This week was a real mix – although the big thing was how much of it was spent with the 3D printers hammering away and the other was how much time I spent staring at MDF.
First up, it only took me 4 months but I finally assembled the sales post for all that MDF I’m planning to shift (and is currently filling the dining room). I will do a full announcement post at some point with a few extra details but if you want to take a look at what’s available, click the link above.
Now on the actual hobby, the first thing up is that I’ve actually applied some paint to some models this week. The newly purchased parts of my Chaos force (the extra warriors, marauders, marauder horsemen and Chaos Chosen) finally got their undercoat this weekend. I also gave them a quick spray of white from the top to quickly add some shading (and help me see what I’m painting). This week I’ll start painting them up properly, beginning with the Warriors and Chosen seeing as most of the paint scheme is Metal. But that’s next week’s update.
The final unit that needs assembly are the Chaos Knights, but to begin with I had to make a little adjustment. I had originally assembled the Knights for more of a skirmish game setup, so pushing for exciting poses and oval bases. This included assembling the Champion with a morning star which (although cool) was a complete knightmare for ranking up. Luckily the later release includes another option for the champion with a hammer held vertically. This was much more suitable for my purposes, so the new guy got the job, while the older champion got demoted for being a pain in the ass to use. Luckily I had a replacement lance in the new set, so it was time for a little bit of surgery. However, just because he was demoted, didn’t mean he was going to lose out – I decided he’d be the only bareheaded Knight in the group, complete with the facial expression showing his disgust. I still need to assemble the other 4 knights (including the banner and musician) but then they can join the pile to be painted. I’m going to admit, I’m not very excited about the prospect of painting up cavalry (those damn horses) but having seen them in action, it’s going to be worth it to get 10 of them on the board.
So what was the mighty printer hard at work doing? Well it was trying out a little experiment. I’ve recently tried pushing my layer height down to 0.08mm on my filament 3D printer in an attempt to see just how far you can push it. This ruin, 11 Turpentine Alley from Tired World, was to be my test piece. Turns out, pretty well. I’m pretty happy with the quality of the final print. The downside of course is the sheer print time – it took roughly 3 days’ worth of printing to do a single relatively small building which is fine when doing small-scale production but probably not very good when I’m building an entire city. There are also some other settings to tweak, as you can see a little bit of stringing. All that said, the real test is going to be once it’s actually painted up.
Another bit of 3D printed work was trying out a new release that arrived this weekend. The Buildings & Terrain WWII North African Campaign Kickstarter that I backed a few months ago released their files on Saturday. Although intended for resin printing, I’m trying to see how much I’m able to print using FDM, both for speed’s sake and to see how much of a saving I can make. First up was this fighting position. I think it’s turned out pretty well – there is still a little bit of cleanup to do and I had to lower it slightly into the print bed due to some errant polygons but it took two hours less than it would do on the resin printer and for just over half the cost. I’ll try printing a few more of these (including a full-on trench system) and you may see them turn up once we start fighting in Shyluz.
Finally, and the biggest job this week, the Dastardly Regular Opponent sent through an order for Dwarves, and more of them. Seeing as I had also managed to leave my box of dice and tokens at his house last week, I thought I might as well get the next wave printed off and deliver them. This was not in any way an attempt to reduce my opponent’s painted model count in order to make the rest of us in the group chat feel less guilty about our piles of shame, merely taking the opportunity to give him more figures to paint. If you want to follow him along on his journey, you can find him on Twitter where he posts everyday (or at least is aiming for a streak).
That’s it for this week, with a new update coming next Sunday.
