Déjà vu; here we go again...

Oh man, life goes on and typing this makes me feel a bit like deja-vu...

Over the last couple of months I have spent plenty of time on my hobby, but I haven't found/taken the time to keep his blog up to date...  

So, what have I been up to? 

Well... A lot of different things, actually... 

First up, I have purchased two new 3D-printers... After my two Elegoo MARS, the larger Elegoo SATURN is a proper upgrade; the larger print volume gives a lot more options. I also picked up a FDM-printer: A Creality CR-10S Pro V2... Having a FDM-printer with a large print surface, allows me to print bigger pieces of scenery. My printer prints at a very nice quality, mind you, it can't compare to resin, but for scenery or terrain it's perfect! It might not be faster, but the ability to print bigger makes all the difference, and that it's cheaper is a bonus, too.

I have printed a whole lot of resin 15mm buildings for my Flames of War scenery. Most of these still have to be painted, but my table now has a proper village. Even better, my friend and neighbour has been busy building and painting two whole armies and together we have been playing some games. 

Well, maybe not a proper village yet. Mind you, this is a 220X160 table...

I have completed a whole lot of pieces to decorate The Dungeon. I commisioned a set of full-plate armoured suits to put on display. I found the sculpter of Uncanny Minis on Thingiverse, joined his new Patreon and contacted him with a proposal. If you are interested in fantasy miniatures, check out his Patreon or his Thingiverse. Most of his models are absolutely free and, most important, very good! 

Two of the full plate armoured suits...

A painted example of one of his designs... 

After the set of armoured suits I asked him to design my D&D character: Gabnast, a Gnome Ranger wielding a heavy crossbow...

Meet Gabnast 'the bullfrog' Millwop... 

Speaking of D&D... Almost a year ago I joined a group of players for a new (and my first) D&D campaign. After our lockdown ended, we switched from online to physical game sessions. So far, I have printed and painted all the character for the players and I have been printing miniatures for our DM, too. 

I have also started printing scatter terrain for D&D. So far I have printed ánd painted (yes, I'm surprised, too) a set of trees, a complete cavern/mine set and a whole lot of ruins... We have been using my terrain during our sessions, which serves as a great motivation to actually paint all these pieces.

The cavern/mine set, all VaeVictis Miniatures...

Most of these ruins will form the basis of a new set of terrain for 40K. This set of terrain should help me to get back into playing 40K.

And because an update without some fresh pictures is just lame, here are a few from last weekend, if only as proof I actually printed and painted something...

These ruins are from Devious Games and are easy to print (they require minimal supports) and fun to paint... I think they are equally usable as scatter terrain for D&D or other Fantasy games as well as terrain for 40K.

I have designed a full set of detailed round bases, which I uploaded to Thingiverse. Originally I designed these for a project of my own, but for now, that project is on hold... Judging by the number of downloads, I think other hobbyists enjoy them, too. You can check them out HERE.

I sold my orange Feudal Guard army, clearing some space for a new Valour Korps force from The Makers Cult. Even though the VK models are pretty awesome to begin with, I found some room for improvement... 

I have kitbashed and designed a set of extra gear for the standard Korpsmen, resulting in kitted-out models which are a joy to paint! I digitally added bayonets and belts to all the lasguns, so I can print them as complete sets.

This army will get it's own series of posts. Well, that's the plan, anyway... 

So far, I have settled on a colour scheme, as can be seen below, and I have printed several squads of Korpsmen to get my army started.

A painted test model...

A squad of Korpsmen, equipped with extra gear...

Painted test model of a Sentinel...

This is the part where I normally say that more updates are coming soon, but looking back, I shouldn't be making any such promises...

Welcome to the Dungeon; getting lost in D&D... pt. I

While the Dungeon-project is well over a decade old, it has rarely been used for any serious gaming. Over the years we played some WFRP-games in it, some Morheim and Warhammer skirmish and even a few games of Dungeons & Panzers (patent pending), but we never played Dungeons & Dragons...

Well, today I had a test-session, together with my long-time gaming buddy. It was his first game of D&D and my first time as DM...

I set up a small, two level dungeon for this first run... I tried to include quite a lot of furnishing, giving the dungeon (well, actually it was the basement of a brewery) an inhabited feel...

Due to having had a very busy week at work/school I hadn't worked out a full scenario. We had prepared his first character (an Elf Druid) earlier and put together a second one (a Dwarf Fighter) on the spot. As this session was meant as an exercise in exploration and combat, the background of the characters was minimal at best. 

I tried to enhance the game by giving detailed descriptions of the walk through the rooms and corridors, something I really need to learn... 

For a first game, it went rather well... As is typical for my buddy, his very first dice roll was a natural 20, a feat he repeated another four times over the session... We had to look up almost every single rule, but as the afternoon progressed the pace quickened. We ironed out quite a few issues and I now have a pretty clear idea of what direction I want to take...

We managed to learn quite a few things and I gained a lot of respect for the way the DM of the game I play in organizes his sessions...

3D-printing dungeon decor... pt. VIII

After joining my very first campaign of D&D with a new group of players, my interest in the Dungeon is as high as ever... 

I have been dividing my printing time between 40K-related projects and Fantasy stuff for the Dungeon, printing monsters, npc's, characters and scenic pieces...

One of the most recent projects was expanding my set of loot piles and updating the existing set... 

The new additions...

I added ten new and unique pieces. The crates and barrels are all plaster casts, hence the occasional bubble, most of the smaller pieces are 3D-printed. These simple pieces add a lot of character to any room they are placed in. Furthermore, they provide cover and add an opportunity for gathering loot...

The full set. More pieces will likely follow...

I have used a lot of different bits and pieces, most are from Thingiverse, but there are quite a few VaeVictis designs, too. 

3D-printing dungeon decor... pt. VII

While it has been a while since I last worked on my dungeon, the project is never quite forgotten... I am always looking around for stuff to add, especially things like furniture and other clutter. This update was written back in December '20, but I totally forgot posting it...

I had already found a few great designs on Thingiverse by Ecaroth and Curufin. One of my very first prints was this Large Cask Shelf. I have since printed several of these and recently finished painting them.

A set of simple pieces, but I like them very much! This piece is part of the Aleworks collection and this week I printed some of the other parts of the set... 

Scaled down a bit to fit on the plate of my Elegoo MARS, this is a very big piece of Dungeon furniture. I tried to add a bit of variety by using three different shades of brown for the wooden containers. 

There are more pieces to the set, but these aren't painted yet... All these pieces combined make for a nice-looking brewing system

These designs then directed me to their website Hero's Hoard. I picked up both the Tavern sets and the Blacksmith. The Library set followed a few days later as I had printed some of the free cabinets and was suitably impressed with the detail.

I made some cabinets with half the depth...

The half-depth cabinets are very useful and use only half the resin...

A few samples of the modular library set...

The library set is extremely versatile and complete and allows me to print and build and almost infinite combination of cabinets... The detail is pretty good as well, adding nice touches like the carved owl.

The blacksmith's forge was a bit of a challenge as the full model is too large for the Elegoo MARS. I decided to reduce the size a bit, but the piece is still quite big and it will dominate any room it will be put in. Pictures will be coming soon...

The pieces for the tavern kitchen are very, very nice. I have been thinking about adding something like these for years... I have tried making my own, both with wood and plaster and digitally, but these are so much better. 

All of these pieces print very well and more are sure to follow...

3D-printing dungeon decor... pt. VI

You can never have too much loot... And that's why you can also never have too many loot piles. These piles are very versatile and can be used just about anywhere in the dungeon, they can be used to store/hide loot (well, they áre called loot piles for a reason) and serve as cover during sneaking or combat. If all else fails they just look good... 

This is an overview of my current set of loot piles...

These loot piles originally started out as barricades for Mordheim, but a year or so ago I updated and repainted them to enhance my dungeon. The base of each of these piles is a stack of home-cast plaster crates, the smaller and more detailed pieces are a mix of plaster, metal, plastic and resin parts.

Having a 3D-printer opens up a lot of possibilities and the last couple of days I have spent some time putting together and printing a couple of complete loot piles and some separate pieces to further enhance the excisting loot piles.

The first two, relatively simple, loot piles...
These were printed as one piece.

The third pile, also printed as a single piece... 

For the third pile I wanted to try something a bit different. I searched, and found, a chicken and a birdcage.

The cage was printed separately, mainly for ease of painting...

On Thingiverse there are a lot of interesting and usefull pieces that can be used for this purpose. Most of the new pieces are designed by a very friendly designer from France. He designed the wicker baskets with tomatoes and apples, the bottles with a wicker shell, the bag of potatoes and the sacks... The wooden crates were found elsewhere on Thingiverse.

Three 3D-printed loot piles mixed with some of the models
from my collection...

The separate pieces... The detail of these items is amazing!

The printed pieces used on a couple of existing loot piles...
The size of these bits is just right!

This is just the first addition to the loot piles, I can imagine there will be more to come!

3D-printing dungeon decor... pt. V

I've got a big dungeon related update to show you...

One of the best miniatures I have printed so far is this Dwarf merchant...

This model will be an excellent NPC but could just as easy be used as player. It has a lot of character and it printed flawlessly. I think he will be very fun to paint!

I have started painting the suits of armour...

While the paintjob is quite simple, these manage to look pretty good. I still have a lot more of these to paint, but so far I am very happy with how they turned out...

I have also painted a round cabinet from VaeVictis. This model is from their Patreon and is part of their Magic Workshop set. The design comes in a couple of variants, one with empty shelves, one filled with books and potions and the option to print those as one piece or two separate parts (top and bottom).

I had printed the empty version previously and painted it last week. Due to the detail of this piece the painting was fast, easy and yielded a pretty nice result. This weekend I printed a couple more pieces. I made them a little bit larger, by accident, but as it turned out, the larger scale works very well...

Apart from printing these ready-made pieces I have tried to digitally kit-bash some unique combinations. These digital conversions were inspired by this piece from Zealot Miniatures. I purchased this table a year or two ago during the last expansion of dungeon clutter but I haven't painted it yet.

The source of inspiration from Zealot Miniatures...

The first attempt at creating something like this was relatively simple. Below you can see the original design I came up with, using a round table and castle, both of which I found on Thingiverse.

The first design... 

This printed very well but lacked some detail and style so I continued tinkering with this idea. Eventually I came up with the following designs...

The first model is the castle of the hand...

The second model is this super fancy fantasy castle... The smaller spires did print fine, but got knocked off during the clean-up. I have recovered most of the spires and will repair them.

While the first two models are fictional designs, the third is a modelled after an actual, real castle: Neuschwanstein castle... It can be found in Bavaria, Germany and was built for/by order of king Ludwig II in the late 19th century. This castle formed a source of inspiration for Disney's Cinderella castle...

The base for these conversions comes from VaeVictis. I split the bottom half of the model (the base is from the round cabinets) and removed a layer of drawers to lower the top surface. This allowed me to make the castles as large as possible to preserve as much detail as I could.

The castles in these prints are all created by very talented designers and are all incredibly detailed. However, I had to scale down the designs considerably and some of the detail was lost because of that.

The castle of the hand
Fancy fantasy castle
Neuschwanstein castle

The idea behind these designs is that an NPC could have a model of a castle in his study. Maybe it's just for show, it could be a toy or maybe it could even be magical, who knows... Such an item could be very interesting when it comes to RPG's...

Here you can see the first, failed print of the fancy fantasy castle... Due to the delicate nature of the design some of the finer details were lost or failed to print entirely. After curing the model even split open due to uncured resin being left inside...