Thoughts On 3D Printing

No painting today, as it turns out. I've really gone slack on that of late - the curse of work and a social life. Something's got to give! I have however spent a fair amount of time plotting out where my Maiden Guard army is going to go over the next few months. First up is bringing the two units of Lothern Sea Guard up to 20 (well, one of 20 and one of 18 plus two characters) and adding in a Level 2 Wizard to give myself some magic defence and a little offence. That takes me to 1,000 points. For the Escalation League I also need to have "a centrepiece unit" painted up, which is a little hard given the nature of my army - there isn't really a "centrepiece" until quite a lot more points, as the whole thing is based around lots of bows and lots of counts-as Maiden Guard. I could argue that the Everqueen would herself count, but, actually, I think I might just grab the rose by the thorns as it were and do something outlandish like jump ahead to the final army list and get my "Dragon Princes" unit done.

After all, once I get to 3,000 points, just having infantry won't really cut it when other armies will be fielding all sorts of monstrosities. So...

Queen's Guard on horse, by Last Sword Miniatures

10 heavy cavalry, with a funky magic banner and a badass champion, giving the Maiden Guard a really nasty combat punch to back up the actual dragon that Commander Aeilliniarie will be riding by that stage? That seems like a pretty good centerpiece to me. Plus it gives me a chance to try 3D printing some slightly larger things than I have done previously.

Or I might just give the Commander her dragon early, rather than paint a load of horses:

Archmage on Dragon, by Last Sword Miniatures 

 Of course the rider'll need some converting to more accurately represent the Commander, and there are some other possible candidates, but it can't be denied that she would be quite the centrepiece!

Just A Little Distraction

Well, I've had a bit of a quiet day apart from work, and the end result of all of that is that rather than do any painting, I've put the 3D printer to work. I've promised to send a bunch of very old style monopose Skaven command, as well as 32 shields for the same sort of model, to a friend in the Antipodes. Then I've also offered to send some Iron Sultanate troops to another friend in Sheffield, and, of course, I have to print the My Little Pony Marauder IIC for C's comedy purposes.

A 3D print file! This is a monopose Skaven musician

So I've been setting up various 3D print files, and eyeing up the commission miniatures, and organising a game of Mordheim for tomorrow night with B, who has Orcs and Goblins... and a troll. So that'll be interesting for my tiny little band of cultists to deal with! Anyway, I'm off to press "print" on a plate full of rats and other random figures.

Oops No Painting

Yesterday after work was too hectic for a variety of reasons to get any painting done, and tonight was much the same. However the little wargames club in Llangefni is getting started and the first night is next Tuesday so I will definitely be going along to that. I'll bring my Necromunda stuff and see what happens. Who knows, maybe I'll get a game in! 

The Firestarter lance I was eyeing up on Monday is still glaring at me from their undercoats, so I really do want to get some paint on them tomorrow if all goes well but I have a nasty feeling this week's going to be not very conducive to putting paint on toy soldiers, so I may have to limit myself to some army list crafting and looking at things to buy (or print), like these Dark Rider STLs which are quite tempting. 

Why Dark Elf Dark Riders you may ask? Well, some locals have floated the idea of an escalation campaign of The Old World, and the idea of a Dark Elf army that starts with a bunch of Dark Riders (scouts) and then gets larger by adding more and more of the army that would follow behind - like Cold One Riders, Shades, Harpies, etc - strikes me as both thematic and quite cool. 

On the other hand I do have all those Tomb Kings that haven't seen a tabletop yet...

  

Roughly 2,000 points of skeletons

Who Needs Arms Anyway

Well, today I finished the organising of the garage - mostly - and it is now a usable space for 3D printing and storage. While doing so I dug up some partly-built stuff that P didn't want any more, so I put together a Chaos Knight Desecrator (I think - big ol' laser cannon, giant power claw thing, apparently that's a Desecrator) and am looking at a bunch of sprues that I think will produce an Armiger with melta cannon and chainsword. Maybe two of them if I can find some of the parts that appear to be missing. 

The workspace - on the left, armies and unfinished kits and unpainted models, on the right, boxes of sprues and scenery. In the middle, the washing station and Mars 2 Pro 3D printer, still in the little plastic bags that they came in

 

I made a bit of an error building this. I didn't realise that the arms won't fit on once the should plates have been attached, and so now in order to get the arms on I will need to cut away the attachment lugs on the torso and glue the arms in place. Mildly annoying but not the end of the world. I also attached a spare Mortifier onto the upper carapace for a bit of Evil Flair

I also put some bases on the painted mercenary battlemechs I did a while ago, although they do need flocking and the like. At the moment they're just bare black plastic:

It's a terrible photo but it doesn't really matter, these four mechs are now the proud owners of bases and a better photo will appear tomorrow after I've properly completed the bases with flock and infoplate details such as STK-MAC and so on

Actually a very productive day. I have a little list of stuff to get before I can get printing properly (not least of which is resin!) so I'll be ordering that once I've got a little more disposable income and then it'll be off to the races. Or at least the trial-and-error stuff before the races. 

Organising And Experimenting

Another day of no painting, but instead I did a lot of unpacking and rearranging and organising within the garage. Now all the Really Useful Boxes full of magnetised (and un-magnetised...) toy soldiers are safely in there, along with all the other things. They need to be sorted out and tidied away, of course, but by the end of tomorrow I should be able to set up the 3D printer and washing station, ready for ordering some resin and any other bits I need so that I can get printing by next weekend. Exciting stuff! I have also arranged a wargame with a local chap over in Bangor on the 29th, and there seems to be some movement towards the development of a local wargames club in Llangefni, which is a nearby town. So who knows; maybe soon I'll actually be able to get some games in again.

 

It's a lot more cluttered now, but it'll become tidier by the end of the day. The RUB towers will eventually expend even more to provide homes for armies like my Old World Tomb Kings, my Raptors Space Marines, my Iron Warriors, Orks, and so on. A project for the upcoming few months I think

I also found the lightbox that my partner P got me for my birthday last month, and I finally had time to get it out and have a play around with it. First impressions - a great little bit of kit! It's a 30cm cube with lots of backdrops out of the box and a pretty self-explanatory process to use it. I think it'll take a little effort to really get used to, but it's already producing some quite nice snaps just with my mobile phone's camera:

This is the Dire Wolf from my Falcon Guards Cluster Command Star, and you can see how crisp the photo is and the colours actually look much like they do in real life

The way the lighting illuminates the panelling and the details on the rear is really good too!

Ad-hoc mixed Star of light omni-mechs and Elementals

After playing around with the Falcon Guards, I dug out one of the oldest Games Workshop models from my collection - not in terms of date of manufacture, but in terms of its relationship to me and my time as a customer of GW and a painter, collector, and gamer of their stuff:

 

Battle Brother Major of the Ultramarines! Purchased for me by my Dad in late summer or early Autumn of 1996 from Games Workshop Oxford and painted by me with a mix of Humbrol Enamels (the blue and orange) and Citadel Acrylics (everything else)

Yes, the Chapter badge and Tactical marking are on the wrong shoulder pads, and I think the skull on the knee should actually be in the yellow circle on the greave...

The power pack has black vents, but I can't remember why now

I was nine, nearly 10, when I painted this model and the rest of the Tactical Squad that he came with. I'm not entirely sure where the rest of them are these days

And that's that for today - tomorrow, more organising, and maybe some painting. I found my various Blood Bowl teams today, and part of me is tempted to finally finish my High Elf / Pro Elf team, the Tor Sethain Thunderbolts, but I do have some Grots to paint too, so we'll see what I end up doing.

 

Organising

Tonight I got carried away organising the garage and ran out of time to do any painting. On the plus side, the garage is that much closer to being able to be successfully used for storage of toy soldier related things and manufacturing of 3D prints, so that's always good. I also found a very useful cardboard box and spent a happy few minutes transferring all my paints from two boxes to one! This also had the useful side effect of freeing up a small Really Useful Box which I can use to put 3D printer related tools and things in to protect them.

I took a photo of my nicely and neatly arranged paints in their nice new box, but because of browser nonsense it's not going to be up tonight. Ah well. So it goes, so it goes...

 EDIT:

Here's the photo!

Look at them! All nicely organised in a snaking pattern starting in the top left with Abaddon Black (and then ending up in the chaos of washes and inks at the bottom)

Making Space

I didn't do any painting today, but I did manage to get a chunk of work done in the garage in terms of moving things around, and putting up furniture. T, my son, helped a lot - particularly by moving things from the garage to his room - and created a lot of space. So much space, in fact, that I managed to get my 3D printer out of the box for the first time since I bought it!

Soon - soon - I will be flailing around trying to make it work. I was going to put a picture up, but alas, my browser is being rubbish and I can't get the photo to myself to post, so that'll probably appear in an edit later. A small update, then, but an update nonetheless. 

EDIT (09/11/2025): 

AHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAaaaaa...!

 

Where Have I Been? SPACE!

I have been absent for a week, which is - I think - the longest gap in posting this year. Mostly this has been because of the heat, which has left me barely capable of thinking, let alone painting, but it is also because over the weekend I went to Death Unto Darkness Event 11: HERETEK where I spent a weekend as Sister Superior Humility of the Order of His Sanguine Tears. Many foes of the Emperor were slain, and much fun was had by all. Here are some photos:

 

Here I was having an argument about whether or not criminals were stupid; my position was that as crime is an offence against the God-Emperor, only stupid people would commit crime and thus criminals by definition are stupid

Here I was being exorcised after getting only a little bit possessed

This is a really good portrait of me - many kudos to the photographer!

Right at the start of the event, before I started to melt in the 27 degree heat and 60% humidity and discarded the wimple

 In terms of painting, I have some medieval civilians and an old Wargames Foundry Scrooge model on the way which I hope to get done tomorrow. On Saturday myself and my friends C, D, and H are going to have a day of wargaming - 4th Edition 40K! So expect many photos from that. 

Technical Problems, Please Stand By

So I've been AWOL for a few days. Partly this is because my internet provider has decided to have a local outage, and partly it's because the UK is extremely hot and where I normally paint is uncomfortably hot. As a result I haven't made as much progress as I've hoped on stuff recently and even if I had, posting about it has been impossible. I'm piggy-backing off someone else's internet to make this post, and hopefully things will be fixed soon. Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to melt quietly into a puddle of sweat.

VE Day

Cologne, Germany, 1945. My distant ancestors came from here, and their name became Cullen, eventually.

 

 

Well, it's been a long time since I posted, and today seemed like an auspicious day of sorts. 72 years since VE Day, and one month 'til the General Election. Don't vote Tory, whoever you vote for; they've spent seven years shafting this country badly, and if they get back in worse - much worse - is to come, not least of which will be the end of the NHS.

 

Anyway.

 

I've been pretty busy, both generally and in the wargaming/hobbying side of things. More on that later. For now, I'm back and hoping to blog about once or twice a week for the foreseeable future. Good intentions and all that, though...!

It Liiiives!

Igor - quickly - the electricity! To maximum power!

Ahhh! YES! Yeeeessss! It liiiives!!

*ahem*

So it's been a while, eh?

Well. Sorry about that. Life got a bit strange. I'm doing better now. And I haven't been idle. Since I last wrote on here I have finished a Sisters of Battle army, almost completed my Imperial Guard army, and done a load of other stuff.

Which I'm going to showcase over the next few weeks, a unit a day, starting tomorrow. Just thought I'd build the expectation really. I know, I know, I'm evil. Mwahahahahaa and all that.

Here, have some links to keep you going!

The Molgravian Gazette - my 18th Century Imagi-Nations Project
Patrick MacLeod Cullen - my poetry corner

And a music video that I really like:



I listened to that one a lot when I was painting my Sisters of Battle.

Things

So in the month since I last posted, I've been to Tunisia (hot, dry, amazing), and amicably split from S.

Both of which have pretty much killed my modelling and painting. I've still managed to get a few games in, and there's a new shop opened in Leamington Spa called BAM! Comics, which is very friendly and deserves your support.

As to what I have been up to, well...

I've played a few games of X-Wing, losing some and winning some, played Firefly: the game (and lost), won a game of Talisman, and joined a games club in Coventry with my friend JY (his uncle and two lecturers from his college attend, and he had no idea, which is pretty funny).

Oh, and I finally got some Germans to paint up as Division Azul troops to fight my Soviets. Except, as I discovered, 30 figures isn't quite enough to represent a full-strength Wehrmacht-organised infantry platoon from 1942. I need another 19 figures for that - another 10 man squad, a platoon CO, platoon sergeant, three runners (one with a sniper rifle), a sanitats, and a 5cm mortar team of three. Ah well, it's a start!

Anyway, here's some pictures:

 A game of X-Wing against JY, early on, before I lost both TIE bombers by being run over by the Dodonna's Pride (the big bloody thing on the right!), and before my Lambda managed to pop Wedge(?) with its heavy laser cannon. My interceptors are busy looking cool and dishing out the pain.

Arrrgh! The death of Iorek the Shamed, my Dragon Age pen-and-paper RPG character, to a Shade, on the road from the Lothering graveyard. Poor sod. He slaughtered his way through a graveyard full of demon-possessed skeletons, only to run up against this thing against whom his battle axe was not effective and his mighty armour useless. So he fought, and died, after realising he couldn't escape. Still, it means I get to make a new character! Happy days!

 Setting up a game of X-Wing at BAM! Comics (£2.50 an hour to use a table, not each, per table. Jolly reasonably priced and you can play anything you want; there was a game of Magic going on behind us and then that turned into Conquistador). Me with Obsidian Squadron and JY flailing about trying to write a list.

 The forces. Seven TIE/ln versus two X-Wings and two A-Wings.

 Setup. Two flights ('A' on the right, with the blank space behind O2, and 'B' on the left, O4-O7) against one. Prepare to die, Rebel scum!

 End turn one. Moving in for the kill.

 End turn two. At this point I've lost O4 to X-Wing fire, while the A-Wings' assault missiles both missed, doing (thankfully) no damage at all to my closely packed TIE swarm.

 End turn three. One A-Wing downed, a few bumps as my 'A' flight run into the X-Wings which are now neatly on the tail of 'B' flight who had run into them earlier on, trapping them into facing the wrong way... aiee!

 End turn four. Bloody asteroids! Amazingly I've only lost one other TIE but I don't like these odds of 5:3...

 End turn five. I'm facing the wrong way with everything, and his X-Wings... aren't. Curses!

 End turn six. Predictable results really. Now one-on-one with TIEs against barely damaged Rebel ships; there's no way out for the remains of Obsidian Squadron now!

 End turn seven. Another TIE's bitten the dust. Still three rebel ships. The end is nigh.

And that's that! Taken milliseconds before the surviving TIE disintegrates under a hail of cannon fire from the X-Wings. A well-flown victory for JY, helped enormously by bad positioning and terrible dice rolls from me.

 Rematch. I got my own back in a 150 point game immediately afterwards where I took two Black Squadron pilots, Vader, and three Interceptors led by Baron Fel. This is the point at which JY gave up, having had all his X-Wings destroyed for the loss of one TIE, and the Falcon about to go down under a hail of fire.

A game of Talisman with CH! He took a monk who became EEEEEEVILLLL really early on (and became massively strong, a base attack of 22!), and I ended up with a thief who snuck into the Valley of Fear and seized the Crown of Command despite nearly dying along the way. Yipes! I love this game and really must get some of the expansions. And paint the figures. Must paint the figures.

And a game of Firefly in progress with SB, NR, NV, and AC. AC won, damn his eyes, but at least I got to fly in the 'verse and I was very nearly the winner. Very nearly. I just misjudged things a teeny weeny bit and ended up having to sack Inara from my crew! Sad times!

I have done some other bits and pieces, like some work on an Eversor assassin, starting to repaint the Rhino from the Aderaband Home Defence Militia, and that sort of thing, but really since I got back from North Africa I've just been gaming.

One Month Later (I'm Sure I've Said That Before)!

Yow! (As Kwazii would say.) It has been a whole month since I last posted; suffice it to say that I have not been idle despite my lack of updates.

The main event, as it were, of the communications blackout, has been a trip to Warhammer World with my old mucker Jellicoe of the NHS to fight an Apocalypse 40,000 game. I contributed about 3,000 points of my Righteous Fists, while he threw in 9,000 points of Angels Sanguine (Blood Angels by another name) and a further 12,000 points or so of Hive Fleet Scheer. All in all about 24-25,000 points on the table in the end, with a scenario written by me. As so often in these things, the first run through of the scenario threw up a glaring error: Tyranid deployment was too far (four feet) from the Marine deployment, with the depressing but inevitable result that they were forced to walk towards the enemy and were shot to pieces in the process. But when they did reach the Marines, well! There was some bloodshed then.

Lunatics of the match, however, must go to the Angels Sanguine Death Company, who killed a Heirophant bio-titan in close combat... twice!

 The Tyranids. All bar about 500-1000 points worth in the bottom left corner are Jellicoe's Hive Fleet Scheer.

Tyranid deployment. Note Heirophant!

The bio-titans lead the right flank advance supported by the Heirophant's firepower. Note the Fists dug in to the left, and the Angels Sanguine sat there looking all smug with their ridiculous firepower.

 Heirodule versus Mephiston (AKA Beatty)... there can be only one winner!

Inevitably it was Beatty. A real monster of a character.

The Death Company bring down the Heirophant for the second time...

...then the survivors go toe-to-toe with a Termagant swarm.

This is quite late in the game; the Fists' air support has arrived and is busily engaged in strafing Carnifexes. Note the total destruction of the Tyranid right flank!

 I kept deep striking tunneling creatures but their lack of shooting and my inability to close with the main force meant that, without exception, they got shot apart before they got a chance to assault. In the background you can see the high water mark of the Tyranid advance; Carnifexes to the fore!

 I swamped Beatty with Termagants in a futile attempt to kill him.

Endgame: a decisive victory for the combined Astartes force which saved the world from being exterminatused by the Inquisition. 12,000 points of Tyranids and they killed barely anything. Had we deployed 24" apart instead of 48" I am sure the story would have been different. Perhaps next time!

As well as that, I took part in another two sessions of the Dragon Age RPG that AC is running with SB and MC. We defied death (again) and defeated the monsters within the caverns, getting some loot and preparing a plan for the last stage of the adventure that we are yet to play through.

Widget the elf and Hass the mage duel with the blood mage on the steps, while Iorek the dwarf slugs it out with a demon.

After much blood is shed (most of it Iorek's), the crazy Dwarf axes the blood-mage in the face. Gloating commenced.

In terms of stuff that I've painted, well:

I made a start on the Whirlwind, finishing the gunner (how he enters and exits the bloody thing I don't know, and doing it when the tank's been hit and is, say, on fire, must be a thing of miracles).

I painted the first five of my Lamenters' Death Company, the Lost. They are simply armed, as I intend to add more exotically equipped figures later to bulk the squad size up to 11 plus a Chaplain. They will be delivered into battle via a Stormraven gunship.

(Acting) Chapter Master Florentine and his command squad - the chaps in gold helmets are the remnants of the Honour Guard, the Marines who should really make up the entirety of Florentine's command group. To bulk up the numbers he has seconded Sergeant Leon and Brother-Veteran Thoros, as well as having an Apothecary from the Chapter Apothecarion. The banner is something I'm quite proud of; it's all free-handed and while not perfect certainly does the job!

Another Lamenter. This is Veteran Brother Damaskan, one of the 14 survivors of the 1st Company. Armed with a hand flamer and a power sword, he's wearing a real mix of armour as well as honour peteruges. I love how he's turned out - he looks really brutal and uncompromising.

 These are a birthday present for my friend CH; a squad of Knights of Justice scouts. He recently came into most of a Space Marine army, so I wrote him a list and rummaged around in my various bits boxes, coming up with a squad of Scouts, a Tactical Demi-Squad to accompany his Captain, and a Devastator Squad.

Here are two of the aforementioned Devastators - they are from the 7th Devastator Squad (see right pauldron), 9th Company (hence the blue helmets). Quite proud of these guys; they're an exercise in simple paintjobs - black undercoat, block colours, black wash, apply transfers, base, done.

Phew! After all that it's time to get back to painting and sorting; my other half S has made the salient point that I really should organise my soldiery into 'Keep', 'Sell' and 'Wha...?' What I do with the stuff that falls into the 'Wha...?' category will, I think, vary. Hopefully I will get my blog updates a bit more regular from now on (HA!, say the voices off)!

Painting Points: 19
2013 Total: 286 (196x 28mm, 2x 54mm, 10x vehicles, 2x spaceships, 3x 28mm cavalry, 2x flags)