28mm BM-13 Katyusha Rocket Battery

A 'battery' of two 3-D Printed BM-13 Katyusha rocket trucks. These are more vehicles for my all-3D-printed defense of Stalingrad army for my friend Scott's campaign. I'll likely sell one of these after the campaign as I really don't need two. Printing and painting two at once took advantage of some economy of scale. Hopefully selling one can help defray the resin cost for this army.

This adds two more 28mm vehicles to this year's painting totals.

28mm Bavarian Napoleonic Artillery

These are five Bavarian artillery batteries based up for Napoleon's Rules of War or Electronic Brigadier. I purchased three of these guns and all of the gunners pre-painted from a seller on Ebay. Since there were many more crew than I needed for three batteries, I printed up two additional French 8lb Gribeuval cannons from my own STL files (available for free on Thingaverse).

These figures are the last of my current batch of Napoleonics re-basing. They include 14 purchased painted figures/guns and two 3-D printed and painted by me guns. Definitely a mixed bag!

This photo, a close up photo of the 3-D printed guns made from my own designed STL files. They're nothing super fancy, but serviceable on the tabletop and I've given the files away free for non-commercial use. I hope you get some use out of them!

Even MORE Napoleonic Re-Basing

Here's the other group of Napoleonics that I promised to post earlier this month. These are another two groups that I picked up on Ebay already painted. I just needed to re-base them to fit my favorite rule sets, Napoleon's Rules of War and Electronic Brigadier. 

These very nicely painted Bavarian jagers will represent a small two-battalion regiment of light infantry.

These Austrian line infantry are quite sharp with their purple facings. That's the primary reason I picked them up. I didn't really NEED another large three-battalion regiment, but the purple facings sold me on grabbing this unit. Also it was a good value for the quality of the paint job.

Further losing pace on my purchased vs. self-painted figures. These represent another 56 figures in the purchased column.

28mm 3-D Printed Aufklärungspanzer 38(t)

 Anyone that knows me knows that I'm a sucker for all variants of the venerable Czech Panzer 38(t). I've been wanting an Aufklärungspanzer 38(t) to add to my collection of other 38(t)-based variants for a long time. I've considered scratch building one as I did my Flakpanzer 38(t) but I never got around to it. Thankfully there's now a great model of it in STL form on Wargaming3D from Night Sky Miniatures. I cannot recommend this model enough. It's dirt cheap and quite accurate. It comes in high-detail and low-detail. This is the high-detail print with open turret. 

Although the closed turret version is likely more durable, I couldn't resist the open turreted option with it's included crew. The turret magnetizes easily to make tabletop use easy. I printed this using some 'tough' resin which I hope will help with durability. 

One more AFV scratched off my bucket list and put onto the annual painting totals.

3D-Printed WWII Soviet 'Army'

My friend Scot has organized a defense of Stalingrad campaign with a bunch of his gaming friends and I was invited to participate. Since I don't yet have any Soviet WWII troops and they make for excellent enemies for both my German and Finnish forces, I chose to be on the Soviet side of the campaign.

I thought this would make for an excellent opportunity to see if I could 3-D print the entire army while also trying out the 'slap chop' painting method to paint them. Painting has been going fast and furious in order to get my 500 point force ready for the first game. There were some hiccups in my understanding of which troops would be acceptable for the first game, so I'm about 1200 points in to field my 500 point force for the game. This dark photo is the army so far sitting in my figure case. Detailed photos below of each unit.

Two nine-man infantry squads of NKVD infantry in their khaki uniforms and sharp blue caps. Each squad with an LMG, an SMG and seven riflemen. 

Below a close-up showing the LMGs, SMGs and a great figure carrying a grenade. 

The weapon teams. An 82mm mortar left and a Maxim MMG team below.

 

Command and specialist teams. Lieutenant and his runner to the left. Below a Commissar with assistant and a sniper and spotter.

Twelve-man 'factory worker militia' squad. Bolt Action allows the Soviets to get a free 12-man inexperienced squad as part of their national characteristics. Quantity has a quality all its own I guess. These are a mix of figures from two different sculptors and I love all of the sculpts and how they work together. Favorites are the guy in the back smoking and the guy in the front with the sawed-off double-barrel shotgun!

Support vehicles: a Gaz truck with quad Maxim guns on an AA mount and a BA-64 light armored scout car with LMG/MMG. 

A squadron / platoon / 'zug' of three T-60 light tanks. Many people know about the T-34 factory in Stalingrad that was making tanks and sending them directly into battle un-painted or in primer. There was also another factory doing the same for T-60 light tanks. These will be part of my 'tank platoon' when we do the urban Stalingrad games.

These and everything above amounts to a total of 45 figure and five vehicles painted in the past 5-6 weeks since planning for the campaign has begun. Not bad starting with liquid and ending up with a sizeable army in that amount of time!

This squad of eight SMG-armed infantry and a converted Flamethrower figure I purchased off of Ebay when I thought I might not make the deadline for the first game. I'll still include them here, but they are not part of the 3D printed figures. I believe these are Warlord plastic figures. 

The 'flamethrower' is an MG ammo box on the back of that figure. I WILL be replacing it with a proper 3D-printed replacement.

More Napoleonic Re-Basing

 This group of Prussian regular line infantry is the most recent addition to my Prussian Napoleonic army for Electronic Brigadier and Napoleon's Rules of War. I purchased them on Ebay along with some other figures that will be the subject of future figure re-basing posts. 

These are plastic figures, probably either Warlord or Perry. I can't figure out which as I'm not much of a plastic figure aficionado. They're painted to a good wargaming standard and based up into two medium-sized and one large battalion. I was excited with this group as it also included a mounted officer and a foot battery.

Not much else to say. This adds 77 figures to my 'purchased 28mm figures' totals for the year. It looks like I'll be upside down again this year on painted vs. purchased figures. Keep an eye out on this blog, as there will be a considerable bit of figures that I did paint myself posted soon.

Two 15mm Sherman Calliope T34 Tanks

These are two 3D-printed 15mm Sherman Calliope tanks. I needed something to track available artillery missions for my O-Group Americans and these seemed the treat for that purpose. 

The files were free from a 1:200 scale armor pack which required I scale the models up, but they still look fantastic at 15mm (1:100). 

Turrets are magnetized. Decals are by Battlefront Miniatures. 

Not much else to say. 15mm vehicles in OD green go pretty fast on the painting table. These took longer to print than they did to paint. I'm loving my 3D printer for filling in such gaps in my collection as needed. Nothing like 'always available' inventory when you need it.

Captured French Hotchkiss H-35 in German Service in Finland

This is a captured French Hotchkiss H-35 tank painted up in German livery. During the continuation war this was the most numerous tank type in German service in Finland. Even during the Lapland war many were still available. Dozens were also buried for use as pantherturm bunkers.

 

This is a 3D print from 1:100 scale files, scaled up to 1:56. There are scant few historical photos of these in use in Finland. Best research I could find suggested that Panzer grey was used in Finland exclusively as whitewash over it was used each of the long winters. Although some H-35s were used in Normandy in three-color dunkelgelb pattern, I could find no evidence that this was used in Finland. To support the all-grey scheme, police duty H-35s used in the east were fielded in all grey. There are numerous photos supporting this.

The STL files come with both French and German-modified turrets in both short and long barrel versions. I've chosen to paint up the German-modified turrets. The French ones may end up being turned into pantherturm bunkers later on.

Weathering on this model was by sponge chipping techniques, dry brushing and liberal coats of Vallejo European dust acrylic wash in multiple coats. Turrets are magnetized for ease of use.

Two 15mm Built-Up-Areas for Napoleonic through WWII Gaming

I made up these two 15mm BUAs primarily for use with the 'O' Group WWII rules. They can as easily be used for any 15mm gaming from Napoleonics through WWII. 

The farmhouse and stable were resin pieces pulled from my 'dead lead' box. I believe I purchased these about 20 years ago. The walls I 3D printed. All pieces were painted and glued to a custom laser-cut base. A trough and wagon were added. I think the trough was from Musket Miniatures and the wagon might be Essex. 

The small house and outhouse may look familiar to regular readers of this blog. This is a reduced scale of the "Small Italian Farmhouse" that I printed and painted in 28mm scale a few posts back. The outhouse was a free STL file and the walls come from the same STL pack that the house comes from. Coincidentally, these are the same walls that I used above in the farm complex.

 

Both pieces are designed to have some open space to accommodate a few stands of 15mm figures. Here's an 'action shot' of the farmhouse being garrisoned by some US infantry.

I'm counting these as two 'terrain/misc' in my annual painting totals.

15mm 3D-Printed Greyhound M-8 Armored Cars

Last Thursday I realized that I needed an M8 Armored car for my American force in an 'O' Group game I was hosting the following night. On my lunch hour I started the 3D printer on these three. An hour at the painting table after work finished them up. Liquid at noon, table ready after dinner. Bob's your uncle!

Three 15mm figures to this year's totals.

 

28mm Carthaginian Veteran Spearmen

These Carthaginian African veteran spearmen are Old Glory figures. I've painted them up based individually for Clash of Spears or Saga Age of Hannibal. I'm running a game of the former this upcoming Friday at our club's monthly game night as a way to drum up some excitement for the rules which I like a lot. Since our group also plays quite a bit of Saga, these are great for that faction in Age of Hannibal as well. 

Nobody makes Carthaginian transfers for Old Glory shields that I could find, so I created some myself using my laser printer and decal paper. The process is fairly simple, but it is laborious. To be completely honest, I'd rather buy transfers than make them. If they are available I typically just buy them. In this case, necessity was the mother of invention.

This group comprises 18 more figures for this year's painting totals. Next up on the painting table are a bunch of built-up areas for 15mm gaming, particularly WWII using "O" Group rules. Come to think of it, I owe the blog a post of the "O" Group game I hosted a couple of weekends ago!

3D Printed 28mm Small Italian Farmhouse

Quick 3D print and paint of this small Italian house. I intend to use it as a small farmhouse. I purchased the STL files for this as part of a larger set and I'm very happy with the purchase. More from this set to come.

One terrain/misc added to the annual painting totals.

 

Three 28mm German SdKfz 251 WWII Halftracks

These three German SdKfz 251 half tracks were 3D printed from free files I was able to find on the Internet. I printed them up on my resin 3D printed and got them painted up in a couple of evenings. The stowage is comprised of additional free STL files I also got on-line (search 'stowage project'). I absolutely didn't need these, but I found the excellent STL files and I'm TRYING to have a personal goal of not 3D printing stuff that I'm not also painting, so here we are.

There are two standard 251 Hannomag troop transports and one 251/9 'Stummel' with the short barreled 75mm gun. Cammo was airbrushed on with the remaining details brush painted and then the whole group was doused in Vallejo's excellent European Dust wash - my new secret weapon. This stuff gives a nice durable 'dirty and dusty' look with very little work.

Three more 28mm vehicles for this year's painting totals. Honestly I'm finding this resin 3D printing to be quite the 'scam'. You can go from liquid to tabletop in a couple evenings in the hobby room.