I’ve dabbled further in supports settings, and for this part I had some better results with painted supports. Still not where I’d like to be, I want to fine tune my settings further.
Printed and painted a handful more March to Hell Vietnam miniatures. This is a mix from the range, meant to be used in my Forgotten Ruin campaign. It’s a couple more M60 gunners to be used as SAW gunners, an HQ officer to be used as Platoon Leader, a Vietcong riflewoman who can be used as Athen Smarte, and the remaining squaddie from my US Special Forces, a dude with a knife. As always, the photographs tend to be less forgiving that the real life when talking about FDM prints. Nevertheless, in the foreseeable future I want to try out different techniques meant to cover layer lines.
Combined group photoM60 GunnerM60 GunnerOfficerVietcong riflewomanSpecial Forces with knife
I like to showcase painted minis so that the end result is evident. Here’s the US Special Forces from March to Hell Vietnam by 3dbreed. My print is missing one miniature which I replaced with the one from their free Promo. They’re printed in 15mm scale, in FDM at a Bambu Labs A1 mini with 0.2mm nozzle. 0.04mm Layer Height. ELEGOO PLA filament. I had some issues mainly with supports, but at the end I think I’ve solved it. So these prints have been printed with different settings. I resolved to scaled down 55% versions of their 28mm designs, with manual painted Normal Snug supports, but you’ll also find a couple that were printed from their resin-lychee-supported 15mm versions that survived the initial batch printing I did. A few minis had some minor defects due to me mainly being rough with them during support removal before nailing down the setting a, which I solved with UHU Hardplast Glue. Painting them was tough, as I tried to create the colours from acrylic palette as I’m missing the Vallejo range. I think they turned out nice.
US Special ForcesLeaderM60 GunnerSniperM72 LAW GunnerSoldierSoldierSoldierSoldierRadio Operator Promo Soldier
A nice base for a miniature helps it pop. Throughout my miniatures painting journey, I’ve gone through all steps. Started with just plain green painted bases back in the ’90s, upgraded with glued upon dirt from the backyard. Now, when I started again back in 2019, I began with experiments using cofee grounds, then modelling sand, birdsand and flock. Flock doesn’t look that good for 15mm miniatures compared to static grass.
But wherever I looked upon how to apply static grass, I saw only expensive applicators, or DIY electric versions that I did not feel like risking my own safety to build and use. What made a difference was when I found NOCH’s puffer bottle. This is a simple soft-walled plastic bottle, with a “sieved” opening. The concept is that you shake it well to generate static charge, and then “puff” it out by pressing the soft walls. It was way cheaper, about 10 euros at my local rail modelling store in a bundle with a big bag of static grass, and the respective grass glue.
I loved it. Application was easy, grass stood up, and wasn’t flat, but after using it for a long time, I’ve identified two issues. Firstly, the soft nature of the plastic, gave in, and the “sieve” cover falls out, and doesn’t catch anymore, I had to DIY rubber bands to keep it in place. Secondly, the mess. While for terrain it’s great (I applied static grass to all my hexon pieces using this), for miniatures it’s less than ideal. I have to use large containers and newspapers to gather the grass back, and still need to vacuum all the surrounding area afterwards.
At some time when I was bored, I just used adhesive putty to stick a miniature inside of the top cap of a plain jar filled with static grass, and shook it to avoid cleaning up. It worked, however the grass was a bit flat compared to when I used the puffer bottle.
After thinking it over, once I acquired a 3d printer, I designed a 3d model to incorporate all my ideas together.
Features:
Closed jar concept
Static rods inside the jar for extra charge at static grass housing
Integrated sieve at miniature housing
Option to add a tin foil under miniature housing for extra directional charge
I’ve tested it and it worked fine, and got similar feedback from other users. I’ve used it in the latest big batch of Brite Minis I’ve painted.
You can grab it for free at makerworld. I’ve included some instructions both in description, in pdf and gif format.
Hope it works well for you also. Any feedback if you use it, is appreciated.
Not sure about the title. As I said in my previous post I had made a batch painting of 28 minis, and it’s not like they can be grouped together easily. So here are a medic, an old bard, a merchant, an explorer, a crossbow ranger, a highwayman and a Norse maiden.
NPCsRanger with crossbow HighwaymanOld bardMedicExplorerMerchantNorse maiden
Having settled on my print settings, I went on a roll, and now I’m slowly eating away at my newly generated printed pile of shame.
I went ahead and primed a batch of 28 fantasy miniatures I’ve printed from Brite Minis freebies – fantastic supportless sculpts by the way, that scale down to 15mm nicely, in the meantime I went ahead and subscribed to their patreon – and I’ll be posting them here. Painting 28 minis in a single batch is faster on a per mini basis, but it’s tiresome as it adds up. I don’t know what came over me and I did this, I usually go at my sweet spot which is about a handful at a time.
Whatever the case, I will not put them all in a single post, but rather divide them in 4 batches of seven. Here’s my first set, that if I could group together, I’d say are thugs, scoundrels and lowlifes from fantasy settings.
ThugsBandit with sword and shieldBandit with spearThug with club and bottleWitch hunterRat catcherPirateRanger
3d printers have become much more affordable compared to a few years ago, and I’ve always been intrigued.
As an 15mm scale player living in the EU, availability, shipping costs and customs are a prohibitive factor to acquiring minis. Coupling this with the reduced variety of 15mm scale in comparison, say, to 28mm, and ordering minis for me had become scarce.
For the main themes that I play (sci-fi and fantasy) I had stocked up in batches of orders pre BREXIT and pre IOSS, and also got more than a few orders after shipping into EU was stabilised again.
However, recently shipping has become more expensive and the hunt for the odd mini that I’m missing usually does not excuse it.
If you add terrain into play, which is even more rare for 15mm, except for the regular buildings and houses, 3d printing becomes a very interesting investment.
I went into the rabbit hole of printer reviews, 3d sculpts, resin and FDM. I’m a sucker for table-ready quality, so resin was my first thought.
To my disappointment I had to decide against it. I’ve worked a good 7 years of my life as a scientist in a chemical laboratory, and I know all about dangerous vapours, chemicals, fume hoods, and personal protection measures.
To cut it short, my home office, which doubles as my hobby space, is not a suitable place to set up a resin 3d printer. It’s used also by other members of the family, and being in an apartment, ventilation is inadequate and contamination of nearby bedrooms possible. I don’t want to add to this potential spills, or space for a wash and curing station.
I kind of dropped the 3d printing subject altogether, as to my knowledge, the other alternative, FDM, is a pain. Several years ago, I had gotten an FDM printer which I assembled (i3 geeetech pro B), but no matter how hard i had tried, I never got it to print properly. Several attempts later, I concluded my failures were mostly due to a bent Z axis threaded rod, coupled with the ABS filament that was shipped with, which is much more difficult to work with than say PLA. All this however taught me how hard it is to work with FDM printers. Calibration, hot end temperatures, bed levelling, extrusion flow, printing speeds, fan speeds, just a few settings you have to play with.
The prints which I was seeing online also, all had clear layer lines. People say that for terrain that’s okay, but for minis that’s a big no, especially in 15mm!
Then, I stumbled upon Fat Dragon Games prints. And he listed using a Bambu Labs A1 mini printer. I did some further digging and I found that this little printer ticks all the boxes. Easy to set up, affordable, shipping from EU warehouse (no customs! Yay), easy to use and maintain, and great print quality.
I was sold, and decided to give it a go. After receiving and unpacking, and set up, which was easy as expected, I printed several minis, and some terrain.
I haven’t got the 100% perfect quality yet, but I’ve got the “good enough”. Only a few failures, which I learned why along the way.
A few prints.
Terrain aside, I got usable 15mm (to eye level) minis, with some layer lines, and good enough detail. Depending on the model and playing with the settings and supports, I got quite good results. I’d say on average they are on par with okay pewter minis.
As to the printing profile, my basis was Fat Dragon Games Bambu Profile, which I modified with information from this Reddit post, and finally changed the supports settings with info from this Reddit post as it was hard to remove them otherwise. Some of my first minis are deformed or broke due to this.
For my first attempt at painting them, I chose a few of dutchmogul’s designs (Ill Gotten Games) and one of Fat Dragon Games. I rescaled the minis to fit my scale, as the FDG mini is 28mm which I rescaled to 65% (I think? – it seems I overdid it and he’s smaller than what I’d like), whereas the 18mm IGG minis were also larger and I rescaled them to 90%. Painting the minis was a bit tougher than with pewter. My first approach was my regular routine, which wasn’t the best.
As you can see from the Corporate Spy and Spacer A, the layer lines are visible. I must say though that the iPhone camera is much more unforgiving than the human eye, and they look okay in reality.
I then read again the Reddit post I linked above, and saw that I have the same primer for the minis, but this time I decided not to thin it. I used it as is, and also followed up with a layer of black Army Painter paint. I avoided thinning up my paints too much, and instead worked with smaller quantities almost like drybrushing. I think the difference with the rest of the minis is evident, and the layer lines are less discernible.
Some minis have errors due to printing. I either used tougher supports which left anomalies where they were connected, or I used no supports when required and the filament extruded in the air stuck somewhere on the mini.
As to the sculpts, I loved the poses. However I would prefer if the IGG sculpts had more pronounced features. Some faces are almost nonexistent. The FDG fighter was perfect, no supports needed.
Now it’s time to share the minis in close up with the relentless camera, and a group photo in table distance.
Corporate Spy (IGG)Spacer A (IGG)Ronald Jackson (IGG)Femme Fatale (IGG)Apocalypster (IGG)Wastoid Slinger (IGG)Elf Mage (IGG)Fighter (FDG)Group photo
Hello giorgis, i just found your blog. The lecture is a real pleasure, it’s truly fascinating to delve into your process of exploring solo rpg A lot of my interrogations are quite similar. Do you have maybe an index page for your actual plays? Navigating the blog is not very conveniant to find them.
Thanks!
Wordpress is quite weird in navigating, may ask if you’re on desktop or mobile? I know that on desktop you can find the Actual Play Category with respective Sub Categories for each group on the Sidebar. However they’re listed in newest to oldest. If that doesn’t work, please let me know and I can prepare a list of links for reference!
Yes I see the “Actual Play” category, it is just the need to scroll through all the posts which is not so convenient. It is true that like you said a page with a list of link would be, IMO, a nicer way to navigate between all the different series !
Nico are discussing. 
Solo, Pen, Paper and Dice 
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