"2mm artillery preview" Topic

I was hoping to come back from vacation to two boxes with many of my final codes waiting for me. Instead, I came back to a typical USPS screw up, and only one box with one code. But, it's an important code, the final version of the artillery:

I'm pretty happy with how it printed up. For about $10.00 USD you get 60 guns in five strips of 12. These 12 guns are on a 100m frontage, but you can snip them up anyway you want to adjust them. You could do individual guns, groups of two, three, four, etc. Four guns will be perfect for the 1/3 scale game that I'm working on. If you go that route then each piece will provide you with 15-20 batteries.

Here's the base as a work in progress:

The plastic in these final versions is much thicker, especially around the base. It is also somewhat flexible. You don't have to worry about the individual men snapping off either- these are actually pretty tough- much tougher than some metal figures' bayonets.

Not sure if this is the easiest way to paint these guys yet; I'm still in the experimental phase of painting them. Not too hard though. Just washes, dots and dashes. You'll notice some blur (I guess you could call it) between the strips; that's just a thin membrane that bled over during printing, it's not thick, and can be ignored while shipping the strips apart. I use scissors and haven't damaged any figures yet. The more careful might want to use a razor, but you don't have to.

Here's an overhead shot. I would make the guns larger, but they're actually at 1:1 scale themselves right now, so I don't want to mess with it…

Overall, I'm pleased with how these came out, and this will be the final production model that I begin with. I may try to do some bicorne and tricorne artillery, because I think that the printers can handle it. We'll see how it come out. If it doesn't work then this might end up being a one-size-fits all code. As regards the train, some people on here have mentioned that artillery units rarely used 6 horses per gun. I'm honestly no expert, so, I'm going to do versions of the limbers and caissons with two, four, and six horses. (Also, I know the limbered arty have too many drivers; that was a dumb error I fixed in the final version!).

My store is up to 25 codes and counting, with many more coming up.

link

Feel free to check out the renders. I'll be putting up some nice painted pictures as I get the chance. I'm guessing that the post office will get both big packages to me shortly, and I'll be able to finalize everything by the 7th. If everything looks good I'll announce a soft release on the 8th or 9th, and then get to work on a proper website and follow-on ranges shortly afterwards.

Any recommendations for 1:1 battles you'd be interested in seeing in the website?

Here's a somewhat better picture…

I just ordered some cavalry! Looking forward to seeing them in person; I'll post some pictures when I get a squadron ready to review.

Best……Mark

Cool! I think you'll find that they look even better in person. Let me know any comments/criticism you might have. This is a living range, which I can adjust and add to at anytime (although major changes/requests would need some lead time).

Here's a picture of an experimental unit of Prussian uhlans:

These won't be available for sale, since the lances are too thin for Shapeways. But, they show just how well these little lances could come out. To make this code work I had to build a roof that was supported by the sprue. It worked great. I'll be re-doing these with much thicker lances, maybe this weekend, and get them out there. The ironic thing is that these lances are actually pretty tough, despite being only .25mm thick. But, Shapeways won't have it, so some logs are in the works…

I confess that I haven't painted any plastics since my Airfix days; do you suggest priming before painting? I suppose they don't need to be washed before we work on them, as there is no mold-release agent to worry about?

I like the look of your Lancers; very nice. I may have to do the Lancers of the Guard when you get them to Shapeway.

I'm a tad driven, so I intend to mix the horse colors (the Greys would be interesting) and cut out a few individual figures to populate the supernumerary rank.

Such fun….thanks…….Mark

Hi Mark,

You shouldn't need to wash them, I haven't done so and they work fine. I'll find my old post where I go into detail later, but you can either spray prime these like normal metal figs or you can take advantage of some weird physical properties of the plastic and color them them with a wash of diluted paint, then use inks and magic wash to bring out detail (or not, I've done it both ways.). Mixing the horse colors should look great. As regards supernumeraries, thats a great idea. I may create "super bases" later on that include them; I haven't yet because tgeclarger area will up the price. You should be able to cut these up, but now that you mention it, I see I should just do a sprue of individual cavalry (and infantry) that people can use for this exact purpose.

Be mindful that, if you use a wash, it will take longer for the paint to dry, because the paint will leech into the plastic, coloring it as it goes. Its an interesting material with unique qualities, as you'll see. Its tough tho, and thats the most important thing.

Mark:
I haven't painted any of these figures so I can't comment on them but my 1/6000 modern naval from Shapeways needed a cleaning of soap and hot water. I had trouble with the paint if I didn't clean them.

Dale

Ah, thanks, Dale! Much appreciated.

btw, how do you like the printed naval pieces? I've been eyeing the 1/6000 ships of the line, but I haven't taken the plunge yet.

best…..Mark

link

As threatened, the new lancers. These are French; I need to do shako/uhland and Polish lancers too. These *should* survive transportation a-ok. I've got the first regiment in production as I type this. If these work I may knock out a quick side project for knights and such. Anyone want to try Agincourt or Hastings at 1:1? Very similar models. Also, this could work for doing pikes as well.

Also, a slew of my codes just got approved for general sale, including almost all of the buildings, the bridges, and a lot more. Oddly enough, the old-style infantry with smaller bayonets were also approved, but subject to recall if any single engineer decides he doesn't want to deal with them. This is why I sought out special approval for the final version of the infantry.

I got bugged!

Anyway, new artillery codes available at the Shapeways store: link

8 and 16 gun batteries.

And, an in-progress picture of several different countries artillery for the Napoleonic era. I like the washed out bases, but they don't photograph that great… but I think the basic idea is there. Even though these are 2mm, you can clearly tell what country each artillery belongs too.

I'm going to try to get some bicorne artillery going- we shall see how that works out…