Some time in the 1990s I bought a pack of GW metal Warhammer Skaven. I didn't have any interest in Warhammer, but I did want something I could use as wererats for my AD&D game.
The skaven are a bit more heavily equipped than your standard AD&D wererat, but they looked ratty enough for my purposes.
It sat on my workbench unpainted for a long time, years in fact, until I finally decided to get it out of the way and slapped some speed-paint and inks on to it, and gave it a cardboard base to protect its delicate foot-claws.
I'm not as impressed by the speed-paints as some seem to be. They're okay, as far as they go, but I don't know that they're any better than Ye Olde Inke-Washe.
Big enough to be fairly fearsome, I would think.
This is a 3d print of a model I got from somewhere, sometime.
I'm not at all sure who originally designed it. Possibly Miguel Zavala, but I wouldn't swear to it.
Here are some more of Peter Dennis' Paperboys paper flats, this time some mounted Saxons. I haven't done any horsemen before in this style.
Like the infantry, they look best from directly in front or behind, but unlike the infantry, these horsemen have a much smaller angle of acceptability — the horses are depicted in a three-quarter view, but when turned to the side it soon becomes apparent that they have no actual length. Most of the time, on the wargames table, they'd be viewed pretty much square on though, and they are after all just gaming markers, so it's not a huge deal.
These figures will be of fairly limited usefulness on the tabletop, as the Saxons were really mounted infantry rather than cavalry, and almost always dismounted to fight.
Now I just have some missile troops to do, and then I'll have the basis of a 28mm 9th - 11th century Saxon army to build on.
Here are the first few bases of archers completed, freshly mounted and still with their PVA boots wet.
I initially place the figures with superglue for rapid adhesion, but alone that glue isn't strong enough to stand up to repeated handling. So, for strength and durability, I encapsulate the feet of the figures with PVA. When that dries clear, it's pretty well invisible.
I've finished 12 bases of archers and one of slingers, which should be enough archers for just about any Anglo-Saxon army based for Hail Caesar. As for the slingers, I don't know... I probably should actually check the army lists.
I've also redesigned my movement trays to make them more compact and easier to pick up.
I think the design is from Schlossbauer*, in which case I would have got it from Thingiverse. It's been sitting in the painting queue for some considerable time, a couple of years at least.
* Nope, apparently it's a Gormaw from EC3D Designs,
Sergeant Measureby is, as usual, doing sterling scale-indicating work with his Spear of 5mm Increments.
The original model was armoured with plate barding, which I removed, and I gave it a more compact base. This is a particularly long-legged boar, and I've made another remix to shorten his legs — I haven't printed that one yet.
Sergeant Measureby, with his Spear of 5mm Increments, is shown alongside for scale.
Finding a miniature of a female fighter type wielding a warhammer isn't all that easy. I certainly don't have one amongst my giant stash of unpainted figures, so I made one. Or rather, I converted one.
 |
| Reaper Bones 89011 Seelah, Iconic Paladin |
This (left) is the miniature I started from. It's one that I got in one of Reaper's early Bones Kickstarters.
I cut off her sword and made the hammer from a bit of brazing rod and some plastic sprue.
It's a club-hammer rather than a warhammer, but that's mainly because the thought of carving a teensy-tiny warhammer made me cringe. It's a hammer, and that'll be enough I hope.
It only occurred to me after I'd done all the work that if I'd looked amongst my cleric figures instead of the fighter types, I could probably have found something that didn't require any messing about at all. Oh well.
I've given her a paint job, though I'm not entirely happy with it. My eyesight is really degrading these days, and I don't imagine it will ever get any better.
In the course of painting the figure I realised that she has almost no nose. That indicates to me that it's one of Reaper's early plastic figures; they had issues with quite a few of their miniatures where the plastic didn't properly fill the mould, or maybe the moulds hadn't been made properly.
Now I've primed it and glued it to a bit of MDF, and started the groundwork with sawdust and dirt. Where I'll go from here I'm really not sure. It's a bit uninteresting just as it is.
To be honest, I'm not quite sure why I printed this in the first place. I have no real use for it for tabletop gaming. Still, it's something to do from time to time.
It's scaled for use with 28mm miniatures, and printed on my Ender 3 at 0.2mm layer height in eSun PLA+.
* I can't find it on their website any more, but I expect it's there somewhere. Their catalogue is quite extensive these days.
** Ah, here it is: it's part of a set called Hallowed Mausoleums
This guy was sculpted by somebody, I don't know who, a couple of years ago in 2020 when toilet paper hoarding was very much in the news, and I printed it (not very well) on my Ender 3.
At long last I've got around to giving it a very basic paint job.
It's a more-or-less 28mm mini.
Here's my first model of 2022, a member of the Stalingrad Workers' Militia in 28mm.
Model design is by Propylene Foliescu, printed on my Mars Pro.
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.
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.
 |
| Clickupon to embiggenate |
I'm not sure who was the author of this model, nor where it originally came from. It might have been Thingiverse, it might have been from one of the Humble Bundles of STLs I've collected over time. All I know about it is that it's named "Abandoned Lighthouse", and it's scaled for use with 28mm figures.
It prints in several parts: one for the island, one for each floor of the tower (of which there are five), one for the roof, and a couple of light options. The one I've chosen is a simple brazier, the other is a sort of magical egg-light.
The tower sections include some interior detail, and it comes apart so that miniatures can be put inside.
I painted the stonework using the "leopard spot" technique.
First everything is painted in loose splotches of raw sienna, burnt umber, and a sort of terracotta orange. The paint is quite loose, so it flows around and mingles a bit at the edges of the other colours.
In retrospect, I think yellow ochre would have been a better choice for the lightest tone, and burnt sienna for the middle.
At this point it all looks fairly terrible and gaudy.
Next I overpaint it all with a couple of layers of a black wash.
This tones down all the clown colours and unifies them tonally.
It all looks pretty dark now, but there's a variation in tone underneath the black wash that still shows through.
Then I dry-brushed with a cream colour, and highlight with pure white.
This lightens everything substantially, and brings out the surface detail of the model.
In this photo, I've also made the very first start on some vegetation, but at this point it's more like a bowling lawn than a wild weed patch.
Last time, I printed it at 50% of its designed size; this time I've done it full-size, and I've gone for a blueish colour scheme rather than the browns I used last time. It's very big.
I've mounted it on three big 50mm steel washers, not because it needed to be based for stability, but rather to give it a bit of weight and to shift its centre of gravity right down.
The blue skin is only modestly successful, and all the boils and sores have ended up looking more like internal molten magma or something rather than pus-filled lesions. Never mind.
As always, Sergeant Measureby is present for scale, with his Spear of 5mm Increments.
This little charmer is called "Vessel of Agony", by DutchMogul on Thingiverse.
I printed it yesterday on my new Mars Pro in eSun water-washable resin.
 |
| Ender 3 print |
I've tried printing this model before, on my Ender 3, and without great success. With all those tiny chain links it could be designed specifically to give FDM printers fits. Which it did.
I could still use it, but I'd have to paint it up as some sort of coral-encrusted undersea horror I think.
This is a crone from the Witcher 3 video game, which I got from DarkRealms on Thingiverse.
This is the second version of this figure I've done. the first one was printed on my Ender 3, this one on the Elegoo Mars Pro.
Baba Yaga is a figure from Slavic folklore, a witch who lived in the forest, sometimes malicious and sometimes benign. She is often described as living in a hut that walks on great chicken legs.
This is a 3d printed 28mm model from Printable Scenery; it costs about thirteen YankeeBucks. I printed it at 0.2mm layer height in eSun PLA on my Ender 3. Altogether, there's probably about 40 hours of printing in it.
The model does have some (minimal) interior detail, and the roof is removable, but I doubt that I'll make use of it. I have magnetized the legs and glued a thin steel sheet to the bottom of the hut, so I can separate it from its legs if need be.
The model comes with STLs for a couple of roof spire decorations as well, but I think they'd be pretty fragile printed in FDM and I haven't printed either of them.
The figure between the chicken feet, for scale, is the trusty Sergeant Measureby with his Spear of 5mm Increments.
The spearman, for scale, is as usual Sergeant Measureby with his Spear of 5mm Increments.
The Flesh was printed in eSun PLA+ at 0.08mm on my Ender 3.
