15mm FDM Leman Russ and its Ork looted versions

 

Still playing around with my Bambu A1 FDM printer I got to thinking about my slowly growing 15mm "Not 40K" sci-fi armies that I intend using with One Page Rules. I wondered, "is it possible to make a main battle tank?" Well, the answer is yes. In fact, I've made three so far. Two of which have already been looted by the Orks! I'll need to make at least one more for the now out gunned Not-Imperial Guardsmen.

These were printed with a 0.4mm nozzle using PLA on my Bambu A1. The layer lines are easily visible and could probably be toned down by playing with the settings and also swapping to a 0.2mm nozzle. But for my purposes, these will do fine and they don't really look too layered from a distance. This is 15mm scale after all. The STL for the tank I found somewhere in a dark corner on the interwebs.

I had fun going to town kit bashing the two Ork Loota Tanks using bits and carboard (heavily coated in PVA to the point of rock hardness). I also used Gaslands weapons and accessories to spruce up the Loota's. You can see two Gobbo mechanics working on the back of one tank and both of the tractor blades are from Gaslands.

Now to get painting.

A 3d FDM printed dragon

 

I've been experimenting with my Bambu A1 FDM printer, and I saw this great night-light on their online Maker World. It just looked too cool not to try it out. So here it is in all its fiery glory.

The paint job is my own and not from the ABS. I printed it out with the 0.4mm nozzle to see how it would print out. If I swapped to my 0.2mm nozzle the results would be crisper. But I am very happy with this as it is.

Now to get up to some more shenanigans with the printer.

Cheap and easy rubble terrain

 

Easy and cheap rubble

I had some MDF bases floating around and some unused sponge and so I decided to give a go at making rubble terrain pieces for use on the tabletop for both wargaming and role-playing games. The first of the finished pieces can be seen above and below.

The process was very simple. So simple, in fact, that a numpty like me was able to do it. I cut the foam into blocks to represent worked stone blocks. Then I added to that some small river stones I had floating around somewhere. You could use thick cardboard for the base but make sure it won't warp first. MDF is better in my opinion. I then smothered the stones and foam in White/PVA glue.

After a few minutes, I then added river sand across the base to add to the rubble effect.

Below, the foam blocks were arranged to make the base of a ruined tower. In this manner, you could make a larger structure stone by stone. However, I wanted this to block partial line of sight whilst permitting ranged attacks over the ruined wall, so I kept it to a low profile.

Below is a fake stone that I bought from a $2 Dollar store. The stone has a hole in the base so you can hide a spare key in it. I wanted it for a large boulder. Once again, the river stones add to the rubble effect, and I'll add sand later to the base.

I mixed some White/PVA glue with water and brushed it over the foam in order to harden it. This took about 24hrs to dry. I did this a few times to get all the foam blocks hardened.

Painting the finished result was simple. A basecoat of black spray followed by a grey spray lightly over that black undercoat whilst it was still wet to blend the colours. I then followed this up with a drybrush of lighter grey and added some straw from an old doormat to make it look like some grass had grown between the rubble then died.

And there you have it. Cheap, easy, simple.

Christmas terrain for wargaming - part 2

 

So, on a 32-degree day here in Oz, when the wind is howling and the bushfire threat is ever present, its finally snowed on my Christmas terrain.

That's right. I have managed to finish off my Christmas terrain that I showed off in my last post. Yes, amazed reader. I have finally finished a single project! I know. I'm amazed too.

This terrain will be making its way to my gaming table soon enough. Now there's some painting of miniatures left to do.

Christmas terrain for wargaming

 

The local Christmas World shop opened the other weekend and as I was browsing I came across some nice miniature Christmas trees meant for a Christmas Village display. I had other ideas!

Following the method I posted about the other day (see here), I grabbed some 10cm diameter round MDF bases from Bunnings and created four more vegetation bases for my next foliage efforts.

Yes, that's PVA glue on the base still drying. I didn't sneeze on those bases.

The bases were sprayed with light brown spray as in the previous post's method. But I also did a very light zenith spray of white. This sets the tone of the winter base before I added the trees.

Currently, these are still a work in progress. Once the PVA glue dries with the stones, I'll add dobs of PVA and then sprinkle snow basing material over the base and stones. I want this to look like a dusting of snow rather than heavy snowfall.

These vegetation terrain bases I plan to use for role playing and for a future Pulp Alley scenario I'm working on. But more on that in a future post.

Easy Vegetation Terrain for wargaming

 

I'm sure others have discussed this before. But I wanted to highlight a really simple way of making thick vegetation terrain for your tabletop. I'm going to use these for our current Pirate Borg roleplaying campaign.

The church is from Sarissa Precision and is a 28mm scale Mediterranean Church

Aquarium and table setting plants pulled apart and ready for use

I started with finding a suitable sized base and, using PVA glue, sanded it. Once dry, I undercoated it in a light brown spray.

I then took cheap aquarium plastic plants and plastic table setting plants and pulled them apart. I then hot glued a random assortment of plant types and colours onto the base. Being hot glue, I had to hold each plant in place as I waited for the glue to dry. I also pulled off the strings of dried glue as I went.

I then used PVA glue to add small gravel stones to the base. Once those were dry, I then added some small grass flock around the base to hide some of the more obvious areas of the dried hot glue.

Just added the grass flock to the base of this one

So pretty cheap and pretty versatile. You can make whatever you want from such plants. You could even use the tiny fern like plants, which come from an aquarium plastic plant, to make corral polyps for underwater terrain.

So, there you go. I'm not the first to come up with this idea. But hope this gives you some inspiration for making cheap vegetation for your own tabletop.

Port Nelson for Pirate Borg

You may remember ScratchFort from a previous post? Well, here she finally is...

Port Nelson is a small port village found in the Buried in the Bahamas adventure from the creator of Pirate Borg. You can find the adventure over here.

The Easter Island monoliths are fish tank accessories bought from Amazon.

In that adventure, the port is little more than a collection of shacks and a quey. My interpretation puts it behind a palisade wall. When the player characters arrive, they will find it under attack from the natives, who in this case are goblins. The port itself will be run by a handful of Pirate Orcs and the PC's will gain the orcs favour by helping to defend the port against the savage's assault. This gives a logical reason as to why a group of orcs would permit Skeleton Pirates into their presence.

The Port itself is only meant to be a throw away scenery set and so isn't going to have any extra detailing, paint or features such as vegetation added to it. It's a one scene wonder that my crafting brain decided had to be built. I may turn it into an orcish fortress for something else later on. I'm thinking 15mm Dawn of Warhammer...

The lads within the port are a test here to see if everything can fit. The tents are from the boardgame HATE and are perfectly orcish. I haven't painted them yet, however.

The tower over the main gate permits up two miniatures.

The port side gate has a small, elevated platform to permit shooting and accommodates two miniatures.

The main gate should permit two models to fight side by side.

The main gate tower also permits the ability to shoot down at attackers.

So, that's the fort done. Now on to the next key things to finish for the game. The scatter terrain of crates and a bar and also the quey itself.

ScratchFort for Pirate Borg

ScratchFort (not its official title)

So, what do you get when you go to the 2 Dollar store, buy a round cake base, match sticks, stirring sticks, tongue depressor sticks, hot glue (for your glue gun) and some white glue for about $25 all up?

ScratchFort, that's what!

I'm going to need a small outpost for our next foray into the islands of Pirate Borg. In this next gaming session, the lads will encounter the beleaguered survivors of a small trading port under siege by Savage Tribal Goblins. The survivors themselves are also going to be a more civilised, sea faring goblin faction. They will have to save the port if they wish to have a future safe haven and trading hub to pawn all their ill-gotten gains. Enter ScratchFort (not its official name, but it will do for now).

The gates. A main gate (comprising two parts) and the single port gate

More to come on this but it's always good to post about the craft you do so as to potentially inspire others to make their own stuff. I could have 3D printed something. But I felt this would be a more useful employment of my creative skills. I'll show the finished product later when it's done.