Therefore, I once again turned my attention to using what I already had: a pile of unpainted miniatures and a 3d printer.
And the result was a 3d printed Vault-Tec Poster Girl and a kitbashed version of a Fallout 3 character, the Antagonizer (the ants are models I already had and are from Crooked Dice).
Both of these models demonstrate a certain amount of ingenuity on my part and I'm quite proud of both of them.
Easiest to talk about is the Antagonizer, who is a character that you can meet in Fallout 3 that is engaged in a superhero-supervillain conflict with the Mechanist in the town of Canterbury Commons.
Your character can intervene in this situation, taking one side or the other. A third option exists, which was the path I trod, where you kill both of them because you repeatedly say the wrong thing.
Interestingly, there is an official model for the Mechanist in Fallout Wasteland Warfare, but not for the Antagonizer (yet). I suspect this is because whilst there are plenty of robots for the Mechanist to command, there aren't any Giant Ant models, which is odd, as they are a fairly frequent hazard.
However, I did have a model from Crossover Miniatures called Whiskers knocking about from my proxy Marvel project. I liked the model (which is clearly Catwoman inspired) but had not found a use for it. Until now.
The model comes with a range of heads and tails, but the best fit is one with cat ears that needed filing off and antennae (bits of staple) adding. I also filled the hole in the base of the spine for her tail.
It's a fairly good fit, although the mask covers the whole face and the armour is somewhat less spiky. However, a nice touch is the knife strapped to her leg as the Antagonizer's weapon is a knife called the Ant's Sting.
Painting was quite interesting as it's quite hard to get a clear image of the character in Fallout 3 as she's mainly encountered underground. The colour of her armour can vary quite a lot between images. I when for black and gold as I felt it would be in the right ballpark without just being a mush of browns.
I'm really quite pleased with the outcome, although I need to put some though into what profile I am going to use for her in the game, and I probably need to put together a custom card.
The Vault Girl came as a part of a Humble Bundle of Fallout files and STLs I picked up before I had a 3d printer. She's actually the model that demonstrated the limits of my FDM printer when I first got it as its thin limbs small details proved too much for tree supports and even a 0.2mm nozzle could handle.
However, I've found a way around the problem.
Or more pertinently, a YouTube channel called Painted 4 Combat has with a tool called Resin2FDM.
Basically, this is a plug in for Blender that allows you to thicken the supports from pre-supported resin STLs and make them suitable for printing with an FDM printer.
The 'lite' version of the plug in is free to download and obviously required me to download Blender. However, despite never using either program, it was really easy, especially as the channel's guide video walks you through the whole process.
The outcome is a pretty dame good print. Still not as good as a resin print, but definitely better than my previous efforts and certainly good enough to use.
The model comes with a sculpted base that I was able to print more conventionally, although I did manage to clip off the pegs from. The feet of the miniature before realising there were holes for then to slot into, making gluing the whole thing together a bit more awkward.
As you can see, when painted, the details are pretty good. The undersides of arms and keys are a little less good, but, as I said, I'm really happy with it.
Painting was done really simply with bright colours and the outcome is a model that I actually think is better than the pvc miniature of Nora that can in the starter set.
I've not yet had any success with other sculpts as I've been away since Christmas Day and the one miniature I did try was a Carnevale sculpt that hasn't worked, however I'm looking forward to trying out a few more sculpts.
On the subject of Christmas, Carnevale and Fallout, Ive gad a bit of a haul this year. Mrs Cheaphammer took advantage of Black Friday at Element Games in Sheffield to make the pounds stretch a little further and I now have the latest Carnevale starter set, World's Faire After-Party, and the Hollywood Heroes set for Fallout Wasteland Warfare featuring characters from the TV series.
They were also running a paint lucky dip which garnered me a Camo Green that will definitely see use and a Purple airbrush paint which might not.
On top of this I got a haul of Horus Heresy boxes that actually have me pondering whether to start a new army. The Predator and Jet Bikes would fit perfectly on not my Blood Angels army, but the Mk II Assault Troops come armed with chainaxes, which aren't available to loyalist marines in 2nd edition, which we've stuck with.
This is making me consider starting a traitor, specifically World Eaters or Sons of Horus, or Blackshields forces. However, I'm also tempted to create some converted Angels Tears for the Blood Angels.
I received the Ravening Hordes book for Warhammer: The Old World, which contains the army lists for Orcs & Goblins, Beastmen, Tomb Kings and, most importantly for me, Warriors of Chaos.
This allows me to run my Nurgle army in Warhammer: The Old World, and the Arcane Journal adds rules for Warp Dragons making the whole army game legal.
Finally, as part of this year's 7TV Secret Santa, I received this handful of Robin Hood themed miniatures from David.
It's a sprue of Oathmark Humans, who can easily be kitted out as Merry Men, but might also serve at Rangers of Gondor or Ruffians in MESBG. However , there's also a couple of Norman soldiers carrying a chest and so, given that I've at least one Norman miniature in my backlog. I might very well venture into a Sherwood Forest based project next year.
All in all, it's been a good few days, giving me plenty to be cracking on with.
Acquired: -52
Painted: 532
Lead Mountain: 246
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