Flying Visit

In another excursion to the 1980s I've finally got round to painting up my Skyfighter from V, along with my last remaining Visitor miniature from Crooked Dice.

Despite being a 3d print, I didn't actually print this myself. I picked up the STL during the Kickstarter campaign for the 7TV: 80s campaign and it was kindly printed by Matt.

I managed to lose the landing gear somewhere along the line and so I put the project on hold until I could print my own recently.

In all honesty, the print is a little rough, but given that Matt did it for free, I'm not complaining.

Therefore, when it came to painting, I kept things simple and coherent with how the ships looked in the series and decided that being less detailed will prevent the eye being drawn to the less than perfect areas.

I undercoated it in Ghoul Grey from Colourforge, sponged on matt white, before painting the windows black and freehanding the icons in red. I then gave everything a coat of gloss bc arnish because these things were shiny.

Given that this is most likely to feature as scenery, I'm happy enough with it. I've seen them used with the helicopter rules in games of 7TV, but unless I'm playing on a big board, the transport capacity is not that useful.

The final Visitor I've painted is actually a duplicate model to the one I painted as Lydia. Given that the pose and her hair are quite distinctive, I opted to do a couple of things to differentiate the two.

Firstly, I went with a slightly different colour scheme, giving her the black body armour worn by the security guards and allowing her to use the Shocktrooper profile.

Secondly, I gave her a head swap. Finding an appropriately sized head proved challenging and the best I could come up with was a Zombie Vixen head from Wargames Factory (I think these are the models that also feature in the Project Z game from Warlord Games). There is a wound on the face, but I've painted it as a torn bit of fake skin, which works well enough.

I'm not sure if I'm going to add to my Visitors. I might do another Skyfighter for scenic purposes and Crooked Dice do have Visitor Jeep with a gun mount that I've been tempted by for a long time.

However, I'm much more likely to focus my attention on the Resistance, as currently I only have four dedicated miniatures for them.

Acquired: -95
Painted: 163
Lead Mountain: 391

Vindicated

After printing and painting the free Rhino STL a couple of weeks ago, I went back to look at what the same 'creator' had available and picked up the STL for a Vindicator and a Predator.

I began with the Vindicator as I suspect that the sponsons and other elements of a Predator might be problematic.

I also took the opportunity to slightly change the print settings and went with 'optimal' rather than 'standard' with a smaller layer height. I'm trying to get the balance right between print quality and speed.

I think I might have hit the jackpot as this setting has much less noticeable layer lines whilst not upping the print time very much. This was useful as there was more to print, including the dozer blade, turret hatch and camera thing for the top.

I might try the next setting up for printing a Predator just to see if there are more small gains to be made. Additionally, I'll probably switch to the 0.2 mm nozzle for the top elements as they don't take long and a couple of other bits I printed didn't really work.

Painting was done simply and imitated what I'd already done for the Rhino, with only minor changes based on the slightly different details.

I am a torch worried that the big blue expanse on the dozer blade needs something adding to it, but until I know exactly what, I'm going to leave it alone.

I almost stuffed up applying transfers because I was repeatedly too impatient and came close to destroying the two large lion heads. A lesson in patience helped me to fix my own mess.

I also took the opportunity to use a couple of the additional bits I'd printed to improve my Rhino with turret hatches and a pintle mounted storm bolter.

In order to get them to sit flush I had to clip and fil the protruding elements and found out that PLA does not clean up easily. I might need to invest in something like a Dremel if I plan to do more of this.

All in all, the 3d printer is really coming into its own with vehicles, something which has significant implications for most of my 40k armies.

Acquired: -95

Painted: 161

Lead Mountain: 393

A Bit Ratty

I've been chipping away as my 30 year old collection of Skaven that were originally intended to for the beginnings of an army for Warhammer Fantasy Battles. This plan never got off the ground as I could field barely three units.

Now focusing them towards Age of Sigmar (possibly due to lower model count) I've reached the last bunch of the original collection and have added another 10 Clanrats to the 30 already painted.

I've needed to get the number of Clanrats painted to get the required models to field two units of 20 and provide a decent chunk of battleline units to my force.

As ever, I have mostly focused on the plastic Skaven from Advanced Heroquest (released in 1989) which do show their age but actually hold up better than many other miniatures of their venerable age.

Painting, as explained in previous posts, has been mainly done with contrast paints to speed things up. Even then I've had to break these 40 into 4 blocks over about a year.

I've never been a fan of batch painting, I think it's because I get bored of the repetitive nature of it. I suspect this is the main reason that I didn't do more painting in my youth.

Obviously, being the last batch, there were a few missing and broken parts involved. As such couple of weapon swaps and variant shield have found their way into the unit.

Additionally, there was more cleaning up to do on these models that had not had mould lines addressed and had probably been twisted of their sprues rather than clipped.

Also, the unit includes these two chaps from the event older Fantasy Regiments box (1987) which included 60 monopose miniatures;10 each of Skaven, Dwarfs, Elves, Orcs, Goblins and Dark Elves. 

The miniatures actually hold up okay and the box actually came with alternate heads for each sculpt allowing for a little bit of variety on the tabletop.

My Age of Sigmar Skaven army currently consists of:

• 1 Grey Seer
• 1 Master Moulder
• 3 Rat Ogres 
• 40 Clanrats (2 units)
• 1 Endless Spell

I still have the wherewithal to add a couple more units and Endless Spells to the army and potentially get it up to 1000 points.

However, I'm glad I'm done with the Clanrats. Younger me was probably right to not start in turning this into a Warhammer Fantasy Battles army, as I would definitely have run out of steam.

Acquired: -95
Painted: 160
Lead Mountain: 394

Production Lines

As I ran out of miniatures to paint for my Astral Claws, it became simultaneously apparent that it was extremely unlikely that I would be able to attend any of the remaining campaign events.

This had a massive impact on my desire to spend much more money on an army unlikely to see massive amounts of table time.

However, this did open up an opportunity to test how well my FDM printer could handle vehicles other than ramshackle Ork constructions.

I've started with a Rhino which is a free file available on one of the well-known sharing platforms. I printed it using the 0.4mm nozzle and standard settings as using the smaller nozzle had a ridiculously high print time.

The Rhino printed in three pieces and is hollow inside and there were no issues with the print, although getting the supports out of the racks was a bit fiddly.

When it came to painting, I kept things as simple as I have done with the whole Astral Claws army. Spray silver, wash black, dry brush silver. Add blue bits (gloss varnished) and gold details (Agrax wash) and then finish off with the lights.

I limited the amount of transfers on the model as I am trying to avoid buying a new sheet and there aren't many big flat spaces on the model.

Overall, I'm happy with this little experiment although I do have to admit that the layer lines are very much visible and this is no match for one of the plastic kits.

However, given that I'm not trying to paint this army to anything other than tabletop standard, from 3 feet away the Rhino looks fine and cost significantly less than the RRP of a standard Rhino.

I'm going to go the 3d printed route for a few more vehicles for this army, a decision that is helped by the same creator having a couple more vehicles in the same style (the Astral Claws made heavy use of the Rhino chassis apparently).

This experience has helped me to decide that I probably won't print any additional vehicles for my Blood Angels as I want to keep my armies consistent. Where I actually buy more for them remains to be seen.

Acquired: -97
Painted: 150
Lead Mountain: 406

A Kind of Magic

After I'd kitbashed my Battle Nuns of New Antioch for Trench Crusade, I pondered proxying a Court of the Seven-Headed Serpent warband using my ubiquitous Tzeentch Daemons, who have pulled bad guy duty in many a setting.

I decided against this and decided to be a bit more creative, but I have taken some inspiration from the Changeling and some Tzeentch bits from my bits box to kitbash a Sorcerer.

The model I used as a base for this kitbash is a Stormcast Knight Arcanum that I picked up dirt cheap in the first issue of the Stormbringer partworks magazine.

It is obviously a magic user, which suits the Sorcerer and has a larger frame than most models, making it more suitable to occupy the necessary 50mm base, and a simply head swap with a Crooked Dice cultist head (wearing and appropriate goat mask) started the transformation.

Next came the Tzeentch bits.

According to the limited reading I've done, Sorcerers appear to be fallen angels who cannot (or do not make contact with the ground. Given the stance of the Knight Arcanum, I decided to have her standing on a floating platform made from a large book (from Kairos Fateweaver's staff).

I appreciate that this decision pushes the aesthetic towards Tzeentch, but it did solve the hovering problem.

Another facet of the Sorcerers is that they can produce additional arms holding the items that they need and here the Pink Horror sprues provided: a pair of arms spouting flames; a hand swap with a wicked looking blade; a hand clutching a clearly corrupt book.

I also added a couple more scrolls to fill the gap where I had removed the Knight Arcanum's sword, just to lean into the magic book theme.

When it came to painting, I tried to work within the same palette I'd used for the rest of the warband: reds, browns, beiges, etc. I used more red than on the other models to indicate the status of this being in the pantheon of Hell.

I also enjoyed drawing writing into the open books, something that fortunately worked better in the one in her hand than the one she's stood on.

All in all, I'm quite pleased how my Sorcerer has turned out, although I think that I'm increasingly seeing that my attempt to tackle a Blanchitsu style is really limited to just the colour scheme.

I'm also aware that if I ever get round to playing Age of Sigmar, I could potentially use this model as a Magister on a Disc of Tzeentch.

I now have about 300 ducats of the 700 I need for a starter band, but I'm not sure where my next kitbash is coming from. There are options, but I need to firm up what I'm going to do.

Acquired: -98

Painted: 149

Lead Mountain: 406

Is it art though?

There are many things I like about Carnevale. I like the setting, I like the miniatures, I like the gameplay and I like the character and atmosphere of the game.

I also like the fact that they make the rules available so that you can play the game with alternative miniatures if you wish, which is handy as I've printed another model.

This is a Golgotha, an animated golem constructed from ruined statues and sculptures to serve the power of the church.

It's for my Vatican force, which I started by accident and mainly features proxy models as I've focused my purchasing for this game on the Guild, Rashaar and Patrician factions.

Therefore, when I stumbled on the STL for this model whilst search for terrain, I decided to add it because I couldn't imagine actually getting round to buying the official model and I also had a suitably sized base spare.

The miniature itself printed easily enough but I probably oriented it badly as there was a fair bit of clean up needed beneath the head and there's still a good amount of scarring left. However, the fact that it's meant to be made of broken stone means this isn't a massive problem.

The sculpt itself is a bit wooden in its pose, but I suppose you get what you pay for and this file was free.

Painting was done simply with a coat of Basilicanum Grey contrast over Ghoul Grey (from Colour Forge) and then drybrushed with lighter greys, the lightest use I've the areas that were potentially dressed stone or marble.

Other details were picked out: wooden 'claws', the prow of a gondola and whatever is sticking out of its left shoulder. I assumed this was from a roof and so painted it as tarnished copper.

One thing I learned is that drybrushing is not great with FDM prints as it really brings out the layer lines. I've read that some primers do a good job of hiding these, but I need to find out more about them.

All in all it's fine as a model, which I'm happy enough with. The awkward bit is that it makes my Vatican force not playable as I don't have enough henchmen and possibly need to add a Summoner Priest as well to use the Golgotha.

I have to admit that I'm feeling a bit off about printing and not buying for a game I like and want to support, and so I'm going to stop looking for files for Carnevale for the time being and pick up some more official models.

I don't have any Doctors yet...

Acquired: -98
Painted: 148
Lead Mountain: 407