Since I had some doubles from the Islamic Federation range from GZG leftover from the packs I had painted as Star Wars rebels, decided to go at a different angle.
I used some gas mask and goggles heads from GZG and did some head swaps. Painted them in the Cadian color scheme I’ve used, so I can add them to existing units as say, special units, or just mercenaries as standalone.
The perfect gaming board doesn’t exist.
What we’re trying to do is have something that is the ideal gaming board taking into account factors such as, storage, replayability, usability, setup, modularity, looks, durability, effort, cost, and time.
The above factors many times work against each other, for example a well detailed board with height maps and rivers looks great and takes no time to setup, but is a pain to store, has no replayability, parts of the board aren’t usable, and of course there’s a lot of effort needed to make it.
On the other end of the spectrum, a highly modular set of tiles stores easily, but doesn’t look as good with the seams breaking immersion, and may take a long while to setup and store.
In between, rollable mats look good overall, store very easily, but may lose their shape over time and are prone to shedding if flocked.
So I wanted something that stores easily, doesn’t shed, looks nice, and is quite usable. Didn’t want to spend a fortune, or take too long to make it.
The initial concept would be a double sided gaming board made of XPS. I’d print a few texture rollers to give it texture, prime it with spray primer and drybrush, wash and seal.
I bought a 2×4 board from the hardware store for about 3 bucks, and cut it in half. However things didn’t go as planned. The texture rollers left a seam between each roll, the spray primer was too dark and didn’t close up the various foam cells, so the coverage of the following drybrushing was terrible. I had to throw away the first half of the board.
I went back to the concept design. Decided against using a texture roller. A texture stamp would be a better fit, but I didn’t want to spend more time searching, designing and printing, so I did manual texturing with a sharp rock, a thin stick and my fingers and knuckles.
The dark gray spray primer meant for XPS (Gamemaster line from Army Painter) would not be covered easily. So instead I found some of my leftover house paint (latex paint) which was in earth tones (a brownish grey and a light beige ochre) and painted each side differently. Two coats were enough per side (turned it around when it was dry to the touch) and coverage was great.
Finally I made some diy wash with acrylic paint, water and PVA glue. Did a brown-green wash and a brown-ochre one for the other side. Applied it liberally, soaked out any excess with a sponge and let each side dry overnight.
Sealed with a spray mat spray sealer, though I’m unsure if it was needed. Just for extra durability.
I’m very happy with how it turned out, and I intend to buy another 2×4 XPS board and make four more different terrains.
What I love about it, is the stability, flatness which allows for scatter terrain to sit on top, no shedding, and still enough texturing to give this uneven look.
XPS board is really cheap, so is house latex paint. Making a diy wash with PVA and some acrylic craft paints is low cost also.
Effort was minimal, each latex coat took a few minutes to do, as well as the wash application.
Hope someone finds it useful.
Painted the second poses of my Brethren of New Light troops from GZG in the scheme of Star Wars Imperial Navy Trooper. Painting full black minis can be quite an issue as you lack contrast, especially in 15mm.
Painted their coats in Paynes Grey, and the Helmets and Boots in the primer gloss black. The blasters in graphite for the gunmetal look. Painted their helmet straps black and the visors white.
Finally I gave the helmets a satin varnish compared to the mate of the rest of the figure for a shiny look.
Jedi and Sith in 15mm? Yeah not likely to find any suitable miniatures. 3d printing is also not so much of an option as the Star Wars stls are true scale, which doesn’t scale down nicely in 15mm, and the few epic scale sculpts aren’t FDM-friendly. So… kitbashing is the way.
I had put this project on hold for far too long as I wanted to use LED lighting for the lightsabers using acrylic transparent rods. A couple years later I realised if I waited until I was ready for such a kitbash, I’d never get it done, so I decided to go ahead with a regular painted straight wire instead.
I did two Jedi and a Sith, using different models as a base, some green stuff and some pewter heads.
I like how they turned out. On hindsight I realised I could do some mix of sci modular digital kitbash with some greenstuff, pewter heads and clip wires for more options, but I have a basis to build on. I can attempt more options.
Haha! Will make a nice addition to the Very Hungry Tyranid https://www.reddit.com/r/Grimdank/comments/1jwyurq/the_hive_mind_is_still_hungry/
Having tested my Cadian style colour scheme on the Not-Rebels, I went ahead and painted the Colonial Defence Force troopers from GZG in the same scheme.
I can proxy them for Imperial Guardsmen, or any colonial defence force.
Having finished painting my 3d printed sci-fi miniatures, I went through my pewter pile of shame and realized I have a few miniatures that I still haven’t painted. Doubles mostly, but also some that I didn’t touch yet for whatever reason, and some that I intended kitbashing.
With this pack I decided to kill two birds with one stone, and took my Hammer Slammers doubles that I hadn’t painted, and did head swaps with some heads from my GZG pack. I decided to go even further and test a color scheme I intend to use for my not-Cadian Imperial Guard. I don’t use any of the proprietary hobby colors, so I did some mixing of my artist acrylics. For the Catachan Green, I mixed Olive Green Deep and Neutral Gray, and for the Desert Yellow I mixed Yellow Ochre and Warm Gray. They still have that generic earth tones fatigues look, so I decided that with the caps and goggles heads they’ll look like fine Rebel Commandos from Star Wars, or any generic militia or mercenaries for the Five Parsecs universe.
Support-free miniatures are a great way to print on FDM printers without having to deal with supports.
What are supports? Imagine that a 3d printer “builds” stuff in the Z axis. An FDM printer goes from the ground up, while a resin printer from the roof down (prints are upside down). In both cases the culprit is gravity. Because it all happens in Z slices. Each Z slice needs to be able to attach to the previous one, otherwise it will drop in the void. Resin printers are less problematic with supports, and also removal is easier especially since it can be done while the resin is still uncured. With FDM printers that’s another story. Gravity will ruin the print either with overhangs (imagine balconies), bridges (speaks for itself), or islands (z slices with parts that don’t connect anywhere).
To make it more clear, an overhang that would need supports would be a sword arm horizontal to the ground, a bridge would be a rider pose, and an island would be a knife arm with the blade dangling pointing downwards.
Therefore these would need supports. Supports are 3d constructs in the slicer which are printed and connect the parts to the bed plate or the model, that would otherwise be unprintable. These come with a caveat though. Filament is meant to stick together, so supports usually end up sticking too well on the model, and removing FDM supports can lead to scarring or parts breaking. There are some solutions which have their own problems, such as angling the miniature backwards, which essentially hides scarring, or using support or support interface of different filament (PETG or PVA), but this would increase print times, filament waste and requires a multi filament setup, that usually isn’t worth it.
So what support free miniatures sculptors do, is design and pose the miniatures in ways that there are no overhangs, bridges or islands. Sword arms are almost vertical to the ground, spear heads touch the ground, knives are held close to the body and touch it, etc etc. It’s an extra skill on top of miniature design. However even with this skill there are limitations, and you won’t be able to get into more dynamic poses easily.
A solution to this are modular miniatures. Cut the miniature in several parts that are support free on their own, and glue them together. Even this has its own limitations as the limbs for example cannot have angles that would cause overhangs, and you end up with open arms poses that could easily dance Zorba if placed all together. Good designers though, find the sweet spots of posing that resolves this. Another problem is the process of gluing.
Especially for scaled down to 15mm, gluing PLA can be a problem. Superglue (cyanoacrylate glue) doesn’t set fast enough, with PLA, as its catalyst is moisture, and you’re more likely to glue your fingers instead. To work around this you can use some baking soda (another catalyst) but then it sets up too fast and you may end up with baking soda particles glued to the mini if you’re not too careful.
I find that the best glue for PLA is UHU, especially the Allplast/Hardplast (depending on where you live). It contains ethyl acetate, which dissolves a small layer of PLA, and can bond it together. It’s also quite viscous so you only need to hold the pieces together for a short while. My main issue is that the nozzle is too big and I can’t put the tiny amount I need for 15mm with the control I want, but it doesn’t set too fast so I can clean up any mess.
To minimise this, I usually do some digital kitbashing beforehand, either in the slicer or in blender. I found that blender is excellent for this, as you can snap objects to faces, and they are placed where they should be as you grab them to place. So I usually place torsos to legs, and sometimes heads too, and print upper limbs separately.
I even went ahead and combined physical kitbashing with the modulars, by using one of GZG pewter heads with a torso. I had done a slot in the slicer for the head pin to drop right in. I miscalculated and had to use the drill in the end, but it was a lot easier with the slot in place.
I did several different modulars, and even combined some parts from other sets together, that’s the cool thing about Brite Minis modulars, they’re (mostly) meant to be used together however you like. Gave them some Unity color schemes, as there are meant to be aliens in the Unity army as well as humans (a couple of ferals and a gray alien). Love the humanoid heads that give this old school science fiction tv look.
The modular torsos all look a bit downwards, and the photos are angled higher up, so the faces aren’t always visible in the photos below. I’ll take this under consideration for future photos.
I have so many different sci fi troops collected, but I haven’t painted any of them in the Unified Army scheme – red armor, gray uniform, brown, green or black webbing.
Looking at the Space Guards from Brite minis, I decided they’d be a great canvas to paint on.
Used primary magenta ink for armor and neutral gray for uniforms.
By the way, two of the minis are printed with the Pro PLA/0.06mm versus four printed with basic PLA/0.03mm can you guess which?
Also a Lord in the bottom with electro lance and a few Space Guards Heavy and Heavier
Mini from Arbiter miniatures, scaled down to 15mm. ELEGOO PLA Pro Purple. Bambu Labs A1 mini with 0.2mm nozzle. 0.06mm layer height.
So back to basics
I got a new ELEGOO PLA Pro to test versus my ELEGOO PLA basic. After doing all relevant calibrations I tried using it with the highly fine tuned settings I had for basic (0.03mm layer height, low speeds, etc).
The results I got were disheartening at least. I got really fine stringing like hair which would cause minor imperfections.
I tried adjusting temperatures, retractions, z-hop, drying the filament. Nothing worked 100%.
Then I remembered a lesson I had learned when starting 3d printing: back to basics. Whenever something doesn’t work, reset to default settings.
I switched to the Bambu default presets for 0.06mm layer height High Quality.
The results were amazing. Rigid printing minimal layers, no imperfections.
My theory is that the different properties of Pro are more rigid, so it doesn’t allow the squishing of my other settings I was using for basic. However it works really well with default settings perhaps it fixes itself better together with no curling, stringing or gaps.
Reptilians, aliens, slugs. It wouldn’t be space opera without some (more) xenos. These sculpts from Brite Minis will make great additions to my existing collection.
I painted the reptilians green with vermillion colour armor. The slug and the alien, in simple colours. Gave the slug a yellow bottom part and satin varnish for this moist effect.
On another note, I tried to improve my miniatures photography. Used Adobe Lightroom and my white photo box and I think I’ve gotten some better results than before.
Solo, Pen, Paper and Dice 
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