Post-battle report

We had another great couple of games of One Page Rules - Grimdark Future a couple of weeks ago. Following that I've made a few improvements ready for the next encounter.

Each time we've played, the table setup has looked better. I've had more variety of scenery prepared and much of it is painted. I'm particularly pleased with the tyrannosaur skeleton. Modelled from a complete structured cut and assembled to look part buried and useful as cover. 

I've added to my modular buildings. For the last game I had just finished the alien fort.

The idea is that the base colours are the same, so that all the components are interchangeable. I found I was a little short of some of the bits to finish off the edges so since then I've printed and painted some more bits.

I've honed the painting technique to be as quick as possible. I've skipped the primer because the Rust-oleum Switch Limestone spray gets good coverage and adhesion on the PETG without the need for a primer.

I've watered down the off-black emulsion wash a lot more. This gives the effect I want without the need to further dry brush over the top. I remembered to mask off the floor, so that could be finished just by a quick dry brush of Vallejo sombre grey. This quicker process means that the basic building blocks can be ready to use very quickly.

There's always more scenery to paint. Like the buildings, I found a quick method for these rocks. Prime in grey then a sepia wash over the top changes the grey to a more khaki colour. This is then dry brushed in a very light grey to get the finished result.

Lastly for now, a scoreboard. That's something I wanted for our previous games, but it was always too far down the list of jobs.

I had tried to buy something but everything that included appropriate counters was a size more suitable for a stadium rather than an intimate tabletop game where we had squeezed it into our living room!

There were a few 3D printable designs but none that I could find were quite what I wanted. As I find fairly frequently, I had to design and print my own. It only took two iterations to get exactly what I was after.

The rings have an octagonal cross section and clip into matching holes. The team names and even the turn name can be swapped out.

Unusual for a 3D print, I've printed it solid. This gives it a nice weight.

I'm sure I will continue to add and paint more scenery and I'm starting to assemble another army. I'm looking forward to the next match.

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Painted scenery

What a fun day today. We played two games of One Page Rules - Grimdark Future, each with 2000 point armies. Robots vs Humans. This was the first time that I had a complete set of my own fully painted miniatures.

I had been rushing over the last couple of weekends to get some scenery painted and some terrain pieces finished so we have less unfinished scatter on the battle mat.

I've designed and printed some modular gothic building pieces and put together some simple foliage, based on plastic plants. 

The bulk of the plant pieces are based on faux moss. This proved difficult to work with. The structure was far too loose, I would not buy it again for terrain modelling. It took a lot of watered down PVA to give it any strength which I did not think would dry in time, but it did, just.

I'm pleased with the buildings. The inspiration comes from Notre Dame in Paris and St Vitus Cathedral in the castle in Prague. I've used OpenLOCK clips to join parts together to have different building shapes from the same component pieces.

I found it difficult to get a consistent paint effect over all the pieces, but the end result still looks good when setup on the table.

OpenLOCK

OpenLOCK clips are open-source released by Printable Scenery. As far as I can tell, the original intended use was for 3D floor plans but they also work for scenic buildings. For tabletop wargames it is inconvenient to have a step up to the ground floor level, so I have adapted the layout of clips to suit the scenery that I wanted. Mainly, this is so that there are clips to hold upper storeys together and no need for a ground floor layer. I have stuck, near enough, to imperial inch sizes and spacing.

My layouts are based on a 3" (76.2mm) square wall section. It also works down to 1" wide.

I have used 1" (25.4mm) spacing between centres horizontally but to avoid overlap of the sockets I had to use 19mm (3/4") spacing vertically. I deliberately wanted them to print without supports and without the break-off mini-pillars used in the original example files.

As the sockets are 4.2mm wide, the minimum wall thickness that I could have used is about 7mm, however, for a bit of extra flexibility with surface textures, I've gone with 8mm thick walls.

So far, I've been able to design everything to print without supports on my FDM printer using PETG filament.

Scale Anomalies

I struggle with accepting the scale creep of miniatures. Years ago a popular size for tabletop miniatures was called 25mm and now they have crept up to 32mm. Generally referred to as 28mm. 

The following is how I rationalise it so that I can work with consistent rules.

1:56 Characters: The notional size is 28mm to a normal human's eye height, which is a top of the head height of about 32mm for say a  5'10" (178cm) tall person. To the nearest common model scale, that works out about 1:56.

1:35 Buildings and vehicles: These look too small at 1:56 scale, probably because of the exaggerated features of many of the models and that they sit on, typically, 4mm thick bases. I find a scale of 1:40 works better for most scenery. The most appropriate common model scale is 1:35. This puts the 3" tall ceiling height at about 2.7m (9') and garden walls and low hedges that look right are about 30mm to 35mm (1.25") tall.

Knowing this, helps me design scenery to suit.

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Painting an army

Painting an army is not the same as painting an individual figure. I'm sure it could be done the same way, but for me, there needed to be some compromise to be able to get enough done in an acceptable time scale.

I have limited the number of colours and only painted the details that add significantly to the overall appearance. They need to look good at a distance, it's a bonus if I can also get them looking good close up.

What I have learnt is that, perhaps, the thing that makes the most difference for me is the colour scheme. If I can use a wash, it is faster. Because of that, the tan uniforms were much quicker than the blue cloaks.

The models also have a significant effect on the efficiency to paint. This is fairly obvious, that the ornate miniatures take a lot longer than the simpler jump suits and by far the fastest are chunky models like space marines. Vehicles are relatively quick but the amount of paint coverage needed, even with an airbrushed base coat, means that they take a while.

Another significant factor for me, is painting faces. I'm not particularly adept at it and frequently going over the same tiny detail adds to the time and the thickness of paint, spoils the result. I'll be on the lookout for more models with full face helmets.

There are other factors that can get in the way! Cats, for example :-)

All that said, I'm pleased with the results.

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Prague city break

We spent a couple of days in Prague, Czechia.

What a wonderful place. 

St Vitus Cathedral in the castle.

The astronomical clock.

The Dancing House, designed by Vlado Milunić and Frank O. Gehry.

Lots of very interesting buildings.

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