3d Printed Hedges

 

I got some STLs for hedges from https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/hedgerow-bocage-terrain-for-6mm-10mm/

They're presented as being for 6mm - 10mm gaming scales, and they're certainly best for those, but they're also quite usable for 15mm. In any larger scale though I think they'd just look like a herbaceous border planting.

These sorts of things are quite easy to make with some ice-block sticks and clump foliage, but the advantage (to me) of 3d printing is that I can just click-and-forget, come back the next morning and pull a bunch of hedgerows off the printer. Of course they need painting, so they're not entirely labour free, but painting them takes very little time or effort. Also, they're pretty well indestructible unless you jump up and down on them with hob-nailed boots. I can just toss them into a box without fear that they're going to lose any foliage.

Here they are alongside some 1/300 scale (5-6mm) Heroics & Ros Napoleonics, Spaniards in point of fact.

In this scale they're easily bocage-size. If you wanted smaller hedgerows, they're easily rescaled down in the slicer, and they'd print a lot faster too.

In 10mm (1/150 - 1/144 scale) they're also large enough to represent bocage.

Unfortunately I don't have any 10mm infantry. I printed this 1/150 Bishop as a test of one of Mr. Bergman's 1/200 scale models, just to see how it would look on the table, but I don't actually play in that scale. I would though, if I were starting out again from scratch.

In 15mm they're still head-high hedges, suitable for planting around pastures and what-not.

It would be a simple matter to rescale them a bit to create 15mm bocage, though unless you have a big printer the larger STLs would probably not fit on the print bed.

Cura 5.0 and FDG profiles

 

Ultimaker has recently released version 5.0 of its Cura FDM slicer, and Tom Tullis of Fat Dragon Games has, as usual, provided the 3d printing community with some excellent profiles for the Ender 3-ish printer family. They're available via his website, as usual.

Cura has an all-new slicing engine, and the improvements in its rendition of surface detail are marked.

This is one of Tom's own FDG miniatures, designed to be printed supportless. The print shows some striations and boogers; that's because I'm too lazy to be constantly tinkering with my machine to keep it in a state of ultimate tuning, and also it's getting a bit long in the tooth now. I'm not too concerned; at tabletop distances, those imperfections largely disappear under a coat of paint.

More importantly, observe the surface detail on the figure's helmet: the rivets and plates are defined much more crisply than I could have expected before with my stock 0.4mm nozzle. Likewise the chain over his groin, and the smooth upper curve of the plackart (the lower part of the breastplate).

This figure was intentionally designed not to be a challenge for the Ender series printers, which is why I chose it for this test. I wanted minimal complication so that I could see just what Cura's new engine could do. If I had thought ahead, I'd have also done a print using its old engine, but never mind, I've already uninstalled it. I'll just have to rely on my memory, and from what memory tells me, the new engine is a great improvement.

Minitama

I made myself a miniature travelling Onitama set, this time on the 3d printer instead of out of wood.

The pieces are pegged, to go in the holes on the board, so there's no risk of them being shaken off.

The board is only 60mm on a side, and the whole lot could easily slip into a pocket, were it to be given a suitable box. Which it may very well be.

What's the point of the Cleric?

 

Really, what's the point of the Cleric as a separate character class? It's pretty much just another Magic-user with better hit-points and combat ability and no armour restrictions.

Even if the DM chooses to play a game in which sects and cults are socially important, there seems no point to me in the Cleric as a separate class. It would be more satisfying by far, in my opinion, to take care of all that religious palaver through roleplaying. If a player desperately wants a fighting spellcaster, there's always the multiclass/dual class Fighter-Magic-user option.

Armchair Skeleton

 

This is a 28mm model from somebody's post-apocalyptic stuff, printed on my Ender 3 FDM machine, and it's a pretty good example of why I don't really bother much with printing miniatures on that machine any more.

I could tune it to get cleaner results (probably) but frankly I can't be bothered. Not when I can get much better results more easily on my resin printer.