This Way In

 

"The Sacred Well of Garlo is an intriguing archaeological site located near the village of Garlo in Pernik District, Bulgaria. Constructed between the 12th and 11th centuries BC, this ancient structure is nestled in a small valley rich with natural springs. The well's design and function bear striking similarities to sacred wells found within the remains of the Nuragic Civilization (1600–730 BC) on the island of Sardinia, Italy."

Also, it is clearly the entrance to an underdark dungeon of immense scope. It's obvious.

Afrika Korps Tiger 1 - WiP

 

Next project: a 15mm Tiger 1 for my Afrika Korps.

I'm 3d printing an Afrika model, with the Feifel air cleaners, from TigerAce1945. It's the one in the middle, with an old Battlefront resin & metal model on the left, and a PSC plastic kit on the right.

I've given it new, more detailed running gear, and added a commander's head and some spare track on the hull front. Looking at it now though, I can see a few other places where it could benefit from some tarting up — it's missing the prominent seam around the turret top, and also the seams between the individual side skirt panels. Maybe if I do any more I'll take care of those details.

 Later...

I've added those details, and I think it looks a lot better.

When I'll get around to reprinting it I don't know, but it's ready for me when I do.

Later later...

Got the initial airbrushing done. Next will be to do a bit of dry-brushing and pick out some surface detail — tools, tyres and so forth — before gloss-varnishing for some decals and oil-wash.

The 2 pounder portee is there to remind me to pull finger and get it finished; it's one of those projects that has been hanging fire for far too long.

Later later later...

 I've finished it off now, and in spite of my hatred of waterslide decals, I'm pretty pleased with the way it's turned out.

Blogger Reply Login Woes

 To reply to a comment on any of my posts, Blogger demands that I log in.

Logging in to Blogger has no effect at all, and I'm just directed to log in again.

The upshot of this is that effectively I can't reply to any comments. If you're expecting a reply, sorry about that. I don't know what I can do about it.

Army Painter Speedpaints

 

At long last I've got my hands on some of these new-fangled SpeedPaint colour glazes from Army Painter.

The figures are a pair of 3d printed 32mm barbarians by Fat Dragon Games; they print in FDM without supports.  I've primed one in a sandy colour (left), and the other in white (right).

The SpeedPaints went on without any issues, and they do a decent job of staining the underlying colour and darkening recesses. If you can sort out the right colours, they would certainly make painting figures quite speedy.

However, actually finding the right colours is going to be largely a matter of trial and error, as the labels on the bottles give only a very general impression of what the paint will end up looking like, and in common with almost all hobby paint ranges, the paint names are of very limited usefulness.

Being glazes, the underlying colour is very important in determining the final outcome. They recommend either white or grey, which is fair enough. The sand colour worked okay with these two colours, though the final contrast levels are a lot lower than the pure white underlay. It would be worth while to do some tests on a variety of primer colours to see how they react.

The paints would be very useful for production-line painting of mooks, but I think they'd be of more limited usefulness when it comes to fine painting. I'd happily use them for pumping out masses of wargaming figures — assuming I can figure out which colours I actually need for historicals.

Fantasy Hero Grimoires

 

Just arrived this morning, a couple of PoD Fantasy Hero books from Hero Games.

These are full of spells and potions and what-not — magical shenanigans for a Fantasy Hero game.

There's nothing in either of them that any half-way competent GM or player couldn't come up with themselves, but it's handy having all the maths already done for you. The spells are designed for their Turakian Age setting, which is their bog-standard high fantasy roleplaying milieu, but there's nothing completely setting-specific there and they could be slotted into pretty much any fantasy campaign.

In truth, I have no particular need for these books, since I haven't run a Fantasy Hero campaign for many years, and to be honest it's not that likely that I will again. But they weren't very expensive, even with the swingeing postage the USPS charges these days, and they add more bulk to my Roleplaying Bookshelf of Doom. 

The Hero Games webstore for the 5th Edition stuff is at https://www.herogames.com/store/category/3-hero-system-5th-edition/

15mm Afrika Korps paint test

Collage of various internet stuff

I'm not great at painting 15mm figures, but I do like them to look at least half-way believable.

So, I occasionally force myself to do some research.

Fortunately, these days the internet provides plenty of material to look at — though it can be of variable reliability, since it is subject to reenactment fads and AI bullshit.

Looks like an Osprey illustration to me

This is the method I've settled on that seems to work for me:

Primed with Green Brown surface primer

Then 914 Green Ochre for the uniform base coat.

Just Buff for the trousers. I'll use Iraqi Sand for the helmets and other painted metal.

After lightly dry-brushing with Bone White for highlights, and washing overall with Agrax Earthshade, another wash on just the jacket with Athonian Camoshade greens it up a bit without making it too bright.

Bison II

 

Apparently this self-propelled gun ended up being called "Bison II" due to a model-maker's error, and like many nicknames given to German WWII vehicles, it was never used by the Germans themselves.

Its proper name is 15cm sIG 33 auf Fahrgestell Panzerkampfwagen II (Sf), which is a hell of a mouthful. I'm just going to keep calling it Bison.

The base model I built this up from was by Bergman, though all that's left is (most of) the  hull. I replaced the running gear and gun, rebuilt the engine grills, and cobbled together a couple of crewmen from some figures by someone whose name I've forgotten.

As usual, when I've decided to do some paint chipping, I've gone completely overboard. This looks more like shrapnel damage than normal wear and tear. 

Scale is 1:100 (15mm)

PzJg38(t) Hetzer

 Continuing with my plan of painting all the stuff I printed ages ago and then forgot about — this time it's a 15mm (1:100) Hetzer, or to be pedantic, a PzJg38(t).

 I don't recall who designed the 3d model originally, nor how much fiddling around with it I did. There's an error with the track guides, which should be running either side of the road wheels and not down the centre of the track links, as they are here — I think that's probably my mistake.

I quite like the Hetzer. It's a very compact little bug-like thing. Apparently the ergonomics and survivability of the thing were appalling though, so I'm glad I never had to fight in one.

M22 Locust

 

The M22 Locust was a tiny tank designed and manufactured to a British specification by Marmon-Herrington for a light air-landable tank to support airborne troops. It was intended to replace the Tetrarch, and to be carried to the landing zone in a Hamilcar glider.

It was only ever used in combat once, at the crossing of the Rhine, and it did not acquit itself very well. Only two vehicles survived both the landing and a couple of days of combat.

Its poor showing was perhaps inevitable; it had very light armour and a puny 37mm main gun, and it was totally outmatched on the battlefields of 1944-45. So dissatisfied was the Parachute Regiment with its performance that after the action they reverted to their old Tetrarchs.

These models are 1:100 scale (15mm), from a 3d design by Windham Graves. The figure is one of PSC's 15mm plastic paras. 

Crusader 3

 

This is another FDM print I did some time ago, but unlike the Crusader 2 in my last post, this one was split latitudinally, both hull and turret, and printed in pieces sitting vertically on the build plate.

That gave me much better print quality, with the down-side that the gun, when printed vertically, was extremely weak. So I replaced it with a piece of brass.

I have more Crusader models in the collection, but in my view you can never have too many of them. 

Once again, the scale is 1:100 (15mm).

Crusader 2

 

I found this FDM print I did some years ago and decided to do something with it.

The Crusader is maybe the worst possible choice for FDM printing, with all its gently sloping plates. The layer lines are pretty hideous, but from a distance on the table it looks okay. I guess.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Caunter scheme: I love to look at it, but I hate painting it.

The Crusader 2 only overlapped with the Caunter scheme by a few months, but there were a few — a very few — that were painted in it for Operation Crusader.

As usual, scale is 1:100 (15mm)

Dingo

 

Here's a spot of recce capability for my 15mm North Africa / Mediterranean WWII Brits, a cute little Daimler Dingo armoured car.

The base model, as is so often the case, is by Bergman. I've just added a couple of crewmen and some more detailed wheels. I don't think there would be much point in any further refinement than that for my purposes.

As always, all the 3d modelling has been done in Blender. 

Printing went well enough, though one of them had an incomplete starboard-front wheel for some reason — I have no idea why, because all three were identical on the build-plate. Hey-ho. I just printed some spare wheels and glued one into the space I chopped out of the incomplete model.

I'm not all that happy with the colour these have ended up; it's rather too dark for North Africa, and completely wrong for Normandy. Maybe they'll do for Italy.

Achilles

 

This 1:100 scale (15mm) M10 17 pounder Achilles has been sitting on my desk for quite a while, waiting for me to pull finger and finish it off.

The base model is by the estimable Mr. Bergman, with a set of running gear of my own.

I also did all the stowage cluttering up the sides of the turret; all the photos I saw of the original vehicle showed it covered in stuff, so I did the same. 

In addition, I gave it a couple of crewmen, also of my own design. There should have been three, but the commander didn't print properly. And in any case, I don't think there would have been room for him.

More Paper Dollies

I've started putting together a 28mm army of 10th-11th century Saxons, using Peter Dennis's Paperboys download-print-and-snip paper flats.

I print them on Brother 143gsm matte paper, so when they're folded and glued they're fairly sturdy — as long as I'm not too ham-fisted with them.

Here's the first batch of huscarls, mounted on 3mm grey-board covered with a vaguely grassy patterned paper, also from Paperboys.

I didn't notice that I had the Save Ink/Toner checkbox in the Acrobat print dialogue checked, so the colours are all a bit washed out. But now I know about that.

I run around the edges of the cut-out figures with a sepia felt pen, to remove the glare of the cut edges. Then I use superglue gel to tack the figures in place on the base, and then go back with PVA to create an encapsulating boot around the feet for strength and durability.

I have two sets of Paperboys Saxons — one (on the left in this photo) is from their 1066 book, and the figures are printed in shoulder-to-shoulder groups for big-battle wargaming. The other set is intended for skirmish games, and each figure is printed and mounted individually.

The 1066 base is much more densely populated: with three ranks, there are twelve figures on the base, whereas on the other there is only six. I could bunch up the individual figures more if need be, and I'll probably try that for the front rank of a shield-wall base.

Of the two types, I find that I prefer the look of individual figures when mounted on their bases.

I'm currently putting together some units of the Great Fyrd as well, and there will be some light troops as well — slingers, archers, and javelinmen — as well as some mounted troops who, for Saxons, would probably be mounted infantry rather than cavalry.

They look pretty good on the tabletop from the front or back, or in oblique up to about 40-60 degrees. They disappear from directly side on of course, but that's not too big an issue most of the time.

Because they're so cheap and quick to prepare, these paper soldiers would be ideal for trying out new periods or genres of wargaming, or even as an end unto themselves. I'm quite enjoying them.

Later on...

I've given my Anglo-Saxon fyrd some moral support in the form of a holy banner and a bunch of monks, which I'm sure will be of great comfort to them when the Vikings come rampaging over the hill.

Also, I experimented with giving one of the bases — front right — a couple of coats of spray satin varnish.

It doesn't show up as much in the photograph as in real life, but it seems to have darkened the ink a bit, while at the same time giving it a bit of a milky film that lowers contrast.

I doubt that I'll do it again.

 Later on (again)

Now I'm having a go at making some shield-wall stands, this time using the Paperboys Viking skirmish set.

There's a single close-set rank of four figures in front, and then a few more loosely scattered figures in behind them just to give the crowd a bit of volume.

There is a little bit more work involved in using individual figures rather than the base-wide groups in the 1066 set, but it's not really much more arduous, and I do prefer the look of them.

One good thing about Vikings is that they're really very similar visually to the Saxons, so at a pinch I could use them all together. The raven banner might be a bit of a giveaway though.

Something else new with this lot: instead of glueing the grassy basing paper around the edges of the grey-card base, I've just painted the edges green and sponged them to mottle them. It's a lot faster and easier than the other method, with the additional benefit that I can get a lot more bases out of a single printed sheet of basing paper, since I don't have to allow for any overlap.

Later on (again again)

Using 40x40mm bases is pretty flexible on the wargames table, but moving a whole bunch of individual stands about as units gets tired pretty fast.

So I've made some movement trays to accommodate 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 stands, to be 3d printed. The 6-stand tray is 120 x 80 mm, so 6 stands in 2 ranks. I can't fit a tray 6 stands wide on my printer platen.

The STLs are available (for free) at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6934223

 I've tried making a six-stand tray in two halves, and though it does work, it's not ideal. The gluing surfaces are just too small.

I've added some reinforcing strips of masking tape on top and bottom, and that certainly helps a lot, but I wouldn't rely on it not bending in the middle at the worst possible time.

I'm not likely to have a lot of use for a tray that wide in any case, and I can always use two 3-stand trays if need be — which would probably be a better option for several reasons.

HeroQuest (and HeroQuest-Adjacent)

 

Some years ago, when I was making some dungeon tiles, a guy gave me these.

They'd taken all the miniatures out, but apart from that they appear to be complete.

Fortunately, I have large numbers of plastic miniatures sitting around doing nothing, and although they won't match the Warhammerish minis that originally came with the game, they'll do the job just fine.

So now, after years of basically doing nothing with these games, I can actually have a go at playing them.

I don't think I've ever played HeroQuest, but I have had a couple of games of Space Hulk way back in the dim, distant past, and that's basically the same thing... right?

Also some years ago, at a clearance sale I bought a copy of the Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Adventure Board Game, of which BoardGameGeek has little to say except that it's "Quite similar to HeroQuest".

I've never played it.

When I first got it, I did flick through the rulebook, and found that it says very little about how to actually play the game. Which is one reason why I've never played it.

It includes a bunch of minis, some of which would be usable for HeroQuest, but I think it would probably be easier to just use some of the bajillion WotC collectible figures I bought back in the day.

---

Next day...

It occurred to me that hey, I have 3d printers. So I jumped over to Thingiverse to see what people might have done about making replacement HeroQuest miniatures.

My optimism was fully justified; there are masses of them there. It looks like many of them have been 3d scanned from the originals, moulding seams and wonky weapons included.

I grabbed some and did a bit of clean-up — new weapons, new bases mainly, and removal of obvious mould seams — and pumped out some STLs which I will now print.

Sure, I could have just used old WotC pre-paints, but I kind of like the idea of having the old retro mini designs. Except for the Wizard. The old HeroQuest wizard just didn't look wizardy enough to my eyes, so I got a mini that somebody had made of Gandalf from the animated Rankin-Bass Hobbit cartoon, and whacked that on a HQ base.

---

Next next day...

I've collected together sufficient figures for the base game. The orcs to the left are WotC pre-paints, as is the gargoyle at right rear and the sorcerer to its left. The two mummies at centre are Reaper plastics, and the two zombies to the right of them are hard plastic GW figures. Everything else is 3d printed, from a variety of sources.

The actual HeroQuest figures are those with the rectangular bases, everything else is a proxy.

---

Behold! Organisation!

Judging by the detritus in the box originally, it did come with some rudimentary and rather flimsy internal boxing. However, I decided that rather than try to revive that, I'd just make some better and sturdier compartmentalization. So now the game board can sit on top of everything else without crushing it, and the components can be stored and retrieved in a more or less rational manner.

I'm putting a lot of labour into this game which I may well never actually play 😃

---

Dice

After our first ever attempt at the game the other evening, I've designed and printed some HeroQuest dice, because we didn't have quite enough.

One of the original dice had been misprinted, with a skull overprinting one of the white shields. That could be worked around easily enough, but still. Why not take the excuse to make some of my own?

I've used the Moorcockian arrow symbols for Law and Chaos for the "white" and "black" shield designs.

My dice are printed in Esun resin, and they'll do for the moment. They'd be better printed in one of the tougher ABS-like resins, but as long as we don't go rolling these on concrete or anything, they should do well enough. I don't have any tougher resin, and it's a bit pricey, so I don't feel the need to buy some just for this project.

A brief session of test-rolling returned the expected proportions of skulls, good-guy shields and bad-guy shields, so they're true enough for our purposes.

One of these days I may get around to painting in the faces, but I'm in no great hurry to do that.

Pendragon

 

Chaosium have, fairly recently, released a new edition of their Arthurian TTRPG, Pendragon.

This is the King Arthur of Thomas Malory, of the movie Excalibur or the book The Once and Future King, not the 6th century Dux Bellorum who defeated the invading Saxons at Mount Badon. It's medieval, but mythic medieval. Arthur's knights ride around in highly polished 15th century plate armour and have jousts and quests and what-not.

It's a generational game, in which time passes and your character ages and may die, of old age or the sword, and you carry on playing your heir. And so on.

Many, many years ago I was introduced to another medievalist game, Chivalry & Sorcery.

It was developed by a couple of medieval recreationists, and they wanted to be as historically accurate as was feasible in a game that included dragons and goblins and spell-casting wizards. We used it mainly as a resource for prices and wages and things like that, though a few of my friends have run C&S campaigns over the years. I still have a copy of my own around somewhere.

Although the idea of Arthurian knightly roleplaying appealed (and still appeals) to me, I found C&S too dense. And the typewritten text was really small.

Anyway, fast-forward to the present, and I got myself a copy of the Pendragon 6th Edition Starter Set from DTRPG in PDF form, just to have a look at it and see whether or not I'd be interested in playing it. It's only twelve YankeeBucks or so.

As a starter set, it's an impressive piece of work. However, it uses a different task resolution mechanic than any of Chaosium's d100 systems, which is a mark against it in my book, as I was really hoping for something that slotted into the generic BRP ecosystem.  I can't really be bothered learning a bunch of new systems any more — it's never really floated my boat, but I was (grudgingly) more open to it in the past.

It looks like, once again, this is an Arthurian game that would mainly be useful to me as a resource for home-brewed Arthurian gaming in another system. Which is a shame really, because what I've seen of it looks pretty good, if I only had the energy any more to figure out a whole new rules system. But life is just too short.

Non-D&D D&D, maybe

 

As I have mentioned before, I really like playing in a D&D-like manner, but I'm not that great a fan of D&D as a system. Never really have been, after a brief infatuation with each new incarnation. (Except for 4th Edition. We speak not of 4th Edition.)

Similarly, I do like Runequest (and the generic nature of the d100 system in general) as a system, but I'm not fond of its attachment to Glorantha and its cults and what-not.

So, I thought I'd give Mythras a go for my fantasy roleplaying, 

The Classic Fantasy supplement is designed to make the game feel more Gygaxian, for those who like a heapin' helpin' of dungeoneering in their FRPGin', and the Unearthed Companion extends the power levels available.

I haven't yet organised an actual Mythras campaign, but I do have the glimmerings of an idea on the horizon. What's the worst that could happen?

Fokker D-II and D-III

 

The Fokker D-II was a fairly mediocre and uninspired successor to the E-III monoplane responsible for the “Fokker Scourge” of 1915-’16. The D-III improved on it, but not enough to make it competitive with the Allied aircraft then coming into service, and it very nearly lost Fokker all the credit he had garnered with the German air services.

Visually, there is little to distinguish the two. There were very minor differences in dimensions, the main difference being that the D-II had only one machine-gun, while the D-III had two.

The models are supplied in 1:100 scale (above) and 1:200 scale (left). The wings and struts on the smaller scale models are thicker, to make them less fragile in play.

For 1:144 scale, either re-scale the 1:100 model to 69%, or the 1:200 model to 138%. If printing in FDM, I recommend scaling up from the 1:200 model, but in resin scaling down from 1:100 will work fine. I have printed the 1:100 model scaled down to 1:200 without problems in resin, though the struts are extremely thin and fragile.

The models can be bought at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/fokker-d-ii-and-d-iii/ 

---

December 20th

I've finally got my FDM printed 1/144 version of the D-III painted. The print is okay for FDM, but because it was printed nose-down, the front of the cowling and engine are pretty rough. It may be necessary to detach them and print them separately, at a different orientation.

However, this will do for gaming purposes.

Sopwith Triplane (1:200)

 

This was (I think) a CapnAhab design. I added a pilot and some engine detail, but that's all, and I printed it on my Mars Pro at 1:200 scale.

The model has no wing-rib or control surface detail at all, and I've just painted some in. The effect is fine, for a gaming piece, and having smooth surfaces instead of ribbed certainly does make applying decals a bajillion times easier.

I've messed about with a range of scales for WW1 aerial wargaming — 1:300, 1:200 and 1:144. The most satisfying from a modelling point of view is 1:144, and for maximizing table space of course 1:300 is best. But I think 1:200 is a very good compromise between the two; big enough to be able to see, and small enough to make the best of available space.

Handley-Page Hampton (1/144)

 

This is one of Roman Troyen's (PlanePrinter on Patreon) 1/200 scale designs, up-scaled to 1/144 and printed on my elderly Ender 3 in PLA.

It's a Handley-Page Hampden, a British medium bomber of the early years of World War II.

In truth, I have no real wargaming use for this model. I really only did it because I have a fondness for the Hampden because it looks so goofy. Apparently the fuselage was so narrow that once all the crew were in their stations, they couldn't really move around inside the aircraft at all, and there was no room for a co-pilot.

SchupoSonderWagen '21 in the flesh

 

Now that I have my 15mm Daimler SchupoSonderWagen 1921 (https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/daimler-schupo-sonderwagen-1921/) printed (resin, Mars Pro), it's time to start thinking about painting it.

I want to paint it more or less as it appeared in 1945, during the battle for Berlin.

This photograph was taken outside the Reich Chancellery. It had been taken out of storage and pressed into service along with everything else that was available in those desperate times.

The Panzerwrecks entry for this vehicle suggests that it was painted overall grey, as it would have been pre-war. That's not unlikely, since it was a police vehicle, not military, so it likely wouldn't have been in a dunkelgelb military livery.

It has been suggested that it might have been in "police green", whatever that was, but I prefer the grey since that makes it easier for me to use in a variety of milieus.

Panzerwrecks shows it very rusty, which wouldn't be unlikely since it had been in ungentle storage for years. I might well paint it fairly well weathered, but I don't think I'll rust it up quite as much as this illustration shows.

Basing With Washers

 

I like to base my 15mm infantry on 12.5mm (½ inch) steel washers so that I can store and transport them safely on magnetic sheet. However, I don't like the big hole in the middle of the washer.

I've come up with what I think is a good solution: I 3d print a shroud for the washer on my old Ender 3. It gives me a flat top to the base, and it only increases the base diameter to about 14mm, and increases its thickness by 0.4mm. I can print an array of 25 of them in about quarter of an hour.

These figures are some US Marines I got second-hand; I'm not sure of the manufacturer, but I suspect Battlefront. They don't have Peter Pig's screaming faces.

I'd already started basing some of them, and those ones I'll just put into upside-down shrouds, purely to maintain consistency across them all.

I'll do something similar for the 22mm washers I use for team weapons.

 

Sabot Bases

I use 3d-printed sabot bases to ease mass-movement, and so that the minis don't just fall out due to my clumsiness, I put magnets in little sockets in the bottom of the big sockets.

The magnets I've used here are 5x1mm, and the whole sabot base is 3mm thick, with the sides slightly undercut to make them easier to pick up. They're thicker than I would like for WWII games, but I'll live with it to avoid having to move a bajillion 15mm figures individually. 

 

These long, curved single-rank bases are better visually I think, and also more flexible inasmuch as the figures can be set in a rank (as shown here) or in a file for moving along paths and the like.

Schupo Sonderwagen 1921

 

I have finally managed to finish my 15mm (1:100) Weimar Republic Schupo Sonderwagen of 1921. At least one of these armoured cars was still trundling around Berlin when the Soviets took the city in 1945.

The STLs are available at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/daimler-schupo-sonderwagen-1921/

 

Later on...

Unditching ramps

I've added a separate STL for the wooden unditching ramps that could be carried over the port rear wheel.

However, due to the limitations of the STL format's floating point calculations, it will probably come into the slicer ten times too large. It should be only 14mm long. Rescaling it to 10% should do the trick.