Artilleriewagen 75mm

 

I've never really seen a decent compromise between ground scale and model scale when representing armoured trains on the tabletop, though this particular German WWII vehicle is less egregious in that respect than most.

It could be connected to a larger train, like a normal flatcar, but it also had its own internal diesel engine and could move independently.

It mounted machine guns on all sides, and a 75mm turret from a Panzer III N.

This 1:100 model doesn't really fit properly on the N-gauge track lengths I have, but never mind.

I printed the hull on my Ender 3, and the turret on my Mars Pro, and it really throws into contrast the difference in quality between the two. I'm not one of those who likes to tinker constantly with their printers to squeeze the absolute maximum from them, and I know the Ender is capable of better, but when it's so much quicker and easier (though a bit more expensive) to get much better quality from the resin printer... well, why bother?

To be fair, the FDM-printed body looks okay at arm's length on the tabletop, so what the heck. I probably won't be printing any more non-terrain models on the Ender 3 again though.

Later...

This was called PanzerJager Triebwagen, and "triebwagen" basically just mean "rail car". I'm guessing if you hang about here, you probably already know what "panzerjager" means.

It's also 1:100, the body printed on my Ender 3 and the turrets on my Mars Pro. I've got as far as base-coating it, and I don't know if I'll take it any further than this, not in the immediate future anyway.

The problem with it is that in just about any tabletop wargame's ground scale, this particular car alone would be about 300 or 400 metres long. I think that if I use armoured trains at all, I'll just use them in 1/300 scale rather than 15mm. Apart from anything else, the smaller models will take a whole lot less printing.

Vallejo Inks

 

I like Vallejo acrylic inks a lot, and I use them often. 

I made this textured colour chart to show me just what they're likely to look like when painted on to a 3d surface. The texture in this case is an acrylic wall filler, sealed with a couple of coats of Vallejo white surface primer.

The glazing medium I used is just a 50/50 mix of Vallejo flow improver and Golden liquid acrylic matte medium. I should probably have done a 1:5 ink to medium panel as well, but I didn't, so there it is. Maybe later.

Red Peril

 

This is a 28mm 3d print from a sculpt by Propylene Foliescu, part of his Winter War catalogue.

He's a dastardly NKVD man, though in this scale I'm more likely to use him in a TTRPG as an earlier dastardly Cheka officer — I don't really know how much the Cheka and NKVD uniforms differ, but he'll do me for either.

Evil Tree

 

This model came from a Humble Bundle I got some time ago. It's called Evil Tree, and that's about as much as I know about it.

I printed it on my Ender 3, the first print using Tom Tullis' printer profile for Cura 4.11.

Lurking in the background there is, as usual, Sergeant Measureby, for scale.

Umber Hulk

 

This is Miguel Zavala's redesigned Umber Hulk, printed on my Mars Pro and painted with Vallejo acrylics.

It's a monster I haven't used much, if at all, in my own campaign, but my favourite character of old, Sir Fnord the Pretty Neat died of them twice, both times by having his head ripped clean off.

German SPG Crewmen

3d printed 15mm crewmen in a 3d printed Marder III M

 Open-topped vehicle models and artillery pieces really do need crew figures, and they're something that has not, historically, been straightforward to come by as a separate item from a 15mm model.

I've used spare figures from PSC kits, figures from infantry sets and some artillerymen from Peter Pig, but I couldn't find my Peter Pig men, and with international mail order being in the parlous state it's in, I instead went for some downloadable STLs from 3dBreed.

They're decent enough figures — quite chunky, but I don't mind that in a 15mm figure — though limited in range. The pre-made supports on the ones I first tried were terrible (I suspect that they were created for their 28mm figures and then everything just shrunk down together) and I had to strip them out and do my own in ChituBox.

Since I was messing about with them in Blender anyway, I took the opportunity to do some head-swapping to give them a bit of variety.

The original figure is 4th from the right in this photo. I cut off his head, made a bunch more heads, and copied them together, so here I have ten slight variations on that one original.

So anyway. The experiment has been a success, and now I will have as many 15mm German artillerymen as I'm ever likely to need.

A Multiplicity of Marders

 

I don't know where the original model that these are based on came from. I thought it was one of Zachary Kuvalich's old ones, but that turns out not to be the case.

The grey one is more or less in its original form, though I thinned the edges of the armour plates, added studs around the edges of the tracks, and re-did the rivets and canopy attachment handles. The decals are from Battlefront, and they're absolutely terrible — completely out of register.

The yellow one has had some mesh panels and a rail (which I assume is a canopy support) added at the rear of the hull.

STLs are available at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4980259

I'm gradually building up a decent collection of Marders, though I'm still missing a few types.

Left to right:
SdKfz 135 Marder I, SdKfz 132 Marder II, SdKfz 139 Marder III, SdKfz 138 Marder III-H

Next up, a Marder III-M. It's another remix of somebody else's model, and once again, I don't know whose.