Ah the joys of 3D-printing, it masks as a way to feed your hobby and turns out to be a hobby in and of itself. I should really update my attempt at a 3D-printing for wargamers faq soon. With that said, here's another painted 3D-print: the Colossus Heavy Transport with Container by Print Minis.
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| You have to wonder: are those future delivery people or high-tech porch pirates? |
Life seems to have found a way to get in the way of blogging. Fortunately I do still find time for my hobby (a lot of it is taken up by 3D-printing to be honest). Despite having a lot of half-finished projects on the table, I couldn't resist taking on another one. So this week I attempted to paint on a new scale. Here's a 1:12 scale Red Sonja 'miniature' (it's about 7 inches to the top of the stone throne).
Life is quite an exhausting undertaking, and when it comes to the hobby I'm overloaded....with enthusiasm and joy! I've been working on and off on about six projects at the same time and all of them are glorious. As a lot of them are either nearing completion or showing wonderful progress, I should update this blog more often (otherwise I'll end up typing one of those monster posts). Aside from that I'm still in my Rossian (Bob) 'Joy of Painting'-trip: “No pressure. Just relax and watch it happen.” For me that means slapping paint on random monsters from the queue around my station. This week I picked up an Omni Toad, relaxed and just started blasting paint on it.
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| Leap for your life! |
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves.....oh dear I can't just copy paste mr. Caroll/Dodgson for the entire length of a blog post, can I? Back to regular blabla then. I finally got around to finishing this wonderful sculpt of the famous Jabberwocky It is a fun monster to add to my collection of miniatures and I'm rather happy with the paint job I applied.
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| Just when you thought it was save to go back into the forest. |
Classic HeroQuest, now there's a project that has been terrorising my various shelves, windows sills and piles of shame over the years. No more, I say, because I've finally finished all the models needed to play the game. Here's a quick group shot of some beloved classics.
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| Here they are, the full cast of the first HeroQuest box set, published (in Dutch) in 1989, painted (by a Dutchman) in 2023. |
It's easy to mistake a low rate of blogging with a lack of hobby time, luckily the opposite is true. Aside from a number of good games, I've also got a few rather massive projects (*cough* titans *cough*) on the burner. My lack of blathering stems from a lack of time to sit down and go on about my hobby. It doesn't helpt that my autofocus seems to prefer zany backgrounds to finished models :) Ah well, with all that useless preamble out of the way, let's get to the gravy. This week I decided to sit down each evening and paint an entire big monster start to finish. I actually managed to do it too :D Here's a Lizardmen Serpahon Carnosaur....
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| No! I don't know how I'm going to hit anyone with my spear from up here either! |
Five years ago I took a bunch of railroad pine trees I'd kept in a jar and stuck them to bases to make a pine forest. I had an excellent time making those tree bases and I've been using them for both gaming and backdrop purposes. While this was all well and good, I really wanted to add some deciduous trees to my collection, but the ones made for the railroad hobby didn't work for me (too expensive and not quite to scale). As those of you following along with my ramblings for the past months have probably guessed: my 3D-printer came to the rescue.
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| "In the sheltering shade of the forest, a screamingly drunk Goblin King and the path under his bare feet, The Elvenpath" |
This week I added more Stargrave scenery to my collection. The monorail train you see behind the models is 3D-printed. This is actually one of the first STL's (3D printable files) I purchased after getting a 3D printer. It thought me what not to do when 3D-printing (I think this is train number six to be honest). Aside from painting the train, I rebased a few older models and finished a few new Die Hard Miniatures and 3D-printed ones.
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| Don't worry I'm not moving into model railroading (I'm already out of space as-is). Here's a wonderful blog about crossing over to that hobby though. |
I've spent the past few weeks painting more scenery to use with Stargrave (and perhaps eventually 40K (if I get around to playing that again)). Aside from painting I've also had the chance to get more actual games of Stargrave in. I had a blast each time (sometimes while actually using a blast template). About time for an update, so let's go.
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| The collection of rust terrain to play Stargrave scenario's in, is slowly expanding. |
You'd think this finished Oversight Office follows rather fast on the heels of the Snack Stacks I wrote about two days ago. This is a carefully crafted illusion*. In all honestly this tower has been standing on a shelf (and on the tabletop) for quite a bit longer than the Snack Stacks. I just hadn't gotten around to writing about it yet. Let's remedy that.
* Why publish in chronological order when you can let chaos rule?
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| The message above the main gate reminds me of the computers I owned in the nineties. |
Stargrave is awesome. And it gets even better if you go overboard on scenery and scatter terrain. As a rather fanatical terrain builder (also know as a 'storage challenged wargamer' ;) this game ticks all my boxes. So much so, that I went ahead and filled my shopping cart at TTCombat after playing the battle for the overgrown factory last year. I figured I needed it to play games in frontier world style sci-fi cities, also it gave me an excuse to play around a bit more with MDF terrain. Long story short, here are my Snack Stacks.
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| The original setting for 40K (Rogue Trader) was more a frontier settlement sci-fi exploration game. I'm glad Stargrave is here to scratch that particular itch. |
Update more often is starting to sound like 'paint all my models before getting more'. In other words: crazy ideas that have no place in the hobby ;). Speaking of crazy ideas, I thought it might be fun to write about this mad project while large chunks of it are still rolling of the printer. Rolling? More like slowly sauntering towards completion. Let's get this crazy train rolling (queue Ozzy Osbourne)
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| Quick! Start chanting to the Omissiah! Another Warlord is about to walk!!! |
Considering beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I have to admit at least one of my eye stalks is not vibing with the Spirit of the Mountain model GW made for the new High Elf line (also known as the Lumineth Realm Lords). Luckily we live in an age of many alternatives. And as a recent convert to the 3D-printing community I looked and found a more suitable model called the 'Sacred Mountain Avatar' by a gaming company on MyMiniFactory called Ghamak. Here's my painted version.
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| This Sacred Mountain Avatar makes a nice proxy for the Spirit of the Mountain. |
Time flies. I got my first resin 3D-printer last year and have been toying around with it ever since. I have to say: it is a tool with a learning curve. Last week I added a second 3D-printer to my hobby arsenal, for reasons I'll go into below. Combined with the new 'climate controlled environment' (my 3D-printing tent ;) I'm getting better results and I find myself spending less time scraping resin gunk off reservoirs and more time looking at successful prints. With that I thought it was about time to write a first 'Resin 3D-printing for wargamers FAQ'. Let's go for it.
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| I printed the Dragon Crest space ship that is part of the Outpost Origin's collection. |
"Dreaming dreams of A-a-a-altdorf, and sweet Marie who waits for me." My apologies, occasionally the result of a slightly extended paint project makes me break out in a ghastly song and dance routing. The Glottkin fits that bill for me. You could say this is one of the last Warhammer Fantasy models ever produced as the Nurgle aligned triplet was in part responsible for the destruction of the Old World. I can't hold it against them. For one: the End Times' source books are just too cool (the novels...that's another story). Second the background on Glottkin is quite interesting, and third they make for extremely entertaining bad guys in the current AoS stories. Anyway let's start with a shot of the model.
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| "Brother three shall bring low the Empire of Man," you can say that again! |
One of the best gaming supplements ever written - as far as I'm concerned - is Waaargh the Orks. After fleshing out Chaos in the venerable Realm of Chaos books GW decided to really keep going and give their Space Orks some background. I bought the book way back when it came out in 1991. Even though I curse the decision to give it pre-punched holes for a binder and forsake any glue for the cover I still love it. I even attempted to start a Space Ork army way back then (and sold of most of my models over the years). One of the things I never bought when it came out was a classic Space Ork Battle Wagon (I couldn't scrape the funds together for a full mail order and there was no GW point of sales within reach way back then (and no internet*). Thanks to the miracles of 3D-printing I now have one. Obviously it had to be covered in paint as quickly as possible. No need to paint it red, you don't have to go fasta' when you'z got lots'a teef!
* A horrifying thought, I know
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| "Fasta' you zogs! We needz'ta leave! 'Oo knows what'll happen when two weirdboyz call shotgun at da same time." |
I did not just mess around with my 3D-printer this week, I also found time to build and paint. This Skaven Clawlord for instance. I got him as part of a small second hand Skaven lot. As I took his old coat of paint off, I discovered his head had been replaced with a plastic variant. No problem if you ask me, this face suits him well enough.
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| Now for something different: the front door to Maisontaal abbey. |
Resin 3D printing may be laborious to get a grip on, but it offers an awesome addition to the hobby. Unfortunately, as I found out, when the temperatures drop, the resin becomes too viscous and prints start failing. Here's the solution I came up with.
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| By placing the 3D printer in a growing tent I can lose the cover as external light is blocked by the tent. It gained me precisely the amount of space I needed to fit everything in there. |
After almost three months of nothing, three posts in three days. Admittedly this is not a professionally planned (or run) blog ;). But with more stuff on the paint station coming up, I did not want to walk into the 'let's save this one for later'-trap (it's where my King Tiger is parked). So without further ado (and bereft of pre-amble (so as not to fill the space with empty rambling)) here's the Verminlord Corruptor I finished yesterday.
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| "Rats spreading the black death? Amateur stuff I say, wait 'till I'm done here." (oh dear, now this Verminlord sounds like Matt Berry in my internal monologue.) |
When it comes to Skaven on the second hand market, I have a hard time leaving them to others. Recently I lucked out and got my hands on a bunch of Skaven that contained a model I'd been hoping to get for quite some time: Gnawdoom the Skaven Grey Seer. This is the wizard that was sent to Maisontaal to recover the Black Ark in the Terror of the Lichmaster book.
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| Painting Gnawdoom the grey seer again after all these years was a joy. |
I can't believe I managed to fall of the edge of a globe! Luckily I dropped back onto the surface and painted some miniatures along the way. What is that you say? No edges on globes? Okay, in all honesty: work managed to eat up most of my time and I had to overcome a raging addiction to Satisfactory along the way too. But over the holidays I managed to get some hobby done. As I turned the space underneath my paint station into a GW store facsimile I'll be forced to paint even more in the foreseeable future if I want my legspace back. In other words: more updates will follow soon. But for now, and without further ado, lets pretend I never fell of the globe and show what I painted over the past few weeks.
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| Painting skin with purple glazes is a lot of fun and produces nice results (I think). It also makes me hum the tune of Purple Haze, but that's just me being annoying. |