28mm FDM prints

 A comment in a previous post was talking about print quality of miniatures. I was very surprised about half a year ago when my friend came over to visit me and offered to print up some minis. The support removal was fairly agonizing, but the end result is impressive.  

He is using a cheap bambu printer with a 0.2mm nozzle (vs the more common 0.4) and settings appropriate for the job. Bambu has a reputation for really solid prints with not much (?any) tinkering...at a competitive price point. Unfortunately they also have a bit of a reputation for moving towards a closed ecosystem (think how apple gates all their stay in a walled garden). For lots/most of their customer base it doesn't really matter, but for people who have been in the 3d printing community (which has advanced a lot via open source improvements) for a while it's not a good look.  

For that reason I can't really recommend Bambu, and I went with a different manufacturer. The output is certainly pretty awesome though. 

 

Defend the castle!

 For YEARS (honestly, decades) I've had the aspiration to do a castle fight. I have a campaign I downloaded off the internet of a desperate defense of a fortified town/village near Sylvania but a group of mercenaries (why yes, it does use Mordheim). One day it may see the light of day. 

 

 

 

With my list of 'things wot I need' I stumbled across some cool stl's early in my printer ownership and progressively printed a bunch. It sat unpainted for much time. Then I swapped some painting with local gamer Garret. He usually zenithal highlights and inks with a home mix to get a satisfying stone look that I dig. 

 

 

 

The impetuous to finally finish the stuff  occurred with the plan for enfilade 2025. I knew I wasn't going to make it for a variety of reasons (childcare, car that can't survive freeway speeds, geopolitical tensions, etc). But I would be able to contribute to the success of the game for my gamer friends who go yearly (and come up to Canada each summer for a game). Seth, conveniently, was up in Vancouver for rugby the same weekend I went to Trumpeter Salute at the Bonsor club and I managed to pass off a castle to him to borrow. Trotting it over as a foot passenger on a ferry was the most challenging aspect of the process. 

 

 

York 867 was chosen to run a variant of '6's are bad'. That is.....roughly the name of the rule set. It's been re-skinned a number of times, but it's a great ruleset for people who feel like they roll an abnormal number of low dice. 

 

 

 

 

Frostgrave: The complex temple three way fight.

In October 2025, Bryan hopped the passenger ferry across the Georgia straight and visited for a weekend. With local gamer Garret we played out a 3 way frostgrave game. Considering the 8 months since I played it I don't have a lot of recollection of the event. I *do* remember having the worst luck (I think 50% of my force was taken out, and possible non at all for the others). 

The pillars (printed by me) were magical constructs and would turn into chests when touched. The game was to rush forward, grab what you could and escape (which is the general theme for frostgrave in general TBH). In principle there are 2 chests per team.......but that is so unlikely it's hardly worth noting. 

Small table and tight quarters meant some definite clustering to start. 

Hard to see with white on white, but I'm a big fan of using mist (cotton fluff) to control long ranged fire and wandering monsters. It usually works quite well.... 

But not in this game. One of my henchmen gets a wandering monster charging him as soon as an opposing team activates a pillar/chest. These GD toads are slow but have a really impressive bite. Out in a single roll. 

The pillars are all converted at this point and we are dragging them away. Plus flinging spells at chests and henchmen to complicate and/or steal them from the other sides. Lots of red 'dead' markers can be seen (blood ringed bodies) in my area of the table. There are lots of square ish red x's showing damage. 

The GD toad just keeps on hunting my team. 

 It's probably subjective but I feel like Garrets archers are usually both effective and annoying. 

 

It was a total rout for my side (I'm not sure I even got a single chest), but Bryan and Garret did all right. Fun times despite the rough handling by dice rolls.  

THE HOBBY DRAGON STIRS! (2026 blog update)

With some gentle, yet persistent, prodding about updating my blog I am finally stirring into action. Like a long torpid draconid resting upon it's massive treasure pile (of plastic and lead), SOMETHING has provided enough stimulation to cause the beast to move. 

One of the barriers to blogging has been the workflow for posting picture. I have had to pull them off my phone to my computer, resize them, then post them. Due to changes in my computer setup it's progressively more annoying to access the box and cabling to do so. So....I just don't pull my pictures that often. Then I need to sort them, etc, etc.  

Despite the APPARENT absence of activity, there has been some steady chipping away of the hobby projects. Reviewing my photos I can see I manage to do a bit of painting each week. With some actual gaming happening....a couple of times a year (boo). The biggest prompt to game seems to be visits out of time (to visit me, or to visit others). 

I do have quite a backlog of games to post on, so my series of posts moving forward will be dealing with that deficit. My painting progress pics aren't super compelling, but maybe I'll try and get some of those up as well. I haven't been good about taking decent photos of completed things (the few completed things), so maybe I'll go back to take pics of them. That's definitely a reach goal however. 

Perhaps most notably in this update is my purchase history for 2026. I have bought:

- 28mm: 15 figures (and painted 13 of them)  

- 15mm: 32 infantry, 8 cavalry, 4 ballistas/12crew (artillery painted, all the rest is in early progress). 

I think, ambitiously, I may paint everything that I bought this year. Assuming I don't fall off the wagon and buy a bunch of stuff in the next half year.