To the Limit

 I've added AMS Lite to my 3D printer. AMS Lite is an attachment (not literally) for the A1 Mini and it allows you to print in up to four colours. I also ordered a spool of black, dark blue, light blue, and a sort of fleshy colour. Also in my order was a 0.2mm nozzle. Naturally, I wanted to see how tiny I could go. Pretty tiny, as it turned out, using the smallest layer height (0.6mm).

I decided I would also try my hand at designing some figures. I worked in Tinkercad creating 8mm American Civil War figures, which I knew I would scale down by 25% in Bambu Studio. I sort of knew beforehand that the figures would be too skinny, but I also wanted to see if I can get "realistic" and "proportional". Here's a more close up photo with a 15mm Zulu mounted on a penny.

I'm pretty impressed by how these turned out. Yes, there's some fuzz between the kepis, the flag didn't survive removal from the plate, and it is extremely wasteful of filament, but it was a worthwhile experiment.

I'm already working on 2.0. I'll make it much sturdier by having the figures slightly overlap, thicken up the flag a bit, and make the base thicker. 

Hot Lead 2025

 I have been looking forward to Hot Lead for some time. It's a chance to see some people that I used to play with. As it turned out, David was the only one but it was really good to see him.

I got into two games. The first was run by David and was a Japanese civil war game. Each player had two clans of varying strengths and composition. It was fun with both our flanks winning but our centre collapsed, resulting in a narrow loss.

The next game was an English civil war game featuring the Parlimentarians trying to hold off the Royalist attack. The objective of the Royalist was to exit three cavalry units off the far edge by turn 15. Due to plucky resistance, the Royalists didn't come close to these victory conditions.

1st Project With a 3D Printer

 So I got a 3D printer for Christmas. It's a Bambu Lab A1 Mini and it has been great. 

I've printed the obligatory Benchy (that's what it was doing above) and some accessories (printer poop basket, toolbox, and scraper). It's now time to put it to its true purpose: printing stuff for my miniatures.

I've had 300 15mm Zulus for a while and I've stagnated in painting them. I also recently (relatively) aquired The Men Who Would Be Kings rules. These rules use individual figures for casualties, so the obvious solution is to create movement trays for them, because why move 12-16 inividual figures when you can move just a couple of trays?

I've started with an artillery tray because it only have 4 figures on it. I have quite a few figure bases saved (courtesy of the Canadian government) and so I designed the stands to fit them. I should have enough to base all of my Zulus and British, but then I will have to look for alternatives for other periods.

 In TMWWBK, every unit has a leader, so I wanted to have a specific spot for him. I experimented with pausing printing and swapping from the grey filament to a white filament, and it worked reasonably well. The text a little smudgy, but it should look OK after I apply some flock and other terrain.

The leader also has a rating. But because the leader rating can vary from unit to unit, I didn't want to make it a permanent feature of the stand. Instead, I will be creating some labels and an area on the stand to put them. To keep the labels in place, I'm using mini magnets.

These pictures are showing my prototypes. I think I've got them pretty much dialed in to how I want them, so now I'll start cranking them out. I'll be  swapping out the grey filament for brown, and if I'm lucky I may not even need to prime the trays.

Any way, here's a more close up of the trays with some Zulus to show what the trays look like with figures in them. You can see the white letters aren't perfect, but they are definitely good enough.

Neglected Blog

 Wow, it's been basically a whole year since I last posted.

Basically 2024 was mostly a write-off as far as gaming. I did go to KEGSCon, which was very enjoyable, and there's a group of local gamers, who I joined for the occasional game. I did a little painting of some 15mm Zulus.

But really I've spent the year either not being able to game or haven't had the time or energy. A rambuctious puppy and two family medical incidents will really sap away gaming time.

But December and January have seen a renewed intest in miniatures. That's been helped by the acquisition of a 3D printer.

I'll post more about that next time.