Kings of War Kingdoms of Men Army

This weekend, I went to a Kings of War tournament called Refugees of the Olde Worlde in Rexburg, Idaho. It was a great time, but I realized that the army I used, which I had painted over several years, has never appeared on this blog.

I originally built this army years ago as a Burgundian Ordonnance Army for DBA, which is why most of the miniatures are on 60mm bases. Some new units, especially the fantasy types, and the Kings of War sized sabot bases, were added recently. I ended up running it for the "Kingdoms of Men" faction in Kings of War. I'm very satisfied with the way the miniatures turned out, even though the army is not competitive in actual game play, being one of the rather overlooked factions.

Household knights with ducal banner. All miniatures are from the excellent Perry Mounted Men-at-arms plastic kit, along with the paper banner. These are mounted on sabot bases as knight regiments in Kings of War.

The first unit of Burgundian Ordonnance pikes. Again, all are Perry plastics, with some conversions, from their European Infantry plastic kit. These are used as a pike regiment in Kings of War.

The second unit of pikes, from the same source with no conversions. Some of the men, like the other units of infantry, are single-based, to conform to the size of Kings of War bases. They have to be 100mm wide, and so can't take two 60mm bases.

To have a somewhat competitive list, I gathered some random Swiss halberdiers and Burgundians with sword and buckler into a "militia mob" regiment for Kings of War. This ruleset very much needs "cheap chaff" units as a part of gameplay.. Again, from the same Perry kit as above.

A large unit of knights on foot. These are mostly from the Perry Foot Knights box set, with a few armoured command figures from the other plastic infantry sets. This is used as a foot guard horde unit in Kings of War.

A large unit of longbowmen, with all figures from the Perry War of the Roses Infantry set. In Kings of War, they are a horde of archers. Unfortunately, there are no special rules for longbowmen or any other type of elite archers for humans in the game, so their performance is rather lacklustre.

A couple of Burgundian cannons. The crews are converted Perry plastic infantry with metal Foundry cannons. In the game, I actually run them as proxies for ballistas, due to those being cheaper and more competitive.

The human army by itself is very uncompetitive game-wise, and I had to add some fantasy-based punch (as well as flair) to it. I made some generals on winged beasts (dragonlings or small dragons in this case), with 3D-printed bodies and wings, and Perry knights riding them.

Another useful unit is a hero on pegasus, which is much cheaper in game points and more flexible (expendable!) than the bigger flying generals. This is a standard Perry knight with 3D-printed wings.

To add even more fantasy theme are a pair of wizards riding pegasus, as spell-casting is an important part of the game. These are more complex conversions, with Perry Light Cavalry bodies, Frostgrave wizard bits, and 3D-printed wings.

There is an interesting unit in the Kingdoms of Men list called a Monarch, which is a large command unit that provides a lot of useful buffs. I made a version of this unit with the Duke riding an armoured bear, along with his banner-bearer and trumpeter. The bear is 3D-printed, with the other figures from  various Perry sets. The figures are all removable as I can also use the armoured bear for another fantasy unit, the beast cavalry.

I have enough miniatures built for a unit of Swiss pikes too, although they don't fit in my current army list. I'm building more to have Burgundians and Swiss as two opposed sides in other games, such as Never Mind the Billhooks.

This is the only non-Perry infantry in this army, a 3D-printed Swiss horn blower from a file sold by Wargames Illustrated magazine. I used him as an additional hero who is a special character for this tournament.

The entire army together on a gaming mat, quite impressive looking if I do say so myself. Unfortunately I didn't manage to take too many pictures of the tournament itself, but it was definitely an unforgettable experience, with a lot of other well-painted armies for me to play against.

Some Painted 3D Printed Fantasy

I've painted up some of my bigger 3D printed miniatures, just to see how badly the infamous FDM print lines will show up. The results have been a lot better than I expected, especially when I did some surface preparation before painting.

On the left is one of my 3D printed earth elementals that I showcased in a previous post. On the right is a D&D pre-primed miniature I had painted some time ago. For this particular earth elemental, I used Future floor wax on the surface to "fill" the print lines, then used white gesso to prime. After that, it was painting as usual. I think it turned out very well, and the print lines are not visible to any table-top level scrutiny.

I've painted up all four of my 3D printed earth elementals, including the one from above. These are all free files from Thingiverse, and are ultimately the same design posed in different ways. This is one of the strengths of 3D printing, where you can design and alter models to customize them.

For the other three earth elementals, I used a technique described by a user on the Miniatures Page, where you use varnish to fill in the print lines before priming. I'm not sure I see that much difference in print lines compared to the Future method, but they did require fewer coats.

The backs of these miniatures are also quite free of print lines, after the pre-paint treatment.

I'll be using these earth elementals as a another horde in Kings of War, probably still for my dwarf army. They are definitely serviceable compared to my other earth elemental miniatures.

I also printed and painted a generic fantasy minotaur, also free from Thingiverse. The design is pretty no-frills, but good enough after the varnish surface treatment and a quick paintjob.

Here it is compared to a Warhammer Fantasy figure. He's a pretty big guy, and I'll probably use him in smaller scale fantasy games like Frostgrave.

Now that I'm more confident about the quality of these miniatures, I'll be getting onto some more complicated models and the smaller cyberpunk characters I displayed before.

Even More 3D Printing

Sorry that I haven't been posting more on my blog, but I've been distracted by my new 3D printer. Earlier this year, there was a Kickstarter from the famous 3D printer manufacturer Creality for their new FDM (i.e. print by extruding plastic filament, rather than by UV-hardening resin) printer, the CR-6SE. Not having an FDM printer, which is suited for larger models and terrain, I bought into the Kickstarter and received my printer a couple of months ago. This is a good supplement to my current resin printer, which can't do any larger models and is rather messy and toxic. An FDM printer is much easier to use, and no cleaning is required.

Creality took some flak for this Kickstarter, since there were quality control problems. However, I think I was lucky, and I haven't had any issues yet.

Here's the printer in all its glory. It has a typical design for an FDM printer, with a print head moving on the X, Y, and Z axes.

I primarily got the machine to print terrain, for example this cobblestone street tile above for fantasy games. However, I did try to see how far I could push the resolution.

I started by comparing the same items being printed from both the CR-6SE and my Sparkmaker, the resin printer. As you can see above, the building tokens for Dropfleet commander provide a good comparison for the resolution and detail for each printer, with the white filament output on the left being from the FDM printer and the clear resin output on the right for the resin printer. I went in not expecting too much from the FDM printer, but it turned out quite good. Of course, the resolution is nowhere near the resin printer, but it's still good enough that I would use the prints as gaming tokens. They are also of course much sturdier than the resin prints.

For a sort of combination application, I also designed some movement trays for Kings of War. The one above is a 120 mm X 80 mm base for large infantry, taking in models with round 40 mm bases. I also printed some earth elementals from Thingiverse to fit in the tray, and they look decent.

Pushing things a bit further with larger models, I printed this cacodemon from the Doom video games, again from Thingiverse. Aside from the support not having dealt well with the thin arms, the print turned out pretty amazing. I think with some post-processing (i.e. sanding, etc.) this can work as a regular game miniature. There's more than enough detail to make it a success for tabletop use.

For my next Kings of War army, which is going to be either Kingdoms of Men or League of Rhordia, I came up with some combination ideas for miniatures, like the 3D printed riding bear above (again from Thingiverse) with a Perry historical knight miniature. Even for miniatures, I think the CR-6SE opens up quite a few possibilities.

With all this experimentation, I ran out of the original spool of white filament from Creality, and I bought some orange coloured filament (eSun PLA+) from Amazon. The new filament looks even better to my eyes for smaller miniatures, like this lizardman warrior from Fat Dragon Games' excellent range of 3D printable miniatures. It might also just be the colour making things look more defined. In general though, I'll leave smaller miniatures to resin for better detail. You can see the stringing in the photo above, which is just one of many issues when printing smaller items with a lot of detail.

In addition to miniatures, I also do more "useful" prints. For example, I've always needed a way to fix my joystick to my office chair to provide stability. Thanks again to Thingiverse, I found a set of support mounts for joysticks. These fix my joystick using plastic "thumb screws", which allow it to get put on and taken off my chair very easily, with good stability when playing games.

All in all, I think this printer was a great purchase and will provide a lot of fun and useful moments.

Back to Dwarves

After my Ogre army was finished, I went back to doing some additional fantasy miniatures that can be used for multiple games. I also wanted to fill out my Dwarf army with newer, different units.

This undead Ogre is from Reaper miniatures, one of their new Bones Black line. It doesn't really fit into any of my Kings of War armies, but I think it's a very nice miniature, and can be used for various skirmish games like Frostgrave or Rangers of Shadow Deep.

Back to my Dwarf Kings of War army, I thought I needed some more tough units, so I painted a few more earth elementals. There are enough now for another horde.

For some long-range firepower, I converted a couple of sharpshooters, and along with some existing rifles, made two sharpshooter units.

Both of the sharpshooters above are made from a standard EM4 Dwarf and a ridiculously long Games Workshop musket. They do look very impressive as super long range guns though.

Also, I built another organ gun, with a couple of left-over Dwarves, some 40k bits, and a 1/72 scale cannon carriage. This way I can run 3 organ guns if needed in my Dwarf army.

And finally, I converted a standard bearer, just so there is a cheaper alternative to the Dwarf lord I already have.

I have some more ideas about new items for the Dwarf army, and I will be posting them here when I finish. Thanks for visiting.

Completed Ogre Army

For the final few units of my Kings of War Ogre army, I performed some extra conversions, as well as taking some extra care painting the unique characters.

This is a Reaper Bones Ogre Chieftain miniature. I did a bit of conversion with the club to make it into an ax, but otherwise this is the base miniature. It has excellent detail for a Bones miniature and is quite animated. The Chieftain's shield is also very "heavy metal", and gives a sinister vibe. I use this miniature as Grokagamok, a named Ogre warlord character, in Kings of War.

This is also a Reaper Bones miniature, an Ettin, or two-headed Ogre. I use it as an Ogre warlock in my army. I performed a bit of conversion with the left-hand club, adding some skulls to make it into a shamanic staff.

The next character is an army standard bearer. I did a conversion with its weapon, and replaced it with a standard from Games Workshop skeletons.

I also painted an extra horde of standard warriors. Currently, my army list doesn't need this extra unit, but I can use it for a bit more option.

With a few simple conversions, I made this horde of heavy crossbows. They are just some plastic bows and sprues added to standard warriors. Still, I think they are a decent representation of arm-mounted heavy crossbows.

The following is a full group-shot of the entire army so far. This is easily enough for a standard 2250 pt tournament army, with some options to swap around. I can't wait when the current pandemic situation ends, and we can start having games and tournaments again.

I think I will be moving on to another army now, probably back to finishing some extra units for my dwarves.