, and quite fast for its time, and the 2 pounder was arguably the best ATG in existence then. However, it would have been very vulnerable to return fire from virtually anything heavier than a machine-gun.

It was not taken up by the British army, and never went into production. However, that’s no reason not to have a model of it, if only for “what if?” scenarios.

The model comes in separate STLs for three components: the turret and turret plug, and the hull. You can get it at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/vickers-light-tank-mk-v-2-pdr/

If you don't have access to a 3d printer, you can get the model printed for you by Shapeways at http://shpws.me/Rn3m

The figure is a WW1 British officer from Peter Pig.

T-24 Revisited

I've redesigned my model of the Soviet T-24 of 1932 for home printing, and uploaded the STLs to Wargaming3d

https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/t-24-medium-1932/

It's a 1:100 scale (15mm) model. It would up-scale to 1/72 OK, but any larger than that and you'd probably want to replace all the guns with something a little more delicate.

The photos shown here are SLS prints. FDM, or especially DLP would, of course, be better, but the SLS print looks quite OK as a wargaming model, and it has the advantage of being nigh-invulnerable. SPOOOON!!!

Component STLs

SLS print from Shapeways

SLS print from Shapeways

SLS print from Shapeways

Note: I've now added optional pieces so that people can, if they so desire, print the hull and tracks as separate components. I know some people like that.

Hobgoblin Archer

It has been quite a while since I've painted any fantasy figures, but this is one.

I believe it's a Citadel figure, and if I recall correctly it's one of a three-pack of hobgoblins. It's quite old; it's been hanging around my painting bench for years and years and years just based and primed.

Well, now it's done. Whether it will ever see any use in a game, only time will tell.

Bison

In the background, an Austin 10 staff car. The figure is from Battlefront.

The Bison was a class of improvised armoured lorry, created by the simple expedient of encasing the cab and engine bay in a thick shell of concrete, and putting a concrete bunker on the back. All sorts of trucks were used as the basis for these ungainly machines, and there was no particular standardization about them at all.

I was intending to make myself a model of a Bison, but then I found that a chap going by the name of DeweyCat had already made one in 28mm for free, so that saved me a bit of work. I just had to re-scale it to 1:100 and print it.

For once the visible printing layer lines are actually advantageous, as they look like cast concrete. Bonus!

King Worm Mk.III

 I was doodling idly in Blender, and I decided to give my King Worm some legs to go with his arms.

The model is about 120mm long. The STL is at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3755934

Medium C "Hornet"

The Medium C, nicknamed "Hornet", was designed towards the end of WW1, intended as a replacement for the Medium A "Whippet". It was much superior in every respect to the Whippet, but it was too late to see action in WW1. It remained in British army service until the mid-1920s.

I've made this model available before on Shapeways, but now it's available as a STL for home printing from my shop on Wargaming3d at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/medium-c-hornet/

The model shown here has been printed horizontally, sitting on its tracks, in eSun PLA+ at a layer height of 0.08mm. It is 1:100 scale for 15mm gaming, but it can easily be scaled up or down in your slicer for other scales.

Brute Squad Base

 I designed and printed a 90mm x 60mm sabot base for my 15mm Brute Squad (they're actually 10mm Warmaster ogres I got on sale from a cheap bin).

The figures are based on 16mm (5/8") washers and the sockets are sized to accommodate those, and the base includes square cavities for two 5mm or 6mm dice at the back to keep track of casualties or morale or whatever. These are intended for my fantasy variant of Hail Caesar.

The STL is available free for download from Thingiverse at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3744480

See the dice?

Painted, flocked and finished.

Here it is with the Brute Squad in place. I epoxied some stones on either side, to make it easier to pick up and move around, and a few more scattered about just for the look of the thing.

The figures stay in place reasonably well as long as you don't fling the base about, but I've put a little blob of BluTak under each one, which holds them quite firmly in place while still allowing them to be removed and replaced at will.