A bit of Western Desert

Inspired by the newly working 3D printer I've carried on producing a few models for Gabr-el-Ahmar, 1940.

Two battalions of M11/39 medium tanks appeared in my last post but here's a slightly more close up view of a few of them.

I've also done some L3/35 tankettes.

For the Commonwealth forces, I started off with a couple of portee 37mm Bofors AT guns. The only portee set-up I could find on Thingiverse was a 2pdr. When scaled down to 1/300th scale the AT didn't print properly but the truck was okay. I decided to scratch build the AT guns using one in my 1941 Hungarian force as a scale guide.

Stretched sprue of various thicknesses gave me the wheels, gun barrels and trails while the gunshields were fashioned from thick paper. I'll add some crew figures when my order from H&R arrives.

The scenario calls for A Squadron, 11th Hussars in the form of two troops of Rolls Royce and one of Morris armoured cars. These were my first attempt at the Caunter camouflage scheme. I used Vallejo Dark Sand as the base with overlaid patterns of Basalt Grey and Pastel Green.

Finally (for now) I delved through the bits box and managed to find an old Irregular Miniatures Bren Carrier and some Heroics and Ros British infantry. Together I think they make a reasonable KRRC carrier platoon. I'm quite pleased with the way they remind me of the work, in 20mm scale, of the late John Sandars, one of my earliest wargaming inspirations.

Return to 3D printing

A few months ago my 3D printer (it's an Ender 3 S1 pro) stopped working. Filament would no longer feed into the extruder and application of a cleaning needle wouldn't change that even with the head heated up.

Some searching on line suggested that I had a broken-off piece of filament blocking the mechanism. Unfortunately the same investigation also suggested that disassembling the print head was a really tricky job. When I couldn't find a Sheffield-based company that did printer repairs I began to think my 3D printing days were over.

Last weekend, though, I decided to stop being a wuss and to have a go at the disassembly job!

It turned out that what I needed was this video by The Edge of Tech, a few tools, and a very systematic approach to documenting the process as I went along.

I took photographs of the work at each stage. 

Also each time I removed an assembly and/or some fixing screws I placed them in a specific location with a label keyed to the corresponding minutes and seconds in the Edge of Tech video.

I ended up with about nine labelled piles of tech before I managed to remove the offender; a 3mm long piece of filament stuck in the guts of the hot end.

After reassembly the printer seemed to be working okay and within an hour I was the proud owner of sheet of Roman roof tiles:

Since then, inspired by the recent review of Benghazi Handicap, I've produced and painted two battalions of 1/300th scale M11/39 tanks for the Gabr-al-Ahmar scenario.

This in turn has led to my putting in an order to Heroics and Ros for some British and Italian infantry and support weapons.  I'm just incapable of sticking to a single project!

Some Pliocene progress

The initial wave of enthusiasm from the wargaming-The-Saga-of-the-Exiles idea has carried me though the process of painting (or in some cases repainting) some figures that were already on hand.

First completed was this macrauchenid. It's a pliocene member of the giraffe family. Too slender to serve as a riding animal, it'll just provide some exotic flavour as a background element in games taking place outside the Tanu cities. The model is a cheap, Chinese-made toy I picked up years ago when I briefly toyed with the idea of a 15mm scale Pliocene army for Hordes of the Things.

Another pliocene animal is Stephanorhinus etruscus. Another cheap plastic toy, this one depicts a 4 metre long giant rhinoceros. I enjoyed airbrushing this model. It and the marcrauchenid benefitted immensely from a coat of AK Ultra Matt airbrush varnish.

Stephanorhinus makes a challenging target for a Tanu hunter.

The Tanu is a very old Mithril Miniatures model that's been sitting in a drawer for decades. The product code on the base enabled me to identify it as "32mm Lorien spearman" from their old Lord of the Rings range.

My paint job is a long way from what this quite nice sculpt deserves. It was my first attempt at depicting coloured glass (vitredur) for the partial armour and the spearhead. 

Another old model (I suspect early Games Workshop but I'm not sure) is this Firvulag stalwart in obsidian armour. Nothing much to say about this repaint of a figure that was unlikely to be used in any other context.

Another Firvulag is this troll-like creature. Also ancient, I think it came from the collection of my friend Alan Slater. I've repainted it as its original 1980s paint job was looking its age.

Finally, another attempt at a glass-armoured Tanu. This guy is in the rose and gold colours of a member of the Psychokinetic Guild. I probably didn't choose the easiest set of shapes to try and depicted as glass but practice eventually makes perfect (I hope).

I don't want to spend a fortune on this project - a few additional figures and perhaps one more building to add an alien element should be enough to give me a chance to play-test some suitable rules. At the moment I'm considering a What A Cowboy-based system as an alternative to Song of Blades and Heroes. Although Pulp Alley is another possibility... hmm....