Scaling Back

 Don't worry, I'm not selling off my collections...

Between heatwaves and busy weeks causing my long covid symptoms to flare up  again, hobbying had petered out over the course of july. These interruptions had caused my enthusiasm for the Division project to slowly peter out. So my hobbying scaled back quite a bit.

Then I discovered Bloodsong by Death of a Rubricist... Ork and Eldar Titans for Adeptus Titanicus was exactly what I needed to relight the hobby fire! So I scaled my hobby back from 28mm to 8mm... ;p 

I've long been of the opinion that Games Workshop shot themselves in the foot by chaining modern Adeptus Titanicus (and by extension Legions Imperialis) to the Horus Heresy. The joy of (previous iterations of) Epic scale games has always been the spectacle and challenge of diverse and eclectic armies and factions battling it out. Seeing mobs of Ork Battlefortresses charging a lance of Imperial knights as a squadron of Baneblades manoeuvring to get a shot on an Ork Gargant. Or Eldar Titans dancing around a Warlord as it struggles to get a bead on them. A line of doomed Guardsmen facing down a charge by Tyranid Bio-Titans...

On a modelling level, it was just great to see the massive warmachines and other bizarre contraptions of the various factions of the 41st millennium that are just too large for a 40K table.

Just look at this stuff! Look!

But I digress. With inspiration and a goal in hand, I scoured the internet for suitable printable Eldar and Ork warmachines to combine with the ones I already had. Some were a bit harder to find than others, but soon I had enough for a maniple (or their particular equivalent) of both Orks and Eldar, and I set my printers to work. In the meantime, when circumstance allowed, I dug out my old Warlord titan to paint while I complete the weapon loadouts I wanted to 3d model for the Ork Gargants (Using Red Nebular's Collossobots). 

A nice afternoon spent airbrushing the Warlord bits

One of my already painted Reavers supervises the proces and serves as a colour matching aide.

A quick test spray of my intended colour mixes of my Biel-Tan titans.

Meanwhile, printer goes brrrr....

And I'm cheerfully bashing away at Fusion.

Two down, half a dozen more to go to get the full loadout options.

While the Collossobots are deeply retro-Ork styled, I want my guns to hit a sort of halfway point between the classic retro Ork style and the more modern Max Max-ian style. 

I'm also feeling the desire to add to my Legio Astraman force, and incorporating some more retro styled bits as well.

A Reaver shoulder pad I modelled based on the older metal Reaver shoulder.

Anyhow, when weather and health allows, I'll be chugging away happily on this little big project!

See you next time!

Hello again. (Insert funny reference to the passing of time here)

Well, hello. We meet again. Again a short recap of what I've been up to. I'm nearing completion of the 3d printed set of Gallowdark Terrain. Which means that is finished for now, until I find files for the parts from the new expansions. So, for the time being, if I do more Gallowdark terrain, it will be the official stuff (more on that later). For variation, alongside the Gallowdark set, I've also finally painted the Samurai Village I've had in storage for a couple of years:

I've been doing some painting on my Space Hulk Terminators, but ran out of steam before I could finish them. I did make some nice progress on my Space Hulk terrain set, though, spurred on by the Gallowdark frenzy:

So, that's the "tech" for doors and bulkheads sorted. Through the open door/bulkhead you can also see who I intend to approach my Space Hulk terrain in the future: No more painstakingly handcrafting repetitive items, but 3D modeling/file-bashing and printing those, and then add the additional touches and details through kitbashing and scratchbuilding.

I also found a source for larger containers of Dirty Down Rust, as I expect to use a fair bit of that in the future:

The left one is the standard 25ml one that you can find in more and more hobby stores. The right one is the 250ml one I found at a store specializing in weathering and aging products for stage and movie props. They even had Dirty Down Rust in 400ml spray cans!

And finally, the Space Hulk milestome I'm most happy about: 3D Blip markers!  The tops are adapted from an existing file, and I modeled the bases myself. The tops were printed in clear resin and then given a thorough gloss varnish. The bases simply primed black, the numbers/letters painted in white and airbrushed over with a fluor paint. Here's the results: 

Sadly, I forgot to take pics of the regular green blips before I safely stored them all away...

In the set are all the blips I need to play any edition of Space Hulk. :) 

As a sidestep, I painted two sets of Ironhead Armour for the Iron Kingdoms RPG:

One of the Ironheads was 3d printed, I modeled a boiler, firebox and chimney onto what was originally a Steel Golem model.

Since I had some leftovers of the red and green resin for the Space Hulk blip tokens, I also printed some Space Hulk fauna, just for fun and maybe some special scenarios: 

In that picture you can also see a hint of what I'm currently up to...

While I had intended to keep going on the Gallowdark and Space Hulk projects, due to having to interrupt hobbying for two weeks because of a stubborn cold I lost steam. 

Just around the time that Games Workshop had their Warhammer Fest and teased Adeptus Titanicus maybe getting infantry and non-titan vehicles... Which I personally found more exciting than 40k 10th edition. So yeah, I started figuring out how to get my own low-cost titans (see the tiny reaver) in the background of the above pic. And having Titans on the brain again, I also took the large 28mm lad out of storage. It's now fully magnetized and primed, ready to get painted over the coming sunny weeks.

As I said, I'd be coming back to Gallowdark in this post: I may not be able to get the complete set. As I said in an earlier post, Gallowdark was my last automatic must-buy from GW for the foreseeable future. And if you've seen the discussions on social media this weekend, you may have guessed why: I missed out on the woefully understocked pre-order. I may, just may have a chance with an independent game store, but I'm waiting to hear back from them whether or not they'll get the supply they ordered or if GW short-stocks them again...

More news next time!

Wow, time has flown....

Several months of catching up to do... Prepare for a deluge of images!

I did some Fallout stuff: 

After a while, interest waned, and I started on some Crimson Skies stuff, namely, printing off some planes I found, and then 3d modeling and printing engine nacelles and broadside bays for my zeppelins (Which I will have to redo, as I dropped them before primering and I'm still waiting for the heartbreak to subside enough to work on them again...)

Having gotten some practice in with Fusion360 again, I settled into another project: making System Ships for Battlefleet Gothic: 

They are TINY! That's a 32mm base it's next to:

And since I was making these anyway, I might as well start printing stuff for BFG again:

Including ordnance (SO FIDDLY!)

As well as some large scale fun:

My friends and me also got a period of renewed interest in cyberpunk, resulting in this: 

We planned to each have one of these appartments printed, so we could paint it, and have a basis for a city board. Due to some issues with the filament printer, the last two still need to be printed. I'm currently ironing out and re-tuning after replacing the entire hot end...

I also finally figured out how I could do the banners on my Reaver, so that project is moving forward again as well (once more, waiting on troubleshooting the filament printer)...

Since I had a week off, and was in a holding pattern regarding 3d printing, I finally got to painting some stuff: 

The fruits of a week of painting, I got a LOT done!

Some close ups of the large (1/10.000 scale) BFG escorts:

And that brings us up to this month.

I'm working on the dismounted crew for my Titans:

And I stayed with the BFG theme:

I also fired up Fusion360 again, and got to work designing an Orbital Dock:

This model, along with my System Ships, are up on my Cults3D page. 

Now that is done, I'm working on a set of Orbital Defence Platforms, again, in the extra-gothic style:

Test prints are currently running, once these print satisfactorily, they'll go up on Cults3D as well.

Thanks for your patience, both in waiting for this post, and in viewing it!

See you next time!