Pantherturm (15mm)

 This is a freebie STL of a WWII German Pantherturm, an emplaced Panther tank turret used extensively in the Italian campaign and during the fall of the Reich as a (relatively) cheap protected anti-tank bunker.

 https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/mojobob_hoochyman_pantherturm

The model is designed at 1:100 scale for 15mm, but it will scale up for 20mm without any issues, and even 28mm at a pinch. It'd also scale down to 1:150 or 1:144 for 10-12mm gaming, though the gun barrel might start getting a little fragile then.

Both the turret and the base have sockets to accommodate round magnets up to 10x1.5mm.

 It printed successfully on my Ender 3 FDM printer, but the print failed on my Mars Pro resin printer — I don't know why. That printer's been getting quite flaky in recent times, and the failure rate has increased markedly. 

The base will need to be embedded in an appropriate terrain diorama. For Italy, that would be most often rural terrain, but in the invasion of Germany they were often dug into city streets to overwatch important road junctions. 

 Here are a couple just sitting on top of a terrain sheet, and they look okay just like this. I'd still like to embed at least one of them in a scenic base though.

2026-03-13

I've now included a groundwork STL that the base piece can be pressed into, for those who don't want the trouble of making a scenic base the traditional way.

 2026-03-14

Here are my prints, now encapsulated with grass and dirt collars so they look more dug-in. 

These are 3d-printed bases, but really it would be a trivial matter to make the exact same thing out of air-drying clay or the like. 

 2026-03-16

Here's one in a base better suited for urban rubble, this time created from scratch using traditional modelling techniques and materials (polyfilla, kitty-litter and matchsticks). 

The Book of Artifacts

 

This just arrived for me, a print-on-demand product from DTRPG.

It's pretty much what it says on the cover: a whole bunch of magical artifacts for AD&D2e. It also includes some notes on the use of artifacts within an AD&D2e campaign, and a bunch of tables with which to generate the various random powers the artifacts are supposed to have.

I like the concept of these artifacts in a campaign. They tend to be ridiculously powerful and unbalancing, but at least they're each unique. I'm not a huge fan of the vast number of generic +1 swords and Potions of Healing and what-not that tend to give player characters their superhero powers.  I think magical doo-dads should be a bit special, or else they just become a stand-in for modern or sci-fi technology.

Plus, I like the idea that magical things should be just a little bit perilous to the user. Knowing that using an object of Mighty Arcane Power™ might make your legs fall off means that employing it becomes a meaningful action, not just a handy deus ex machina. 

Will I actually use any of the contents of this book? Probably.  They're a hoot.

The key is to make sure that they don't stick around long enough for a character to make them the major part of their personality, or else players will get quite upset when they're taken away, one way or another. Unless that would be amusing to me.... in which case, we'll see. 

Giant Hag

 

This is an FDM print of a fairly old Duncan Louca design, one of a set of three hags he did. I've printed it at a height of 75mm, as I had a need for a giant hag in a game session I was running, though that need passed long before I ever got the mini painted.

It's painted entirely with glazes (Army Painter Speedpaint and Vallejo Xpress) and washes, apart from the metallic gold of her piercings and the strings dangling from her waist. It's a very quick way of getting a reasonable tabletop result, though the mini would benefit from some more deliberate shading and highlighting, especially about the face.

My Ender 3 FDM printer is getting pretty old and a bit outta whack now, and I'm getting quite a lot of stringing, blobbing and adhesion issues. It may be time to start saving up for an upgrade. 

Vallejo Xpress

 

Vallejo Xpress is another entry into the colour glaze "speed-paint" style of mini paints.

I noticed them on the rack when I went in to my FLGS  for some normal Vallejo paint, and thought I'd give them a try in my constant search for hobby materials that cater to my laziness.

They work decently well, though there's nothing startling about them. They dry to a glossier finish than Army Painter Speedpaints, but otherwise seem pretty similar.

The part-painted hag in between the two bottles is FDM printed at 75mm size, and not very well printed at that. FDM isn't well suited to colour glazing, as its layer lines are quite apparent. Plus, my printer is a bit out of whack, and I'm getting a fair amount of stringing and blobbing.

Speed-paint glazes, of any manufacturer, are fine if all you want is a quick and okay paint-job, but they're really not a one-and-done solution. If you want a really decent paint job, they're still just a starting point. They work best on models with plenty of well-incised surface detail. However, they're useful for what they are. 

They're a bit tricky to mix reliably, but not impossible.  I assume they'd need the appropriate glaze medium for extending if you want to lower the intensity of the base colour; I haven't experimented with plain water, but I think it would tend to interfere with the paint's pooling and self-levelling qualities.

The skulls on the bottle caps are FDM printed from a file I got on Thingiverse; they provide me with a good visual indication of what's going to come straight out of the bottle. They're just stuck in place with a blob of blu-tak in a socket underneath.

WotC Displacer Beast

 

This is an old mini from the early 2000s, when WotC was newly the owner of D&D and had just published 3rd Edition. They also started producing a range of white metal miniatures to match the art in the Monster manual, of which this is one — the Displacer Beast.

I don't know who the sculptor was, but it does a decent job of replicating the skinny, almost skeletal aspect of the MM artwork. It was a hell of a thing to assemble though.

 

It originally came with a plastic "slotta" base, but I've mounted it on a bit of steel I ground to shape, and added some groundwork with superglue and baking soda. It's supposed to be blue-black, though my one is more blue than black. never mind.