More 3D printed Numidians

 I've finally finished off the 3D printed, 3D Breed-designed Numidians I started back in April, and what a jolly nice - but jolly brittle - bunch of fellows they are too.

I've based some up as "Cavalry" at 3 figures to a base, and some as "Light Horse" at 2 to a base 

They are great looking figures, but OMG these particular prints are really brittle.

So far I think I've completely broken 7 of the horses off their bases (ie legs snapped, superglue comes out..) simply in the process of painting and photographing them, and I've lost count of the number of spears that have pinged off, usually into god knows where.

The saving grace is that they do glue back together again very easily, but with this second batch I've deliberately attempted to position all of the figures such that they can be superglued to an adjacent model at some point, in the hope that it makes them a bit more robust.

Part of the problem is no doubt that they are so light, which means it's super easy to knock them off the table, or see them slide off a tray when you are carrying them around. 

I've also used far less magnabase on each base compared to metal figures, as otherwise I feared that I'd break them almost every time I tried to lift them out of the tin.

I suspect there are better, more flexible and robust resins out there that would make these a bit more survivable - and in future this will get even better as materials technology improves as well.  

I also saw that the eBay seller I picked these up from no longer has any items listed for sale, after what looks like a lot of negative feedback for late deliveries in recent months too. 

My guess is that suspect he's found the whole "setting up a 3D printing business" a little harder than expected, and has thrown in the towel - somthing I can imagine will happen with a number of other sellers on eBay and Etsy going forward.  Perhaps this brittle resin lead to a higher volume of returns than expected, and that also contributed to him stopping too - who knows? 

But, despite the missing javelin-ends, and bits nipped out of some of the horses legs, all in all they are still nicer looking figures than any metal 15mm Numidan range I've yet found. 

Whether I am confident enough in them to pack them up and take them to a competition though is something that needs much more careful thought! 

 

Trajan's Column

On a recent trip to Rome I kinda stumbled across Trajan’s Column - rather hard to do I know given it's sort of a big stone column in the middle of Rome, but there is a lot of construction work around there at the moment due to the new Metro line, and to be honest I'd rather forgotten it was there as there is just so much other stuff to see in Rome! 

Anyways, I took the opportunity to take some photos and videos of it to share, as for wargamers and modelers, Trajan’s Column is an near-legendary goldmine of first-hand information. 

The carvings provide rare, direct insight into Roman legionary gear—such as segmentata armor, scutum shields, pila, and helmets with varying crest styles. 

They also depict auxiliary troops in distinct dress and cavalry in motion, giving hints to tactical formations and battlefield logistics. 

Importantly, the Dacians themselves are richly portrayed, often wielding the distinctive falx—a curved, two-handed weapon—and wearing flowing garments and Phrygian-style caps, setting them apart visually and culturally from their Roman foes.

Erected in 113 AD in Rome, the Column is a monumental celebration of Emperor Trajan’s victory in the Dacian Wars. 

The 30-meter-high stone column has over 150 scenes depicting Roman legions in action: constructing camps, crossing rivers, engaging in battle, and interacting with both allies and enemies. These finely detailed reliefs offer one of the most comprehensive, near-contemporary depictions of the Roman military in the early 2nd century AD.

While some artistic license may be present, especially in the repetition of certain motifs, the overall fidelity and variety of military details make the column an essential reference for reconstructing units and skirmishes on the tabletop. 

Whether you're painting an army or designing scenarios based on the Dacian campaigns, a closer look at Trajan’s Column may well be useful - so hopefully these pictures (which you can click on the blog to see full size) and videos will be of interest and use.

I could have taken more, but at some point I had to get back to my actual holiday... so enjoy! 

HMS Victory in 1/700th scale

I'm starting to think that I may need to create a new tag on this blog, something along the lines of "..you know I said I wasn't going to get any more little ships..?".

Well, it's happened again - and this time it's a classic tale of a wargamer foolishly trying to save a few quid, but then finding that this plan was in fact fatally holed below the waterline even before it started being put into practice due to a complete lack of planning, and - of course - a failure to properly read the f@@king manual!

The guilty model is HMS Victory in 1/700th scale, and the rookie mistake was to try and avoid paying the near-£40 ticket price of the Warlord Games resin and metal model from their Black Seas range by picking up a plastic kit of Victory from China on Ali Express for a little over a tenner. 

So far so good, with the model arriving rather promptly, along with a set of laser-eteched metal ratlines also ordered from China too. This made my total outlay a shade under £20, and of course I would have some extra ratlines for the bits box too should I crumble and buy any more ships in future that I really don't need nor want. Of course.

The mistake though was not quite understanding what the small white text on the box front of "w/interior" would actually mean in practice. Because this was a "kit", not a "wargamers piece" or a "tabletop gaming counter with detail".  A proper, honest to goodness, "making it is most of the fun" and "this really should be a challenge" sort of plastic kit assembled with poly glue and all the gubbins. 

The first inkling how tricky this might be was when I opened the instruction sheet. 

   Oh - this is just half of it. There is more. 

Now, I knew this was a kit, and I hoped in a way it would be more detailed than the Warlord resin kits ... but that is a lot of instructions for a 1/700th scale gaming piece ! 

And why were there so many steps in the instructions?  Because this was a model with an interior, which could even be made with a cut-away side to allow an eagle-eyed , magnifying-glass-holding observer to see the interior detail. 

And how much interior detail is there?

To say "quite a lot" would be understating it - because, as you can see from the instructions in this photo, every internal deck is represented, and on each deck EVERY single cannon is also a SEPARATE PIECE which needs to be snipped off the sprue, held in tweezers and glued into a slot on the appropriate deck !!!!

HMS Victory had 104 guns at Trafalgar. That is a lot of swearing, glue-on-fingers moments, and "pinged across the room and lost in the carpet" incidents ....

Eventually, with plenty of long breaks (I think even a small holiday at one point - not to get away from the kit, but even so..) in between gluing sessions I had all of the 3 internal and 1 upper decks completed, with 104 little, micro-tiny guns all glued into place.  

As this was a plastic kit I opted to do the undercoating by brush rather than spray, as I would need to leave the surfaces which would be later joined clear of paint so the poly cement could actually work.

I then had the ridiculously, near-pointless but still (I convinced myself) worthwhile task of painting all 104 guns as well as the other internal elements of the lower and upper decks, very few if any of which would of course ever be seen again after assembling the hull.

I had to cut the model down to be a waterline model, but that was actually pretty easy given how thin and soft the plastic was. 

That also left a smidge of space under the lowest deck for me to fill with some odd bits of metal and some solder wire to give the ship a bit more weight, before I did my usual trick of finishing off the base of the ship with a layeer of magnbase for safer storage and transport.

The hull sides went together reassuringly well, and to my relief it is actually possible to see the gun barrels from the lower decks peeping out a little as well. 

Look! You can even just about see the drybrushed gunmetal highlights on the barrels (but not really any of the internal detail of the lower decks..) 

A bit more gluing and painting saw the masts added, gun ports painted red (because they look meh if left yellow) and the black stripes on the hull filled in. 

The masts are plastic too, so are very, very bendy - which I hoped would not translate into "too brittle for the tabletop", something else I hadn't really thought of in advance when buying this kit.

Next up was the dreaded rigging stage - made somewhat more tricky with this model as it didn't have any pre-drilled holes in the side panels of the decks to take the cotton, so I ended up drilling some out myself.

To be fair this wasn't difficult for 2 of the sets of holes towards the back, as a plastic model kit is rather soft and easily drilled. 

For the front however this was more tricky, as the side panels on the deck aren't modelled deep enough to be drilled through meaning I had to do a bit of a bodge job of drilling part way through the actual deck and side of the ship in order to create an anchor point for the foremost sets of rigging. 

I've highlighted the positions of the drilled holes here, and also what I felt were the most important bits of rigging as they would be key to trying to keep the rather bendy masts more firmly anchored in place. 

As you can see, even with this extra rigging in place - and done before any of the rest, which is different to how Warlord suggest doing it - the masts still flex a little too much, and the end result is that it is almost impossible to get all of the rest of the rigging to be tight, resulting in some rather saggy (and messy) rigging lines in places. 

Luckily I know from experience that saggy rigging tends to get lost in the model once the sails are added - and also that any attempt to try and tighten it up is doomed to failure and usually creates an even bigger mess, with problems cascasing and appearing elsewhere each time you try to tighten one line up, so I decided this was good enough and just pressed on regardless.  

And here is the finished beastie. 

 

With the kit coming without sails (I think maybe the "full detailed"one does have sails?) I made some home-brew copies of the Warlord paper sails which I coooked up by scanning in a set of 1st Rate sails, printing them out onto 2 sheets of normal paper and gluing  them together with thin PVA glue to approximate the thin card thickness of the Warlord originals

The Warlord models all have the lowermost sets of sails furled, meaning they are cast-on details to be painted on their models - this kit however doesn't have that detail, and also the second sets of sails and cross bars seem to be higher up the masts than on the Warlord models too. 

With these two factors, simply leaving the bottom set of sails off wouldn't have worked - the gap between the deck and the first set of actual sails would be visually too big to ignore, and it would just look weird as the lowest set of sails would not be modelled at all.

Some of this however may be that I might have failed to fully insert the masts into the holes in the multiple layers of decks - which has left the masts - and the cross spars - all sitting noticably higher than they really should be.  

I really should have spotted this, but another example of how seeing the light at the end of the tunnel when making a frustratingly detailed kit actually lead to me to fail to RTFM !

Anyway, to fill this over-sized gap I cooked up some extra sails, which I did by stretching the scanned image of the Warlord sails a little wider, and also at the same time squishing it down to make some printable "middle" sails which were wider and shorter than the originals, but therefore would fit reasonably sensibly in place on this model.

This did in turn leave the bottom set of sails rather flapping in the wind, so I added yet more rigging by puncturing the corners of each bottom sail and tying them to the deck sides through the same holes I'd drilled for the mast-holding rigging elements.

Here are a few closeups of the hull 

   

I seem to have broken and lost one of the three knobbly bits on the back of the hull - It's a PITA after all the time spent making the ship, but I am sure no-one will notice this bit of battle damage once it is on table!

The model Victory doesn't have any boats outboard, which the Warlord ones do. This will actually make the ship easier to pick up and move, as this is where you'd usually pick it up (by pinching the back of the ship). 

At the front I did some of the yellow detail with the Vallejo paint pen - from this close you can see it is different to the Contrast Paint yellow of the hull. 

And here is the model Victory sat next to a Warlord resin 1st Rater 

The extra sails, and extra height of the masts (which I am increasingly convinced is down to a f--kup on my part) are the main visual differences, but all in all they are absolutely compatible IMO.

Game-piece wise I do fear for the tops of the masts on the model kit - this is a model designed to be made and then looked at, not played with, and I have already broken one of the tops of the masts off  (and had to re-glue it on) simply when taking these photos and putting the finished ship in the tin with the rest of my fleets. 

We'll see how it goes once I get Victory on table, but I am already pretty certain that anyone out there who has ever whinged about the "bendy" Warlord metal masts on their resin ships would change their tune if they get their hands on one of these kits for sure!

Whether all the extra work was actually worth it to save myself about £20 is very, very debatable - aka "no" - but as a hobby project it's been really useful, if only for giving me loads of stuff to whinge about on my BlueSky account as I laboured through the many, many steps and carefully glued all 104 guns into the model, and then sealed them all away never to be seen again!

I do still wonder however whether I should have used the optional cut-away hull side just to show off all of that effort..?

 Maybe next time !

 

The Persians are Coming!

Last month my mostly-Legio Heroica 15mm Sassanid Persian army fought its way out of the Bisley storage cabinet* for the first time in almost 8 years (!!) to conduct a 5-battle campaign against a number of fairly historical foes at the Roll Call competition in Cranfield.

All of the many highs (and lows) of this sequence of military misadventures have now been painstakingly captured and lovingly crafted into a semi-coherent wordy and verbose narrative for your delight and delectation, and are even now available on Madaxeman.com.

These include three battles against the Sassanids arch-enemies the Byzantines, as well as a Sassanid Civil War and a somewhat time travelling faceoff against the might of the Fatimid Caliphate.

You'll see Elephants, Camels, fierce hill tribesmen and well-drilled Roman-style cavalry whirling across a number of tabletops, all with the added bonus of all of the in-stream historical videos, dreadful puns, partially-relevant animated GIFs, and vague attempts to explain the rules of the game that you may by now have come to love and dread in equal measure. 

There are - of course - also a great many photos in which you can see what the soldiers are saying and thinking on the tabletop, blatantly false and self-congratulatory summaries of the battle from the Great Shah, and all topped off with the usual bitingly acerbic analysis from Hannibal himself.

So, pour yourself a cup of Iranian tea and get ready to dunk into the un-digestive-able narrative that is 5 all new Sassanid Persian battle reports on Madaxeman.com!  

(* That link to eBay is an Affiliate Link. If you buy something after following it I get a small commission from eBay)

3D Printed Numidians

 Another week, another dabble with 3D printed models.

This time it is some 15mm Numidian cavalry from the 3D Breed March to Hell range, which I picked up as I have never really been happy with the mix of Essex, Baueda and Old Glory Numidians that I already own. 

So, having flogged off some of the metals as part of an eBay sale I then spent some of my ill-gotten eBay gains to pick up some of these prints mostly to see what this now well-established and well-known design shop (is that the right wording?) could offer. 

And here are the results:

I did this as a set of 4 to see how they worked initially.

Horses are mostly done in GW Contrasts - Aggaros Dunes, Gore-Grunta Fur, Templar Black and then the grey is Warlords Speeedpaint Holy White.

The rope "bridle" is also a Speedpaint, hardened leather - all done with white base coat.  

The horses are lovely sculpts - the riders come as separate pieces and I was immediately fearful of the spears as they are thin and rather brittle, to the point I was a little nervous about snipping off some of the "flash" even with a sprue cutter. 

 

These chaps have rather luxurious hair - David Ginola must have had Numidan ancestors somewhere down the line! 

They are a well animated bunch and take paint nicely too... however ... 

... whilst taking them outside for some spray matt varnish I dropped them onto a wooden floor from I guess just over 3 feet up... and this was the sad outcome:

 Yes, every single one broke off its base at the ankles, with a couple also suffering further damage to the horses legs - some very tiny bits of which I knew immediately that I would never find. 

One of the riders also lost the upper part of a set of javelins which he was holding in his shield hand too - but that I did spot and managed to reattach.

To be fair they all went together again with some superglue pretty easily, but that does no doubt mean they could also break again pretty easily too. I've therefore put only minimal magnabase on the bottoms of these units, as they don't need to be desparately gripping the bottom of the tin to stay in place as the figures are so lightweight anyway. 

Once I start doing the full set of 24 my plan is to try and base them up such that the horses and riders can be glued together at some hard-to-see point, giving the entire base a bit of extra stability and structural integrity in the process.

So, in summary, these are very nice figures, and a real upgrade on my rather old metals - but the combination of "materials" and "design" for these 3D prints still perhaps isn't quite there as yet to make them robust enough for butterfingered wargamers like me!