Miniatures pt156 – Halflings
Nasty little hobbitses printed in FDM in 15mm scale. Brite Minis sculpts. They’re more round than my other halflings so they’re closer to hobbits.
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giorgis
Halfling swordsman Halfling crossbowman Halfling archer Halfling archer Halfling farmer Kettle Knight -
giorgis
Miniatures pt155 – Elves
I’ve painted more of the Brite Minis I had printed in 15mm scale. This time various Elves. A couple wood elf archers, a couple high elf warriors and several adventurer type elves (sorcerer, mage, mercenary, bard).
The wood elf scheme was close to my previous wood elves I had painted from Demonworld. Went with light greens, and red accessories.
For the High elves I went with a white and red scheme (wanted pink but guess I missed the mixing of paints in proper ratio, so I just went with it).
For the adventurers I focused on vermillion and turquoise with some variations.
Printing was okay bar the sorcerers staff head which was corrupted during printing so I turned it into a flame.
Wood elves 
High Elves 
Elf magic users 
Elf adventurers -
giorgis
Miniatures pt154 – Peasants, Villagers and Townsfolk
Continuing with a selection from Brite Minis, here are a few peasants, villagers and townsfolk ready to defend their land.
Scaled 60% for 15mm. Supportless models from Brite Minis. Printed on a Bambu Labs A1 mini with a 0.2mm nozzle. eSun PLA+HS Filament. 0.06mm layer height. High Quality default presets.
Halfling butcher 
Baker 
Townsfolk with rolling pin 
Villager with club 
Archer woman 
Peasant archer 
Peasant archer 
Peasant Spearman -
giorgis
Miniatures pt153 – Mycenaean Orcs
Or rather orcs in historically accurate Mycenaean armour. Brite Minis sculpts, printed in 15mm scale, FDM.
Orc party 
Orc heavy with axe 
Orc heavy with axe 
Orc heavy with hammer 
Orc heavy leader 
Orc shaman witch -
giorgis
Miniatures pt152 – Town Guard
I’ve been tampering with print settings a while now, but I don’t want this post to be another 3d printing guide. I’ll just give settings and information and proceed to the miniatures painting stuff. Perhaps I will make a separate 3d printing post later in the future.
I’ve collected several town-guard style sculpts from the Brite Minis catalogue.
Scaled 60% for 15mm. Supportless models. Printed on a Bambu Labs A1 mini with a 0.2mm nozzle. eSun PLA+HS Filament. 0.06mm layer height. High Quality default presets.
For paint scheme I went with a mix of earth tones (browns for leathers, gambesons, wood) and a Green (Permanent Green Light) and Yellow (Azo Yellow Medium) for the uniforms (capes, overcoats, pants, shirts). I free handed a tower in the shield with a Yellow/Green background.
I spent the extra time for details like moustaches, beards and buckles as needed. Overall I really like the end results, and will be proud to field them alongside my Blighthaven Town Guard.
Spearman Guard Captain 
Townguard 
Hornblower 
Drummer 
Spearman 
Man at arms 
Man at arms 
Man at arms 
Man at arms 
Spearman 
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giorgis
Miniatures pt145 – Hungry Dead
The next bugs are from Ill Gotten Games, the Hungry Dead. I went for a flayed flesh look, if that’s possible with FDM printed 15mm scale miniatures.
The paint job was very simple:
- Airbrush Pale Flesh (Miniatures Paints) all over
- Deep Red Thick Wash
- Drybrush Zinc White/Burn Sienna 3/1 all over
- Warm Grey base
- Brown Polish Wash
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giorgis
Miniatures pt142 – Deinonychus
As discussed in my recent Bug Hunting Actual Play report, I’ve spent the recent past few weeks working to expand my “bugs” collection. I worked with the aim to have at least the distinct types covered first before switching to variants (for example insects prioritised over alien xenomorphs as I have not-genestealers already).
I needed a fast way to get these on the table as soon as possible, without compromising quality or variety.
Spent some time looking on available options and the most suitable models to print for each type. Then planned on the print, paint and sealing.
For printing I preferred types of enemies with at least a few variants, fitting on a standard sized base (didn’t want big or long bugs). Support free as always. I printed sets of 16 at a time, and to increase variants I Mirrored half of them in the X axis. The nice thing about “bugs” is that there’s no left or right side, you just want many, and this extra variety gives the mob look that is needed.
For painting, I decided to spray prime, then use a cheap (20 bucks) portable airbrush to lay down zenithal, and a few base colours. I followed them with a wash and drybrush.
I had never used an airbrush before, and it worked better than expected. Laying down the colours was nice, smooth and fast. There was a learning curve about thinning thick body acrylics in the right consistency, cleaning and avoiding clogs, but overall for batch painting that’s a tool I recommend, and will be using it more in the future.
Finally I did a lot of research on making a dip sealant, and combining it with a wash to tie the miniature together. I went down the rabbit hole of using floor polish, and it wasn’t easy to get out. But I succeeded in the end. I found a floor polish (perhaps the last in Greece) which has an acrylic polymer as an ingredient. I used this as my base. Added some PVA glue in order to avoid it running off a lot (for extra viscosity) and brown and black paint (no exact ratio here, just enough to give a nice tint, without covering the mini). I then did a quick dip, and it worked well! Sturdy enough for PLA also (dunno if it’s strong enough for pewter).
The first batch of bugs I painted was Deinonychus from Brite Minis – I only did the round based ones. They’re meant to be razor lizards and whatever else is suitable to be proxies.
The paint recipe was:
- Dark gray spray primer
- Zenithal
- Airbrush belly with Purple Red
- Airbrush low with Burnt Umber
- Airbrush diagonally & top with Raw sienna
- Airbrush top/head with Yellow Ochre
- Green wash
- Tan drybrush
- Vermillion Feathers, White stretch and Claws
- Polish wash
Deinonychus -
giorgis
Space Hulk in 15mm – A board
It’s been a while since the last post, and truth is I’ve been busy. Busy, hobby-wise. It wasn’t so much procrastination, rather jumping from project to project.
Skirmish miniatures gaming (and TTRPGs) have a lot of different aspects to keep a hobbyist engaged. There’s reading rules and settings, collecting stuff like miniatures and accessories, building terrain items, painting miniatures, 3d printing, world design, map making, with the utmost goal of playing the game!
However all these side-hobbies to playing the game are on their own ground enjoyable, and so I found myself occupied with them. I got into designing and printing and flocking terrain expansion for my Hexxon Tiles (I’ll probably blog about it in another post if there’s enough content to make it worth it), printing and painting Space Hulk tiles, 3d-building dungeon tiles and testing them, and lately printing a 3d space shuttle for my sci-fi games (5 Parsecs from Home I’m looking at you). Constantly jumping around all the above, I was getting into having a lot of semi-started or semi-finished and unfinished projects, and then I realized I need to draw the line somewhere and at least finish something before filling up my closet with more gaming stuff I can’t use. So the focus went on Space Hulk.Back in the ’90s, I had bought the 1st edition of Space Hulk. Loved the game. Unfortunately when we moved house I gave it away to a friend as part of the general decluttering and I’m only left with the two books – Rules and Missions & Background – which somehow I didn’t give away.
I’ve always remembered fondly the game, and the theme and concept, and having returned back to the hobby these past years, I always circled around the idea of getting back to it. My main obstacle now was scale as I’m not willing to start another scale for a game, and getting Space Hulk into 15mm is really hard, as I’d have to find solutions for all the game pieces and tiles.
For the game pieces I’ve gotten some (rather a LOT) Entomorphs by Vanguard Miniatures; unfortunately I never got their Novan Heavy armour proxies and now they’re out of stock (plus it will cost me like 20 GBP to buy and ship 10 miniatures, and probably another 10 for VAT and customs handling fees). I can proxy Space Marines with some Ion Age knights I had gotten, but they’re not Terminators, and I still may have to find some 3d printable proxies.
For the tiles I did a lot of searching. Before 3d printing, I had considered building my own, but I was never too excited with DIY examples I saw online, and I know my own terrain building limitations. I had considered using the Army Painter Gamemaster XPS set that I still haven’t finished to this day, for a Sci-fi alternative (and had tested a design for this purpose), but I eventually decided against it, as I could not make nice sci-fi or industrial designs with hand carving. The set is great for dungeons and caverns, but looks wonky for machine made parts, and didn’t want to waste my materials for something I wouldn’t like.
Here comes 3d printing to the rescue. 3d printing can output awesome terrain items, with detail. Yet still so many things to consider. There are many sets out there and I had to choose what would work best for me. I evaluated cost, type of joints, scaling down, and of course looks.
Once I saw the HVAC tunnels by Dragon’s Rest I knew my quest was at an end. They looked great! 3d, but yet the minis don’t get hidden; Entire rooms so assembly is not on a tile by tile basis; The looks are awesome. I printed out a sampler of their sci-fi set to ensure that when scaled down the clips would work fine (they do!), and when their last Black Friday sale was on, I bought it.
And it’s been sitting in my collection of 3d stuff for a few months, until I got the urge to sit down and print it. Found out what kind of tiles I’d need for my 1st edition of Space Hulk and started setting up my build plates. Printed a piece to see how it would work with my 15mm bases, and it works perfect! It uses a 1-inch grid, which when scaled down by 60% is exactly 15mm. Then, it took me a whole week and some, to print out the tile set.
Testing the grid and clips 
Printing underway 
Printed pieces 
Printed pieces connected Printed on Bambu Labs A1 mini, with a 0.4 mm nozzle, in 0.08mm Layer Height, ELEGOO PLA filament.
The next challenge was painting. I made the smart choice of printing it out in Space Gray PLA, and primed it using a Clear Plastic Primer spray. The idea behind it to use the default colour of the material to save on painting time (and also any missed spots wouldn’t look bad), for the core walls.
I had also to decide on the paint scheme. I eventually settled on the following: Yellow and Red tubes, various Metallics for connectors and details, Warm Gray computer panels, and Silver or White floors (two types).I used both normal painting and drybrushing, and also applied Oil Washes, this last step was a bit of a chore, but I think well worth it. It is also the reason I still haven’t applied a Sealer Varnish; probably in a week or two.
Drybrushed floors after priming 
Painting 
More painting 
Oil washes drying 
Painting rooms 
Oil washes drying Then I spent a couple of weeks doing other things before working on the doors. Painting these took me another few days, as they have plenty of details. I only did 15 doors out of the 20 that the 1st edition core set has, and I realized that it’s not enough to run the 2nd mission which needs 19 doors. So I’ll either paint some of the alternate doors I’ve printed, or print and paint a few more.
Doors painted 
Doors with washes before sponging 
Washes drying Finally, here are some display shots of the finished table, some painted unused pieces, and some pieces I printed extra to paint in the future. As I said in the beginning, I needed to draw the line somewhere and call it done, so I consider these to be extras for a future time slot before I burnout on this.
First mission overall shot 
Close up 
Close up 
Close up 
Close up 
The rest of my painted pieces 
Some unpainted pieces I’ll also see to printing some tokens for blips and overwatch in the future, to have a complete experience.
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giorgis
Miniatures pt117 – Knights (FDM)
I continued with my experiments on 3d printing 15mm in FDM, using my lessons learned and new things I’ve accumulated along the way.
As a recap, I’m using a Bambu Labs A1 mini with 0.2 mm nozzle and Bambu PLA.
Some key points:
- I did a “reset” on my print profiles, and worked from a preset as a basis, with the following key modifications: 0.04mm layer height, Arachne wall generator, 0.16mm outer wall width, lower speeds.
- I batch printed 4-6 minis at a time along with a prime tower to allow for cooling.
- Reduced nozzle temperature to 210 Celsius as the Bambu defaults are too high.
- Used support free miniatures, as I’m not entirely confident with my support settings and 15mm are more fiddly.
You can find the print profile here: 004 GA v003 Slow
This ensured that layer lines are minimal.
With a good basis, I went on to the next step, painting, again using techniques to minimise layer lines.
Materials used are Vallejo Polyethylene-Acrylic airbrush Primer (Black), Army Painter Washes. Army Painter Black & White Paints. Royal Talens Amsterdam Artist Acrylics Paints and Inks. Basing materials and static grass for finish.
My workflow was as follows:
- Prime black (unthinned primer)
- Drybrush Black (top down)
- Drybrush White (sideways)
- Basecoat with unthinned paint but in thin layers
- Washes with careful application (not glob over the mini)
- Varnish and basing
You can see the core steps here, using Brite Minis 28mm support free miniatures, scaled down by 60% to be at my 15mm scale.
Naked prints 
Black PE primer – smooths out the print and helps paint adherence 
Black drybrush – this fills in the gaps layer lines 
White drybrush – sideways to not enhance any remaining layer lines 
Basecoats- thick paint in thin layers 
Metallics 
Bases painted 
Washes application in light layers 
Varnished – satin on metallics and leather and matte on clothing, shields and flesh 
Basing complete I still had some failures, but they were few and far between. Mainly with printing too thin legs that broke – let’s not forget that the miniatures I used now were 28mm scaled down 60%. I resolved this with reprinting or adding extra parts under the leg for support. Also in some cases I didn’t bother to reprint as I didn’t consider the issue much worse than a pewter sculpt failure (see the crusader sword for example).
Each mini took around 1 hour to print.
Here you can see the finished painted prints, overall and in close up.
Yellow knight 
Red knight with daggers heraldry 
Sir Bedevere – went with movie photo reference 
Green crusader knight 
Blue and Red knight 
Dark knight with horns Overall I’m enthused with their finished quality. As these were freebies that I used to test, I’ve subscribed to Brite Minis and will print more of their sculpts in the future. That’s going to be a lot of printing and painting which I’m looking forward to.
Onibaba are discussing. 
Solo, Pen, Paper and Dice 
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