Here’s to a productive ’25! Happy New Year All.

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After dragging my wife around many pound shops and lots searches destined to confuse Amazon’s algorithm, I found the part I needed. So here I present my first of no doubt many, Binary Bob, the Beadbot.

Made in authentic Bill style, he’s wooden beads at the core, armature wire, then plastic styrene and EVA foam. The backpack is made from constituent parts of a barbecue lighter, and the rivets are all nail art rhinestones. Lots of glue (so much glue), then simple paint job topped off with my first ever oil wash.

This was such good fun to build. The step of going from “this looks crap!” to discovering there might be something there was somehow amplified with this one. Kitbashing is a lot easier to see the finished product. When you have some wire and a pile of beads, all in bright pastel colours you really have to work to see what it could be… a beadbot!

Bob is a LoadBot. Hulking robots built purely for lifting strength, LoadBots serve in the inhospitable northern volcanic wastes. At numerous ports they load and offload goods between the hover skiffs and the waiting starliners. Their programming is limited and their moods tend to monotone. 

Many decades in the harsh climate have weathered not only Bob's outer casing, but also his personality. Bob knows a joke* (learned from a deckhand who should have known better), which he now repeats ad nauseam to his own amusement.

I’ve already started by second one, this time a Junkbot. And I have lots of ideas, finding this genuinely inspiring. It’s why I chose to be a patreon backer of Bill’s!

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So when they launched the Mantic Vault, their 3D subscription service similar to Patreon, I had to jump in. I got the early bird discount too, so it’s cheaper than my One Page Rules patreon. It’ll take time to properly evaluate the value proposition of course, but so far it seems pretty good bang for the buck. A lot of Armada ships have already been released in the first three month’s packs, along with some full kits (halfling balloons!!) and upgrades for existing kits.

I think this is very exciting, it needed a big company like Mantic to take the plunge and try to augment their range with 3D files, we’ll see where it leads. Whatever happens they’re making GW suddenly look very old fashioned.

Here’s what I’ve printed and painted so far, the start of my dwarf fleet. Then I’m going to do an Empire of Dust one, and a Basilean one, then my gaming group can try our first battle and see if it sinks or swims.

Oh and like all good subscription services, the Mantic Vault has an ever growing welcome pack which has an interesting collection including two upgrades for the goblin Giant.

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The original RT rules even talked about how the gretchin pilots are so used to being bullied by orks that when they get their hands on a little power they tend to go crazy. First time they get into hand to hand range with an enemy they MUST charge in and let off some steam. Fun, characterful, not a WAAC in site. Love it.

So when I was rummaging around the web, as you do, and I found a rather fantastic looking 3D print version of the now long oop dreadnought I had to get myself a copy. Produced by Fanath Miniatures, it has all the similar components as the original, with clean sharp lines and a couple of fun extras.

Even just seeing the 3D render above makes me grin. Oh and it’s about the same price as a Starbuck’s coffee. Nice.

I printed one out and decided to make the smaller version that appeared on the old Rogue Trader era advert. Painted up in Bad Moon colours of course and here’s the result.

I’m so happy with it. The details are so sharp, miles away from the old lead model. And of course the exuberant pilot is a new twist.

So of course the wonder of 3D printing is you don’t just have to print one. I decided to do one for each of the ork clans. I’ve already started the snakebite and evil sunz ones, full photos to follow. But for direct comparison, the 3D print vs the old lead.

Now I’m as nostalgic as the next middle aged bloke, but for me this is everything great about new technology. The old charm and fun, but far superior quality. I’ve never been one for getting into bidding wars with other middle aged blokes over a small piece of metal. I think my opinion on this is probably why my post was removed from the Oldhammer facebook group!

Oh and I should add, I am most definitely not a fan of the generic ‘space mareen’ 3D models that get churned out by every other hack on Patreon. IP theft is a shady business. But when it comes to something that’s out of print for 20 odd years and the only route is to pay about £50 on ebay (none of which goes to the IP owner), then my pov gets more relaxed. Let your own conscience be your guide.

Rogue Trader Ork Dreadnoughts, gotta love the little egg shaped bastards!

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As always, the parts were printed on my Elegoo Mars 2 (still loving this little machine), in thankfully the last of my grey Elegoo resin. Holy crap that stuff stinks. Thankfully I got another bottle of Beige/Skin colour and it’s back to sweet smelling printing for me. Lesson learned.

Paint job was pretty straight forward. Needed a reasonably steady hand to get the lines, but after many touch ups I got something I’m happy with. I then did some edge highlighting to pick out the panels a bit more. The windscreen was a random technique I saw on FB, someone had done a female Mad Max character with chromed glasses. I think it works ok, bit more interesting than just black anyway.

I also got myself some Dirty Down Rust for painting all this series, seemed fitting. Going to take some getting used to, but the girder on the back I think works particularly well. Finally a liberal coating of sandy weathering powder and tis done.

Really happy with the completed Mad Max Interceptor, next up is a post apocalyptic VW Campervan/Bus. Already printed and assembled, just needs a spot of gap filling then it’s off to the paint table.

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First I printed out a few of the Fat Dragon Games models I’d previously printed on my Ender 3. The difference was staggering.

Next I late pledged to an EC3D kickstarter and got a load of sci-fi models to print. I also found a few free star wars models I want to use in Legion (if I ever get to play).

Then at the end of July I decided to finally join a patreon. I want for One Page Rules, they’d sponsored a few content creator videos around that time and having seen what people were printing I decided I wanted in. Since then I’ve printed out a decent sized Mummified Undead army, and with more great models coming in October’s release I think it’ll keep growing.

To date I’ve printed 115 miniatures using a single bottle of resin costing about forty quid. The patreon is less than a tenner a month, the Kickstarter was a bit more, about 30 dollars I think. But value for money with a 3D resin printer is insane.

I should also say if you’re contemplating your first printer and thinking of going for FDM because resin is complicated, or you have an FDM printer and are worried about moving to resin, don’t be. Resin printing for me has been a factor of 10 more straight forward than FDM. I was constantly tweaking my Ender 3 trying to get decent enough settings for clean prints. In a resin printer there’s really only one mechanical aspect you need to focus on, and that’s levelling the build plate. Something I did every print on my Ender 3, and have done a total of 4 times on my Mars 2.

Clean up requires a process, but mine is pretty straightforward. Sensible safety precautions like gloves and a respirator as obviously a must, but same applies to a lot of what we do in this hobby.

Overall 3D resin printing is such a phenomenal tool, and my Mars 2 is easily my best hobby purchase of my 30+ years of doing this. It’s even encouraged me to paint more!

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I did a bit of googling, like always at the start of the project (even a little one), and stumbled across someone saying they had made a simple dice tray from an Ikea frame (post not sponsored by Ikea, honest). As it happened I had a brand new ribba frame under the cabinet, so I dug it out. A lot of rummaging in the sheet materials box came to naught. However we live in this weird age of Amazon same day delivery, I purchased a pack of self adhesive EVA foam, which just happened to be the exact same width as the ribba frame back board.

This idea was formed at 10am. By 8pm the glass was in the recycling bin (I’ve learned the hard way un-toughened glass is not my friend), the spare pile of adhesive eva is waiting for the next project, and my brand new dice try is ready for my next game of Eldrich Horror, Firefly Adventures, or whatever else tickles my fancy.

I could get used to 1 day projects.

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The area with the pen pots has never been practical. I also have a bad habit of keeping old broken things. I found no less than three broken Xacto type knives in there. Which wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t also find three fully functional ones.

HobbyZone do a fantastic modular set. All laser cut MDF, you just buy the units you want and they clip together with magnets. They have a designer tool on their site, but it’s mediocre I’m afraid. Gives you some idea of how it’ll look, but no use if you have a small area like mine. But I knew I wanted

1. Somewhere for my brushes / tools,
2. Somewhere for the paints I’m currently using (my Vallejo full case lives on the floor, but inevitably paints migrate to the desk).
3. Drawers for storage

I also really wanted a corner unit, but I suspect Covid-19 has hit their supply. All the corner units were out of stock on the three suppliers in the UK as well as the HobbyZone site itself. I figured I’d get the stuff I could now and if I want more later…

You can go insane with the HobbyZone stuff, I’ve seen setups where people must have spent thousands. My four units there cost me about £70 with shipping, so it’s not cheap. But it had really helped sort out my desk area. I think I’ll end up moving the two bits boxes to the right somewhere else and expand my HobbyZone organisers at some point. For now though, I have space and I can crack on with actually hobbying!

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The first building had a tab and slot system, shown below, that means every single wall was a separate piece. This took forever to chop out, so in the end I replaced them with duct tape. Because you know, if you can’t fix it with duct tape..

The base and roof are separate pieces, each with a square of black 5mm foam board attached. So long as everything is cut nice and snug the walls open out, and everything slots into place.

The texture of the buildings was super simple monochome art done with my unipin fine liners. As you can see above, I just did a hint at the brickwork rather than trying to fill everything in.

After that it was just a case of coming up with a few designs. There’s the large apartment block, the general store, a small house with an offset roof, and a large house with a hip roof.

In action, no doubt with me losing yet another game of Malifaux. But really happy with the black and white town for what it is; cheap (practically free in fact), easy to make, supremely portable and storable, and gave us what we needed.

Take away from this project: function scenery doesn’t have to take months to make!

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I had a rough idea in mind, I wanted a round circle with some sort of Lovecraftian symbol on the floor. I also want the minis to take part of that circle with them when taken off to play.

After a bit of searching on Amazon for a plint I came across this trivet, which is perfect. Has a great industrial vibe to it, I won’t even need to paint the metal. The initial plan then was to use milliput on the surface to form the details.

For basing the minis I went to my go to cheap flat basing material, 2 pence pieces. Hard to find washers or anything similar for tuppence. Bit of measuring told me I needed 26mm holes for the coins. So I bought a forstener bit that worked just fine in my bench drill (the benefits of overlapping hobbies).

Now I turned my attention to a symbol. There are certainly a few of those in the mythos, I didn’t realise quite how many! I was going to go for something like the Necronomicon Symbol, but the game is so dark and full of inevitable doom I thought something a bit more upbeat might be nice. Then I stumbled across a stylised drawing of an Elder Sign I liked. A bit of doodling and I had this:

This shows the positioning of the bases and the rough shape of the elder sign. I was thinking in ink about the detailing around the edges, but I’m not sure how, I don’t want to over-busy the design.

When I started laying it out I realised my skills with milliput are woefully under-developed for this design. So I thought, carve it out of foamed pvc. This does mean the minis need pinning to the base to give them something to stick to. Fun fact, the above was my failed first attempt. The holes for the bases didn’t line up with the wooden plinth. If I was starting over I’d glue the foamed pvc to the wood THEN drill one set of holes.

I really need a metal circle cutter. My plastic one shown above has done me proud for going on twenty years, but there’s far too much flex in the design making accuracy a best guess.

And here’s where we are. The pvc is glued to both the wood and the coins. I’ve carved the elder sign into the pvc. All that’s left is to give it a little texture. I’m now thinking stone work pressed on with a rock, and cracks carved in with a scribing tool.

The minis are all converted as needed and the primer is drying. Eldritch horror display stand is well under way!

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