Nearly finished Warmaster terrain, Shieldmaidens

In my last post I talked about the Shieldmaidens I 3D printed for Ragnarok.

Well, those two figures are almost done. They were done, but I went overboard on the Army Painter Strong Tone so they're a bit too dark. Maybe I'll rework them and bring out the highlights or maybe I'll just use them as a learning experience for the next batch. There are 6 or 7 more that I've printed and glued together, plus a couple of others that need reprints of weapons or shields.

But the first two look like this:

I know, I really have to get some better lighting. It's been a long time since I've done any photography, so these are just taken with my cellphone under my painting lamp.

First successful 3D print! Vikings for Ragnarok!

I mentioned I recently got a 3D printer, and I've been working my way through the failures to try to get that first successful job. Well I just got it. 

Today in the mail I received a package from Grimfrost in Sweden, which included a lovely viking beard comb, a horn drinking mug, and a copy of Osprey's Ragnarok! Can't really go wrong with heavy metal combat in the Viking age! haha

And with that in mind, I needed some figures. I'd long sold off my Saga figures, so I needed something new. And with the power of a 3D printer at my command, I didn't even have to wait for shipping or get up off my chuff to go visit a store.

I hopped on over to my favourite 3D printing site, and did a search. Out of all the very nice options, my first pick was this Shieldmaiden warband by Asgard Rising Miniatures.

The first two figures I attempted were the Shieldmaiden Chieftan Aidda with Gjermundbu helmet, and a Shieldmaiden warrior. And well, apart from a couple of post-production hiccups, they came out really well. All the bits were there, nothing was out of kilter, and they just came out great.

The issues I had were that the supports were so thick, I hamfistedly pried them off with a too-large pair of nippers, and lost a bit of Aidda's hair tassel, a chunk off the front of her chainmail coat, and a bit off her arm where the shield fist joins. 

None of these should be too noticable, and as I say, they were post-production. The actual prints came out perfectly. My experiments led me to increasing the number of base layers and slowing down the normal layers another half-second from previous attempts. 

Enough of my rambling. This is them.

I think the photo doesn't do them justice at this stage, but they're glued together and tomorrow morning I'll start painting them and see how they turn out, plus put more of the warband through the printer.

I'm pretty happy right now.

I raise my cup to Odin. 

Painty like it's 1999

 I've been painting hard this year. And I've been reassessing the games I play.

Sci-fi Skirmish

So far this year (and for the last few years) I haven't been doing much actual gaming. But this year I've been on a bit of a Necromunda kick. Really enjoying it a lot, but looking for more. I want to be able to play different settings or different kinds of sci-fi skirmish games without being locked into just one setting and one set of forces.

Stargrave might be the winner there. 

But I'll probably still play Necromunda because I recently talked at least one friend into paying butt tonnes of money for the figures and the books.

Kings of War / Mass Fantasy Battles

I found a guy (Geek Gaming Scenics) on Youtube who scaled down a game of Kings of War to 10mm and that really piqued my interest, naturally being a big fan of Warmaster. :) And that video made me realise that KoW isn't like old WH Fantasy. The figures aren't individual, but mounted all together on a base. Or at least, they can be. And man, that just makes the game so much less fiddly.