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So I recently found out how cute 15mm tanks are, and I wanted to try them out with Flames of War. 1. Is there any mod for Flames of War to play it on a smaller scale - say a few tanks and 1-2 platoons of infantry? My impression of the army creation rules is that it appears to favour larger formations, and even if I play at lower points the small formations will tend to run away? Am I mistaken? I quite like the intermediate simplicity of the FOW rules - not as heavily abstracted as Blitzkrieg Commander and yet does not require looking up tables in stuff like Chain of Command. 2. I want to construct 2 forces as an excuse to paint tanks, and maybe use them as a self-contained set to play against each other if I find a willing Germans Panzer IV Company - 2x Panzer IV HQ - 3x Panzer IV - 3x Panzer IV - 4x StuG III - 2x 8.8cm AA - 3x Tiger III Americans Veteran Sherman Company - 2x M4A1 HQ - 5x M4A1 76mm - 5x M4A1 - 5x M4A1 - 2x M4A1 105mm I'll have a bunch of Panzergrenadiers and Paratroopers from Hit the Beach as well. Would these be balanced against each other?
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Nov 10, 2022 00:03
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Endman posted:Honestly just play at 50 points rather than 100 and only take minimum sized units. The other idea I'm considering is Bolt Action with the 15mm figures instead. What's the general opinion on of as a ruleset?
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Nov 10, 2022 00:23
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Genghis Cohen posted:I am a relatively new player of FoW, but my perspective is you could, as stated above, just play 50 pt games. The rules for unit and formation last stands affect both players equally and stop games turning into a slogging match of mopping up remnants. Alternatively you could just play games and ignore the formation last stand rules. From my understanding the regular Sherman guns can get through the sides of a Tiger and force a bail from the front if lucky. The Sherman 76s can penetrate the front armour. I figure the Panzer IVs and Stugs are about on par with the Shermans and there's twice as many of them on the field. Only reason I don't fancy doing much infantry is I dread the thought of painting them all. Maybe a platoon a side but that's about the most I can stomach.
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Nov 10, 2022 00:37
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I was wondering why people kept talking about King Tigers and I realised I'd typo-ed Tiger Is into Tiger IIIs (wouldn't that be a Leopard?) I'm going to stick to Tiger Is, even without playing a single game I figured the Tiger IIs would be about as useful ingame as they were in real life. I'm getting Hit the Beach, just wish the Germans were a tank force with some infantry like the US rather than an infantry force with tank support.
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Nov 10, 2022 21:10
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Is there a good source for 15mm decals in the UK? There's a decent selection for the Germans but Allied stars are non-existent and the average Sherman is supposed to have like 6 of them? I am so tempted to use my 40k decals on them.
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Nov 13, 2022 21:40
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Grey Hunter posted:You could print a load of casualties and sprinkle them down with each failed offensive. have an honour roll of the dead to read off to your opponent every time the kill one of your guys. Doesn't the ASOIAF game have a "gore piles" mechanic that leaves a mess after every combat to impose penalties all round?
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Nov 17, 2022 11:19
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JcDent posted:That's Sludge, the totally-not-a-turnip28-ripoff game. It's the only original mechanic it has. I just checked, ASOIAF also has the corpse pile mechanic. Is Turnip28 even a game or one of these weird art projects like Blanchitsu.
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Nov 17, 2022 13:51
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JcDent posted:Ok, ASOIAF does have corpse piles in some missions. I get the gist but where are the rules? I went looking once but all I found were people doing pretty models and little else. It's like some of the Inq28 and Blanchitsu, lots of pretty models but very little explanation of how they are being used apart from being visual aids in a story.
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Nov 17, 2022 19:52
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Lumbermouth posted:Nah, the rules are a free post on it: https://www.patreon.com/posts/play-turnip28-50212485 Nice, good to see there's a game behind it! Maybe I'll make a Jacob-Rees Bogg the Toff miniature one day.
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Nov 17, 2022 21:50
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spectralent posted:Potentially stretching the definition of "historical", but what good 25/28mm moderns suppliers are there that'd come recommended from the board? I should be clear: this is for a zombies game, so hollywood-acceptable is fine (that is, would look okay for modern soldiers in a movie, even if technically these are 2004 Fallujah marines, not 2019 Afghanistan marines or whatever), it's mostly the kind of patchwork availability in the UK I'm concerned about! Hasslefree have some specops style guys in their ranges. There's also White Dragon Miniatures who appear to have IDF, Brits, Russians and the Taliban.
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Nov 21, 2022 20:10
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Thanks - I'd found these but then read that they aren't actually regular waterslides but more akin to temporary tattoos (apply sheet to surface, wet and rub back to transfer) which sounds terribly fiddly. I ended up getting some I-94 decals from Pendraken.
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Dec 3, 2022 14:35
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grobbendonk posted:I'm not sure where you read that but I used some of these on my British armour last week, they are regular waterslide decals Everywhere I looked when I searched for reviews on their decals! I wasn't as fussed chasing them as they're more expensive than what I wanted. I don't need that many.
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Dec 4, 2022 14:22
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Does anyone know who makes cold war/modern aircraft minis? Looking for stuff like F35, F22s, SU-30s. I've tried searching around but can't seem to find anything, not even the 3d printers seem to do em.
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Apr 8, 2023 13:55
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spectralent posted:Scale? For 1/144 yeah, you have TY (not 1/100 because aircraft that aren't helicopters are smaller scale in Battlefront games for whatever reason), and for 6mm/1:285 you've got Heroics and Ros or... I think GHQ or CinC also do them? Sorry I forgot to mention I was looking for 6mm. GHQ stuff looks perfect. Heroics & Ros I think I saw ages ago but the lack of photos and reviews is pretty sus. Arquinsiel posted:Heroics & Ros planes are very not great. I got a few of them a while back and they're pretty flat with few panel lines and kind of wonky proportions what with being metal. As this suggests.
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Apr 9, 2023 08:01
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Fighter jet update - I found some oddzial osmy 3mms which aren't too expensive or big and would be fun to paint up for a lark.
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Apr 9, 2023 14:44
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Springfield Fatts posted:Are you looking for the STLs or a seller of finished models? Because I pretty easily found these on thingiverese I've found some already- Oddzial Osmy. Now just need to find some rules so I can fly planes at each other while making pew pew noises.
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Apr 9, 2023 20:02
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I got sucked into the world of 3mm modern planes and ended up painting a few squadrons. Is there a good ruleset for doing mass air battles? I don't mind it being bit abstract but was hoping to do some CMANO in tabletop form. Current idea is to use a modded and simplified VBAM Mercenary Air Squadron rules.
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Apr 28, 2023 14:45
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Pierzak posted:I still prefer the old-rear end website parts to the mobile interface parts. Ran into a website with a new feature I instantly loathed - it would not show anything apart from "you are offline" if it couldn't maintain a connection. Anything that was opened didn't cache and disappeared the moment the connection dropped. A livestreamed shopping site.
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May 2, 2023 18:25
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Arquinsiel posted:Black Scorpion makes sone beautiful cowboy figures. I should really look into getting this game at sone point. I thought about buying some but then the image of fixing pinholes in lacey frills gave me shakes.
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May 9, 2023 20:09
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Cessna posted:I remember that guy, geez - was he just on there 24/7? Yeah what was up with that weirdo? Any truth that he was just an admin alt to drum up activity on the forums?
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May 18, 2023 19:15
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StashAugustine posted:Anyone got tips for quickly painting Mongolian skin tones? Vallejo sunny skintone or Citadel kislev flesh. Wash with sepia and highlight up with base + dark sand/buff/ushabti bone. Add some faint pink/blue to taste. If it's too yellow mix in a touch of green.
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Jun 16, 2023 23:51
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IncredibleIgloo posted:Even with low cost molds and whatnot an STL only distribution models is significantly cheaper. Not having to manage inventory or shipping is a huge cost savings. Wargames Atlantic has a mixed business model, but their tribe on MMF does pretty well. STLs are better than models as well because you can resize them if needed or desired, and it is easier for manufacturers to make different scale lines. 3D printers have become so much more capable over the last 5 years, it is hard to imagine what the next 5 years will hold, but we know that manufacturers are continually iterating to make the barrier to entry lower and make the machines more accessible. If you have the necessary infrastructure (an industrial unit) a spincasting mould is very cheap and you can literally cast to order with zero waste. Any extras just go back into the pot. In the time it takes for you to run a print a spincaster could have run a mould a few dozen times and produced an order of magnitude more product. It does rely a lot on having the space and expertise but it would be the same of a 3d printing shop. Plus you're not going to poison yourself with resin fumes. You can 3d print the masters and mass produce with spincasting which is the best of both worlds. Brigade have the capacity to do everything (print, resin cast and spincast) and they only 3d print low demand complex items. Anything that can be spincast or resin casted is still done in metal/resin. lilljonas posted:Making the molds, especially if you don’t sculpt yourself and you’re paying a sculptor, is the expensive part. Once you have that it is not too difficult to just set your prices higher than what you pay for your machinery, rent, raw materials, electricity etc and basically be at least afloat perpetually. Especially if you have an old range with customers who wants to keep buying to maintain a coherent army look - that’s why minifigs still exists. From my own experience running a garage miniature business it really boils down to two things 1. Are you able to keep interest up with releases? It's pretty obvious why GW does what it does with a constant stream of releases as every release gets you publicity and new eyes on your product. I was still getting the odd sale every month or two years after the last product release but when I was releasing regularly each release would be accompanied by significant sales across the board. (Significant for a miniscule business) 2. Do you have a big enough range to survive on those 1 sale every other month? I would imagine if I had a few thousand product codes and sold a small number regularly, thec business could keep ticking along - £20 profit every 2 months with 30 products. Potentially £1000-2000 if I had 1000 products instead. Not cocaine and hookers money, but enough to live on of you didn't have a mortgage. I suspect a lot of the really old and big producers (GZG and Brigade among them) survive due to this and also absorbing the lines from other companies that go out of business now that the creative costs have been paid. The metal moulds are pretty indestructible.
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Jul 29, 2023 21:36
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spectralent posted:Yeah, no, entirely fair, but that's not the business garage historicals shops (or sci fi/fantasy equivalents) are in. People selling STLs are in a different, and for the most part entirely new, industry. Despite the truly vast numbers of STLs out there the actual numbers of resulting physical prints is a big unknown. I suspect most of these are being made for the RPG market rather than wargaming or certain niches where they do especially well - 6mm comes to mind. I guess to circle around to the original statement - STL farms are certainly low cost but they do seem to have a problem translating into actual physical product. It feels like the Star Citizen business model - make lots of pretty pictures (STLs) most of which will never see the light of day. But hey, they are dirt cheap at least. There has to be a saturation point somewhere as there's probably only so many variations of space rat men or Napoleonic Hussar STLs out there that people will pony up the cash for, and that's not even accounting for the inevitable ease of pirating. At least with a recast someone has to spend a significant amount of effort making the mould (which limits what they will want to recast) but for STLs hey just get em and undercut the producers. Edit ^^^ Why would you use printed resin as a production material though. It is fantastically fragile and the tough engineering stuff is so expensive you might as well use metal. Garage shops that can do everything in-house will keep everything in-house as the margins are really razor thin. Brigade and GZG can undercut everyone else in the market because they do their own production. Z the IVth fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Jul 29, 2023 |
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Jul 29, 2023 22:32
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Springfield Fatts posted:Maybe it's the circles I look in but pirating STLs isn't really a thing I've noticed. Perhaps there's a big GW network for it but no one is asking for a codeword to get at those sweet, sweet Russian dragoon files or anything. It's not random end users pirating STLs, it's a big print farm in China/Ukraine/Russia getting a hold of it and outright selling the finished product. Probably less of a problem with the latter 2 these days but they might stop blowing themselves up sometime soon. But you're right, no one is ever going to pirate Russian dragoons from Peter Pig because the returns are just nonviable. However if some recast house got a hold of a Russian dragoon stl it would cost them nothing but a few lines of text in a database to start selling it.
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Jul 29, 2023 23:02
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lilljonas posted:For me it’s living in an apartment. Even before the kid, having a printer simply wasn’t feasible, now it’s absolutely out of the question. There’s a rather big facebook group here in Sweden just for matching people offering printing services to people looking for someone to print for them. Lots of people can’t have a printer at home even if they’d want to. It's this really. I'm fortunate enough to live in a house and no matter how I slice it I can't fit a 3D printer safely into the living space. I don't even want to imagine how it's like in an apartment. People championing STL distribution make the assumption that any end user can simply print what they want. In reality most people don't have 3D printers and will rely on someone else to execute the print for them, which is not really that different from buying a finished product from a shop. And the market doesn't bear out 3D printing as the optimal manufacturing process for miniatures. It's the best given certain subjects but traditional methods will beat it if you don't play to it's advantages. Springfield Fatts posted:I guess this is something I've never considered, there is this odd middleground that develops in model spaces where people will post pictures of a miniature and it's either "STL source?" or some random old guy asking if someone could print it for them. I always wonder why not just get a $100 printer yourself and go ham. Guess I shouldn't judge, I mean just recently paid a guy to print some bases for me because I don't have an FDM printer and it would be a waste of resin on my end. I've seen artists selling their stls of Marvel characters for $20 and seen those very same designs available for sale in resin for less from China.
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Jul 29, 2023 23:45
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I don't have to wear gloves, respirator or scrub my workspace of toxic residue when I
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Jul 30, 2023 14:03
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Sydney Bottocks posted:I don't have to scrub my workspace either, I have a silicone mat laid down to catch any stray resin drips, and usually those only happen when I'm moving the build plate to the wash and cure station (which is on the same work table). A few spritzes of rubbing alcohol and a couple paper towels is all I need to clean up a few drips. The other stuff, yes, but once the resin is cured in UV light, it's perfectly safe to work with (except for sanding, but only because it's like any other resin figure when sanded). Yeah my issue is with the stray resin drips - I've had a few episodes of pretty nasty dermatitis from resin contact (admittedly this is 2 part polyurethane with is nastier) but it is very easy to accidentally smear the stuff and it doesn't really dry off and become inert so everything it touches including the paper towels is contaminated. I guess with UV resin it will cook off if you expose everything to UV but then again it's faff you don't have to put up with when you're dealing with plastic and metal. Again if you have a a dedicated "dirty" area to deal with this it isn't a problem but if you have to share surfaces it's another story. I've also seen enough acrylate sensitisation in my day job to know it will happen. One day its not just gonna be those women with gel nails, it's gonna be the sweaty nerd with a printer in his office.
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Jul 30, 2023 16:00
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Sydney Bottocks posted:There's still faff you have to deal with when it comes to plastic and metal minis, too, it's just a different type of faff. These are all eminently reasonable points to make and I agree fully. However, the average miniature person isn't going to be exposed to any of it - the most vanilla experience is painting with GW paints which are completely nontoxic so the most dangerous thing would be slipping and cutting yourself with a hobby knife. Any resin printing will involve handling hazardous material, it's not optional so it really isn't something that everyone should get into unless they are aware going in. The marketing surrounding the printers and resin doesn't make this explicitly clear. IncredibleIgloo posted:It seems odd to compare acrylates which are in direct contact with someone's body for weeks at a time to a process in which people wear protective gear. Stereolithographic printing has been used for 40 years now at this point, with multiple large scale adaptations and uses that have been scrutinized by OSHA and industrial hygiene engineers. Realistically people probably endanger their health more frequently with their airbrushes. I think you have a really weird dislike for 3D printing and I couldn't figure out why until you said you had your own garage business, and now it all makes sense. Sorry dude, the times are changing and I can make better stuff in my garage. Well you're a disingenuous little wanker aren't you? I never said I was against 3D printing, merely that it's far from the rosy be-all and end-all that you especially keen to promote. I have plenty of printed stuff To address a few of your points specifically - sensitisation to resins occurs with exposure to the uncured form, the cured form can't penetrate the skin - I would argue printing is a bigger exposure hazard than nails because you have an open vat sat around. - OHSA and industry safety standards only apply in regulated settings. If you advocate printers for everyone then you will expect corners to be cut and safety procedures to not be followed or understood. How many people even read the drat manual? More so if you make the devices plug and play - as long as it works who cares? I know of someone who ran six printers in his bedroom. Strange that he subsequently developed a persistent breathing difficulties. - I got out of the garage business years ago and dont have a stick in that race anymore. Day job meant increasingly limited hobby time which I didn't want to spend endlessly sculpting just to maintain a business. But I still know the processes and costs within the industry. I've seen more than enough newfangled projects and miniature lines crash and burn to know the limits of the market. Which is why I know asking hobbyists to shell out £300 for a printer, dedicated printing room and handle everything safely is a tall ask. There will be plenty who will get into 3d printing but it's not something to expect (and make business plans for) every hobbyist to get involved in. People 15 years ago were saying the same about home resin casting. To stop derailing further have some Nazis 
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Jul 30, 2023 22:26
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Virtual Russian posted:I think it took about a decade at least. I have lots of 6mm - 10mm prints with paint on them, so I'm taking the gamble that it will be fine, but the larger stuff I'm still mostly painting castings. I dunno about longevity but 3d prints are definitely more fragile in my experience from both a materials and design perspective. From a design point of view because the artists work digitally there is very little accounting of how the finished physical product will turn out - something physical sculptors will be very aware of is how you need to make a model sturdy enough to survive mastering. I've had resin prints made that had weapons which were sub-millimetres thick because they looked good on the renders but no one bothered to check what they would be like when printed. A lot of "multi-scale" models are literally just resized rather than going through an actual process of adjusting the work so it looks OK in a different scale. The recent Legions Imperialis designer interview mentions this in some detail and I'm sure you know anyway. One reason I like Papsikels and RNEstudios designs is they actually give some though to this and the final product is pretty good. Lots of designers have stuff which looks great rendered but comes our utterly poo poo when printed. From a materials perspective most of the common resins seem to be very brittle and combined with generally poor design choices the prints have to be handled with kid gloves. Shockingly I once dropped an Atlas print (Battletech) and it's legged snapped clean off. Which was a shock since that was a solid chunk of resin. ROK minis in the UK use engineering resin which is bendy, but their stuff is very expensive as a result.
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Jul 31, 2023 00:09
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JcDent posted:I think we touched upon this when we were doing the interview with the creator of Pulp Alley: traditional sculptors going 3D have better design sensibilities rather than just putting all of the fiddly detail you can on the model. spectralent posted:One thing I've always noticed with Papsikels is that because the models are made to survive actual use and are thus good models, they can look unusually stubby in the preview renders. It's always something you'd never notice in practise, though. Yeah I've noticed you almost have to aim for a stubby look in the renders if you want the final product to be useable rather than just a display piece. As the model gets bigger this is predictably less of an issue but 28-35mm do require that exaggerated look in renders. Getting hooked by svelte renders is what netted me a sword blade so thin it was translucent.  IncredibleIgloo posted:Nah, he is unusually aggressive in multiple threads continuously. This isn't a one time thing. Ah yes not wholeheartedly accepting 3D printing as the be all and end all solution for any toy soldier problem is being "unusually aggressive".
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Jul 31, 2023 08:21
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Southern Heel posted:Isn't that the same design choice you have with 6mm figures from places like Bacchus? i.e. overemphasis in some places for the sake of being readable at scale and/or robust enough for handling? Traditional sculptors learn about making sufficiently robust product pretty quickly, usually after the moldmaker complains. If you've transitioned to digital sculpting from that background then it's a lesson you will carry over. Sculptors coming from a purely digital background won't have that knowledge and "ok to print" isn't quite the same as "feasible to be painted/used". At the speed these sculptors release items I doubt a huge amount of testing goes into making sure the final product is functional. I almost never see any of these sculptor patreons advertise their actual printed models, only STLs so I wonder how many of the models are actually printed much less stress tested for viability. Regarding the cute battleships maybe snap off the masts and replace them with brass rod or paperclips? 3d print resin is probably the single worst material for doing those masts despite the detail you get. A better idea would be to print the crows nests and fit those onto a brass rod or paperclip mast.
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Jul 31, 2023 10:42
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Southern Heel posted:Scale modelling kit selection is a bloody minefield with so many rebadges under different brands - the Revell Cutty Sark is over 60 years old at this point, and will happily sit on a shelf next to brand new kits: https://www.scalemates.com/kits/revell-05422-cutty-sark--975156 I remember that Deathwing 'Land Raider' because the guy who made it had an interview in my first ever copy of White Dwarf. One of his other projects was cramming the contents of a Tamiya Bradley kit into a Chimera.
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Aug 1, 2023 13:24
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So this is probably the best thread to ask. I'm looking for hoplites in multiple scales - thinking of assembling a bunch to represent some dudes from the Paradise Lost CYOA. Everyone's wearing Hoplite style armour but the catch is the humans come in different sizes - from average 5-6' dudes up to the 11' tall protagonist Enkidel. The last time I checked around there were fairly small 25-28mm Warlord Hoplites for the small guys and maybe the 35mm Crocodile Games Greeks for bigger guys. Only problem is these are all rank and flank style so the poses are super static. I don't have a source for the really big guys as the 54mm figures are quite static and not really wargamey. Any other manufacturers or good STLs for me to try? I think Artisan Guild might have a set of 5 but I need more variety. For reference this is my attempt at Enkidel converted from a Mythic Battles Apollo 
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Aug 5, 2023 19:39
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Yesterday at Salute I saw a guy who had made a lovely Vietnam table and I really liked the South East Asian style colonial scenery. I managed to find some of them searching online but there are some shop houses which I can't seem to source. They're the type which would have been all over the Straits settlements. Anyone have any good sources for these, especially in 6mm? There was a MDF kit maker from Australia who did some shop houses in exactly that style but they've gone out of business recently. Pic for example  tomdidiot posted:Sorry, should have clarified - I'm in the UK. Spider Magnetics on eBay.
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Apr 14, 2024 14:27
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tomdidiot posted:They're sunk into a recess and I can't get under the magnet to snap hem off. I have had luck with a 2mm micro-chisel and slowly cutting a narrow trench into the material in the side of the magnet and eventually getting underneath and levering it out. You'll have to rebuild the gap afterwards so this may or may not be practical. I've re-aligned magnets from Titans I rescued from eBay in this way. However those do have well defined sockets with flat (and hidden) edges so a little damage will not be visible.
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Apr 28, 2024 16:54
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