Been working on this little gem for a few hours, and thought I would post a little report on my progress.
This is my take on the Tantive IV interior walls, seen in the first star wars movie.
Here with some of my clone scout troopers for scale, you can find the on thingivers
The terrain walls are 3 inches long, making them not too large. This will unfortunately make you print a lot to cover even a small section of the 3×6 battlefield that is the standard for current 800 point legion games.
What these are meant for is instead some close combat encounters for 3×3 battlefields, using smaller infantry lists. The Core set (reb & imps) clocks in about 467 and 525 respectively, making this a good alternative for them.
heres a mockup for a 3×3 table
As you can see, not too shabby, eh?
Of course, there are design problems with this, in the picture above you can see there are some coloured walls, these are what I had to make to get everything to align properly…. This is because I’m not a terribly good designer and probably never will be.
These things aside, I quite like these, only problem is how many walls you have to make to make the table.. 108 for the inner walls and 52 for the outer walls..
3×6 madness
Now we’re talking! This is already becoming unwieldy, 216 walls and 78 outer walls.
So 294 pieces and it takes 2H 16 minutes for the normal blank wall according to cura –> over 600h of printing time, this would be pretty much a month of non stop printing them piece by piece. And that is not counting the connectors!
What an endevour! don’t you agree?
I’ll post them on thingiverse, so you’ll know where to get them.
Still waiting on my clan forces delivery, corona’s really messing things up for the the Italians, as I have yet to receive my parcel from them.. Only one MONTH shipping time so far..
Work has been really rough, and we’re finally going into low season, so might have better time in the future.
I managed to get some terrain done for TOH
As you can see, I got one orchard and one bush, with two willow groves done. The rice patches are 3D printed and flocked. They didn’t turn out really so bad, but could have been better. They almost look like mud instead..
As my clan forces are delayed, I got really bummed and lost my interest for the time being, so decided to switch things up. I fired up my printer and started to print some Star wars Legion terrain instead.
3d printed A-wings and AAC-1
Here we have some terrain for a legion board. everythings 3D printed, the AAC-1 is my old design. I have now updated it to more detailed and greebled.
Here we have the Y-wing, a really great piece of impressive terrain!
And finally, the first 2 segments of my walkways.
As you can see, there’s been some work done on the hobby front, but unfortunately not many games played.
I have been rather busy lately, and thus have not spent much time hobbying. The only thing I have got done is assembling 6 horses, as I have recently purchased the Clan forces card pack. I have only the horses assembled, as I am still unsure what armament and what kind of torsos they will be using.
I also got a shipment of 30 trees that I look forward to making terrain of! As i currently only have spruce’s from my frostgrave terrain in tree way (not counting the bamboo groves i have made), I’ll look forward to adding a little bit of diverse greenery to the terrain mix!
Finally some good news! I played my first 2 games and boy was it fun!
Me and my friend had our first get together in a long while, and instead of our Frostgrave campaign we tried out the first introductory battle and the first scenario in the linked game. The rules introduction was a breeze, and he quite fast got the gist of them and we were ready to begin.
The first battle was the usual new game, diving into the rules to check if we were doing it right every 5 minutes. both managed to take out a spearman before i managed to deal a terrible blow to his samurai, which sent him reeling with a lingering wound to the next scenario. My win!
The second game was a real nailbiter. I chose my forces very poorly, relying on a musket group, 1 musketman and a gunnery sergeant. This was a mistake, as my strategy was to hold the 3 point with 2 spearman and my samurai hero, while my musketmen would flank and harass him. Little did I know that I had to set aside 5 points of troops! This turned my plan upside down, as I put away the musketmen, but chose to keep my sergeant in the middle of the board with my melee troops, thus robbing myself of the Sergeant’s ability for faster reloads. Good for me that the dice gods where on my side, and had forsaken him.
turn 4 off 5. My spearman fending of his, while my Sergeant is fighting for his life. my samurai blocking the way to the objectivestate of the board on turn five. My musketman group holding one objective, his lone spearman the other and my samurai desperately trying to kill his other spearman Board layout. Super fun little scenario!
Even Though the game ended in a draw, I really felt like a winner! The biggest loser in the game were his archers. They only managed to cause a single blood drop in 5 rounds of improved shooting.
I really look forward to our next match, and I really need to get more troops done! this was only 15 points, and I almost used all the troops I have!
I finally managed to get some paints on the Bandits I have been working on!
First up my ranged units
Coming in at a whopping 4 points are my ranged options. One Armoured Bandit bowman and One Armoured Bandit Musketman.
my force of ruffians
Second my meat and potatoes, 3 Armoured Bandits. Can be taken as individual units for 1 point each, or as a group for 2 points. 2 are armed with katanas, and one with a heavy sword. If taken as a group, all weapons counts as katanas.
Bandit Chief and bruiser
Lastly my Cheif and bruiser. My chief is a real bandit, already taken 2 heads to impress his underlings to follow his lead.
Soon to bandit in a village near you!
Tried to keep the bandits a bit different to the “faction” samurai, by using quite dark colour for the armour pieces. Only problem is that they look a bit too “proper” for being bandits.
I feel that a head swap to some more “wild” looking heads would already have done much to convey the Bandit-y feel they now lack. I also feel that they have too much armour to be proper bandits, as they really should almost be dressed in rag to be proper bandits in my mind.
Good thing that I can sub them as a third faction once I get some more Ashigaru troops made. Then again i probably need more Ashigarus for my 2 already existing factions to get more variety. That means more putting models together again!
As the header suggests, this post is related to unarmoured samurai.
I finally had time to complete a tabletop standard paintjob to the unarmored samurai included as a bonus in the second edition Test Of Honour Box.
In my opinion this is a phenomenal sculpt, as I feel it really conveys the feeling of the classic ” oh you are surrounding me, better draw my sword half way to be able to explode into action” poses.
I feel I really should get some more of these unarmoured variants of the samurai. I know that North Star makes a nice line of these, so I may have to check them out in the future.
Showcased in the first picture is also some new pieces of terrain. The wattle fences are from thingiverse and look super! Really easy to print and paint, and really sell a urban settlement style of look.
The other is the barrelcart, also 3D printed from thingiverse. I don’t really think it looks 100% in its element here, I fell it has a more medieval European design to it. I love them none the less as I always need more terrain to my Games of frostgrave.
Hobbying has been a bit slow after I got back to work, with pretty much overtime lately.
I have had some time designing a bit of 3D models for the game though!
Adding to my collection of 3D models on thingiverse, I have now added Rice Paddies and Storage Huts/ Peasant houses to download and print, Free of charge of course. As I need things I’ll try to model it up, and I always try to post them on thingiverse for you to enjoy.
On the painting side, It’s been really slow also. The Bandits are still not primed, and a house I 3D printed isn’t really progressing either.
What i have got done is this:
Bamboo Groves!
Made with packaging foam (small balls variant), they were super easy to make.
Cut to size
Basecoat with glue and black craft paint mix
paint brown
dry brush highlights to the piece
Superglue Bamboo in place
Flock
Done
I also tried out the starting scenario for fun and to learn the rules. It’ll be good to have a rudimentary understanding of the game when I finally get one game in!
Spoiler: Shimazu (green) won
I still feel I have too little terrain fitting for this era, and I’ll need to address that issue as a priority, I think.
This week I had some time off work (1 week of overtime in 3 weeks of work really warrants some time off..) and me and my SO decided to visit my family’s summer cottage in the Finnish Archipelago.
This of course threw a wrench in the hobby time I have. Or so I thought!
In a flash of genius I thought to myself:”why not take the hobby with me?” And so I did! Taking an old CPU-fan cardboard box I managed to pack with me a little neat package of everything I needed. Of course some things had to be left home as painting, 3D modelling and terrain crafting really were out of question.
What I packed with me was the following:
Crafting knife
Pliers
Super Glue
Liquid Green Stuff
1 sprue Spear Ashigaru
1 sprue Missile Ashigaru
1 Sprue Samurai
1 Sprue Mounted Samurai
1 Sprue horse
2 sprues of bases
As you can see I managed to get a ton of stuff with me to assemble miniatures. Unfortunately the actual time I had to assemble the miniatures was hampered by the usual summer cottage activities ( sauna, fishing, working etc..) and my own problem of making up my mind to what I was supposed to assemble.
The first model was easy, as I was lacking a bannerman for my forces. Unfortunately I had only taken one sprue with the great banner, and thus had to settle for only one model. I’m guessing I have to make another one when I’m home. Then the problems began. As I only own the base game, I had already made all of the base troops and samurai that I could make and had the cards for.
The mighty banner of Grey Plastic!
Fortunately for me, Grey For Now offers a lot of bonus card for free on their webshop. So I downloaded a couple and had a little look. The particular cards that I found the most interesting (and doable!) for me was the Bandit units. They are easily made with what I had brought with me, and thus the easy choice of what to try assemble.
Need to give the bowman some swords..
Made by bits from the samurai and missile ashigaru sprue, one Armored Bandit Musketman and one Armored Bandit Bowman was assembled. One note I made was that the samurai body seem to be a tad bigger than the ashigaru body, as the arrow just only touches the bow. This is important to know, as this makes swapping arms between the sprues not as easy as I had hoped! This problem only occurred with the bow arms, as the teppo arms fit perfectly.
Bandits of the grey plastic gang!
Then I made a group of Armored Bandits, and a Chief to command the group. Here I got a Little bit fancy, as pieces are from the Samurai, ashigaru and mounted Samurai sprues. The mounted Samurai sprue is a treasure trove of bits,as it holds a lot of alternate heads, weapons and bits to stick on the miniatures.
Finally I found a use for the sword with ball piece, as my Chief can be seen being in the process of sheathing his Katana. I also made my first “can count as no-dachi” as the original katas grip was too short to be used in the model to the right. I had to make a new grip from a spear, and I think it worked out great! Only thing I am probably going to do before priming the is removing the bow from the no-dachi guy. I hate the thing on the sculpt and I don’t think that a bow is going to give a bandit much credit in the bandit world.
A merry lot of bandits!
And there we have it! Total of models assembled was 7, and I could probably have knocked out 1 or 2 more, but why stress with these things. If you are going somewhere for your vacation, you might think of bringing your hobby with you as I did. I can really recommend it. And for gods sake, don’t assemble outside! I already lost one Katana, and I was assembling the thing inside the whole time!
Welcome back dear reader to another update to the blog.
I finally got my purchase, and now I have a lot of stuff to work with. I have chosen to try to do a lot at once, so in case I get burned out on something I can always switch projects and keep going with motivation. And it really did not go as I expected.
If you read my last blogpost, I had invested in a sizable chunk of miniatures and to get my order with free shipping I added my first ever purchased terrain pieces to the order. What I purchased was the Torii gate and small minka A from TT Combat‘s line eastern empires.
As I had previously worked with my samurai miniatures, I thought I should try to get started with the terrain in case I could get in a test game with a friend. This led me to be very pleasantly surprised, as it did not take any time at all to build the 3 pieces of terrain.
The Torii consist of, as the name implies, of two great Torii Gates. Dimensions are roughly 17x12x4.5cm.
The Minka Consists of one house. Dimensions 15x17x11cm.
Gotta say I’m impressed with the little kits. The construction was straight forward, as you only need a knife to get the pieces off the Mdf sprue, and superglue to attach the pieces to each other. The instructions how to build the pieces was not included in the package, but TT combat has the instructions in pdf on their home site to download. Painting the was easy, but the biggest flaw of mdf really revealed itself. Raw mdf is really primer hungry, as it absorbs a great deal until it is sufficiently coated.
All in all, I’m estimating that total time working from start to finished was about 2 hours tops, as the construction was more of a breeze than I could ever had imagined.
Conclusion to this is to say that I really recommend the kits, as they were only 10£. 10£! For that prize I really going to get more of TT Combat stuff when I have the chance and wholeheartedly recommend these products.
I have managed to get some work done, and thus have decided what factions I now have at my disposal.
Green mean oppression machine!
I have settled to paint my two factions as the red Takeda and green Shimazu. The red being Takeda was a choice that was easy to make as I ordered the samurai army big box. This box comes with Takeda water transfers, which makes my life easier when I don’t have do the clan mons freehanding. The shimazu where a more difficult pick, as there is a plethora of interesting clans in this era of time. My choice was actually quite a lot influenced by Shogun 2 total war, as I love to play as the Shimazu clan.
Nice contrasting colours in my opinion. Also sorry for picture quality.
The biggest problem will be to freehand the Shimazu mon on the back banner, as it is a circle with a cross inside of it. I also reasoned that this might actually be the easiest one to try my hand on, unless I find some transfers to buy on the net. Thus far my search has not delivered any results, as I have been unable to find any transfers at all. Alternatively I could try to print them on ordinary paper, cutting them out with a knife and then gluing them on, but I don’t look forward to that kind of a job..
This of course don’t mean that they couldn’t have allies from another faction, as I happened to find a nice honeycomb pattern metal mesh from a hair dryer I could use as a template for an Asai mon. This also scored me some NiCrome (I think and hope) wire to use in a DIY foam cutter build!
Good Enough Hobbies 