October was a busy month between work and playing in a Necromunda campaign (and the return of Escape from Tarkov to steal my late night gaming time) which left barely any time or motivation for painting. But on the plus side, I did only buy a few tiny extra pieces…
Project 365
Lets take a look at the details.
Painted: 11
Description | Maker | Number |
Lich and Apprentice | Northstar Figures | 2 |
Hades | Raging Heroes | 1 |
VBL | guaro3d | 2 |
Hive Scum | Anvil Industries | 6 |
Purchased: 19
Description | Maker | Number |
Hive Scum (3D Printed) | Anvil Industries | 6 |
Hive Civilians (3D Printed) | Anvil Industries | 6 |
Atlay Tank (3D Printed) | guaro3d | 1 |
Scorpion Tank (3D Printed) | guaro3d | 1 |
The Hunter | Spectre Miniatures | 1 |
Treasure Cache Pieces (3D Printed) | Anvil Industries | 4 |
This month was definitely not as effective as some of the previous months have been, for reasons I mentioned above. But it is cool to see just how much I’ve been 3d printing vs buying in from elsewhere.
Project Moderns
I missed out on my monthly moderns game due to my Dastard Regular Opponent replacing it with celebrating his birthday (which was just as fun). Instead, it’s been a lot of 3d Printing and thinking about ChargeReal stuff. After finishing the VBLs at the start of the month, I hit the 3d Printer hard.
I’m preparing a bigger post on the experience of printing Guaro3d’s vehicles (hint: it’s mostly positive) but for now, safe to say I’ve been working through the models I’ve picke dup to get them ready for gaming. However, there is also a little bit of testing the limits. The Atlay tank, for example, is one I’ve wanted for my forces but it’s also a big vehicle. In fact, it’s so big it almost maxed out my build volume.
The Scorpion is much less of a tester and more of wanting it for a gaming piece. Being a small tank, it provides a chunk of firepower without being too much for most forces to fight. It’s also the type of vehicle you’re more likely to see in policing actions, even as it gets overpowered on the larger battlefields.
The final experiment this month was with the fantastic Combat Octopus. After some chat on the Spectre Discord (which I’ve had a good time hanging out on), I’ve realised that the original CO models are very much at true scale 28mm. When compared to other figures (such as those from TBM) they were a little bit more slender over all, even down to weapons and equipment. I’ve reprinted these at 110% and I’m a little happier with the slightly increased size. I can see it making them a little easier to tweak. I eventually settled on reprinting at 107% based on some more tweaks and it’s the size I’ll use going forward. The only downside is that I need to go into the project files with each new release and export the supported files as STLs to rescale but it’s a very minor thing.
There is another moderns experiment I’ve been working on but its in a very early stage. See if you can spot it in the top image.
In terms of actually bought figures, the releases from Spectre last month arrived. I’m pretty happy with them (aside from the bent barrel on the lead FAL gunner) and I’m quite excited about getting these guys painted up. In terms of paint schemes, I have the basics setup for each – civilian gear for the operators and a desert camo with black details for the criminals
In terms of their place in the world, the agents are going to end up being relatively generic (there are plenty of nations looking to do sneaky moves). As for the Heavies, I’m really seeing them as an elite force (if slightly dodgy) in the Bazi Empire – there are plenty of Royals who may want their own force to play a hand in affairs with all the gear they can purchase.
I also picked up Spectre’s The Hunter figure when it was online. I’m interested in seeing what it’s like and finally getting around to playing The Day Of the Dew, a Skirmish Sangin scenario with Insurgents vs a predator like creature. Maybe some Christmas fun?
Project Necromunda
Oh boy Necromunda. I’m very much behind on writing up the games we’ve been playing but in the last month I managed 6 games in about 15 days so it’s been a little intense! Overall, I’m having a really good time with it – it’s great finally getting the figures I’ve been working on actually onto the table. The campaign is going pretty well as at time of writing I’m doing.
There is going to be some more detailed battle reports on each game coming soon and later this month I’m going up to Teesside for a weekend to play several games against the rest of the campaign. Hopefully I’ll be up to date by then.
Project Fantasy
Finally, the last area of gaming for the month was the finale for current campaign of fantasy I’ve been playing against my sister. It was a really fun set of games, always great to get a new player into the game. I’m already planning out the next campaign, hopefully using some of the 3d printed figures I’ve been collecting.
This also saw me paint my biggest model so far. This Hades from Raging Heroes was perfect to be the villain of the final part of the story, as well as likely to appear later on as a reoccurring obstacle for the main characters. It was also a painting challenge – with so much flesh on display, I couldn’t really get away with some simple “base colour + wash” so for the first time I actually did some layering work. I don’t think it photographs very well (you can see the brushmarks) but I am really happy with how the model ended up when it was put on the tabletop. It was a really good feeling just to finish the model and be like “yep, this works, I can paint things like this”. I’ve got a few more large models to paint, including my keeper of secrets and Morathi model. I think they will both be done next year.
Related to fantasy, I’m also getting very tempted by the new Warcry box that was announced over the weekend. I still need to paint the models from the Catacombs box, but that mine terrain and Darkoath (apart from a few faces) have me very excited at the possibilities. This might possibly be on the Christmas list at the end of the year.
Thatās it for this monthās update, Iāll see you in a month!