A Long Hiatus and Back to Epic

Sorry I haven't been posting for a while, but for the last year I ended up playing games more than painting. I guess that's pretty good, but I also didn't have a chance to write about new things I had painted.

Recently, I started taking an interest in doing some Epic scale miniatures again, actually before GW's announcement of their new Legions Imperialis release. Mainly I wanted to do Epic scale miniatures using the new Xenos Rampant rules, which look very streamlined and easy to pick up.

First up are a company of Leman Russ battle tanks. These are actually not GW miniatures, but metal proxies made by a Czech company. They are quite a bit closer to the actual 40K tanks than the earlier GW Epic miniatures.

They are led by a Vanquisher tank, which has a much longer gun than the others.

I also painted a company of Chimera IFVs. Due to Epic Armageddon's rules, Imperial Guard mech infantry companies only have 7 vehicles, so here we are. I have to try to figure out a way to work this into Xenos Rampant unit organization.

Here's a close-up of a Chimera, showing quite a bit of detail. Again, the same company that made the Russ proxies.

As in 40k, the tank and IFV are similar in size.

Just as a reminder, here's how big these are compared to a 28mm miniature.

On my paint desk, I have a mess of infantry to go with the Chimeras. These are metal miniatures from Vanguard Miniatures, and are very small. I find that they have a lot of detail, but are very hard to paint due to their small size and slimness. These are Death Korps proxies made by Vanguard, but I'm painting them as Steel Legion to go with the mechanized theme.

Since I'm quite into 3D printing now, I kitbashed some slightly bigger Death Korps style miniatures. Maybe these will be easier to paint and handle. I also designed some bases with ruins to help players handle them, instead of picking up the miniatures directly.

More Stargrave Creatures

I've been painting some more creatures for Stargrave for an upcoming campaign, and with this batch, along with creatures from other people, we should have enough to cover the basic game.

These are the only miniatures in this batch that are not 3D printed. They are actually board game miniatures from the game "Cthulhu: Death May Die". I think they are ghouls from that game, but I've painted them up as gaunches for Stargrave.

The back of one of the miniatures. They seem to have fur covering their backs, and there are a lot of wrinkles and other detail on them.

Here is a size comparison between a Mangalore from the last post and one of these creatures. They are basically man height.

One of the more common types of enemies in Stargrave is the bile worm, which is a big worm creature that can spit acid. In this case, I printed out some free worm creatures with teeth from Thingiverse, and used them as bile worms. Their maws open at the front and present an interesting element of horror.

These are also approximately man-sized, although of course a lot of their bodies are buried underground.

Another type of bug-like enemy is the magmite, which is an insectoid that bleeds lava. Again, I used some free miniatures from Thingiverse (some sort of Metroid creature I think), but painted them with a rock-like scheme, along with lava leaking out of their carapace.

These are compact but stubby creatures with a bulbous belly, which I painted as a sort of lava-repository.

One of the more bizarre creatures from Stargrave is the shengrylla, which is a three-eyed monkey with two tails. However, some kind soul on Thingiverse designed and released a model for free based on that description, so once again I was able to print some for our game.

A couple of them are printed using an FDM printer, so they are quite poor quality, but I can always keep them at the back of the crowd where they aren't visible close-up. The two at the front are resin-printed.

I also printed out another horat, from the same design as I did before. This is also an FDM print.

However, unlike the last horat, this one does show some very visible print lines. I guess I didn't do enough preparation with varnish to fill them in.

I'll keep on painting some more player characters for myself, to fill out multiple crews, but for now I think I'm done most of my creatures.

Back to More Stargrave Miniatures

Sorry that I haven't posted for a while, but between real life and painting up an army for Kings of War, I haven't had that much time for posting recent miniatures. I will be putting up pictures of my Kings of War army soon though.

I had the chance to do a few more Stargrave miniatures. These are all 3D printed from designs by various artists on Patreon.

This is a police droid from the excellent designer Papsikels. I modified it a bit by adding a knife hand to fit Stargrave's idea of a "runner" or "recruit".

The miniature was quite big by default, so I reduced it a bit (a good benefit of 3D printing) to fit my other Cyberpunk/Sci-fi miniatures.

These are Mangalores from the movie Fifth Element, sculpted by another great artist, BigMrTong. They will serve as generic enemy troopers in my games. These were actually painted very quickly with Army Painter Speedpaints, which I'm finding to be quite useful right now.

The original design was actually kind of small, and again I increased their size to fit my other miniatures.

I also painted another miniature from EC3D, again using mostly Army Painter Speedpaints. This is supposed to be an alien arms dealer, but I guess it can be used for all kinds of NPCs.

I'll continue to paint a number of Stargrave miniatures for an upcoming campaign, and will be posting more soon.

More Work On The Solar Panel

Continuing on from my work in the last post, I learned more about working in Blender. It turns out that for simple geometric shapes that I was working with, Blender is actually fairly easy to deal with. I was able to complete the base for my solar panel fairly quickly.

I managed to model the base for the solar panel with a minimum of pain. It's a simple structure with four feet and a "swivel" neck to mate with the underside of the panels from last post.

Here is what it looks like when printed.

Both the tri panel and the quad panel have a rectangular recess on the back, and they both fit the head of the base even without gluing. However, I will be fixing them with superglue after I do my typical post-processing for 3D printed objects, before painting them.

Next to a 28mm miniature, it's a fair-sized structure.

Remember, this is all available on Thingiverse, free for download and use by everyone.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4976446

In The Grim Darkness Of The Future, There Is... Green Energy?

I've been doing some miniature preparation and painting in the last bit, but I got distracted by terrain making. After seeing a number of hex style solar panels online, I decided to make some myself via 3D printing. A terrain piece like a solar array can be an interesting addition to games like Stargrave.

Since I'm most familiar with the 3D program Sketchup, I did most of my work for the panels there.

It was fairly quick to make, since most of the shapes are quite regular, and I made a tri panel and a quad panel. Each of the hex faces has a set of smaller hex panel lines inside.

Using my FDM printer, both of these printed out fairly well, although I had some adhesion issues causing some of the corners to curl up slightly. I might have to use a bigger brim to prevent that.

Close up, the surface is a bit rough, since I don't think I made the tops thick enough. However, with a coat of paint, I don't think this matters.

These are only the solar panels themselves, and I still need a base to hold them up. For all that I like Sketchup, it's a bit of a toy in terms of functionality, so I finally transitioned to using Blender for the base. This is a much more powerful tool, but it has quite a steep learning curve. I'm just starting to get the hang of it.

I'm currently just trying to make a fairly standard base with four feet, maybe eventually with some detail bits like control panels. This part of the model is still a work in progress, and I will update as I finish it.

What I have so far, the hex panels, are up on Thingiverse. Anyone is welcome to download and print them for use from the link here:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4976446

More Creatures and Ruffians

I've painted up some more 3D printed miniatures for Stargrave. This time, they are some ruffians, the lowest level of pirates you can encounter in the game, and some tanglers, randomly generated creatures that can cause problems for the crew. Both sets of miniatures are printed on the Elegoo Mars Pro, i.e. they are resin 3D prints.

For ruffians, I thought quite a bit about what miniatures to use. They are supposed to be armed with only pistols and knives, and are the lowest level of pirates you can encounter. I ended up deciding on some space goblins available for free from Thingiverse. They are sculpted by an artist named VidovicArts and are full of character. Following some inspiration online, I decided to give them blue skin, as some sort of aliens, rather than go for the more GW-inspired green.

While each pose is unique, they are variations on a couple of different poses, usually with goggles, grenades, or knives added.

I also 3D printed the bases, collected from various sets of miniatures I have.

Here is a gobbo compared to my standard cyberpunk size comparison character. They'll serve as vicious little minions.

I also printed these grells, again free from Thingiverse. They fit the description of tanglers from Stargrave, which are just small creatures with a lot of tentacles. I just reduced them in size to be smaller than humans, as per description in the bestiary.

Here is one compared to my standard human. I like the simplicity of the design.

I'll be painting up some more pirates right away, mainly the more heavily equipped types.

A Few More Stargrave Crew

I've completed a few more miniatures for my Stargrave crew, this time a combination of resin-printed and FDM-printed minis again.

This is another resin miniature from Papsikels' line-up. I digitally swapped the head on an existing miniature to make this into another "Witcher" style figure.

Again, I like the amount of detail that's available from a resin print.

The thinness of the design makes it impossible to print on an FDM printer.

This is one of my FDM prints with a head from a plastic kit (Wargames Factory Orcs) physically transplanted onto it. FDM prints have a tough time with facial detail, so I tend to just use plastic heads. This mini can be some sort of lightly armed alien.

This is the Cyberforge "wild child" figure I've shown here as an unpainted FDM print, finally painted now. I was surprised by the amount of detail kept by the printer, but it's still nothing compared to a resin mini.

All three miniatures shown together as a size comparison. With these done, I have more than enough miniatures to build a first Stargrave crew. I'll be doing some more creatures and pirates next.