28mm National Guard of Milan 1848 - Piedmont Army

These are the first of two Chocolate Box Wars units I'll be making of the National Guard of Milan. When I saw this uniform in the Osprey book with it's fantastically ridiculous hat, I knew I had to have them as part of my Piedmont Chocolate Box Wars army. Unfortunately for me, because they saw little action until their incorporation into the Central Italian League, nobody makes a figure for this unit. Time went by and I mostly had given up. Then I decided to learn more about AI 3D model generation. After playing around with some online 2D to 3D AI tools I got some nearly usable figures. Good enough to encourage me to learn the requisite tools to complete the project. Those tools being the 3D modeling software Blender, Meshmixer and Windows 3D Builder, as well as some Autodesk Fusion 360 until I got more comfortable with Blender.  

Investing over 100 hours in learning these tools, I'm finally competent enough to make my own 3D models and this unit is the first one I've completed using my own 3D model STL files from my own models. To say I'm quite excited about learning this new skill is an understatement. Now there are no longer ANY units or uniforms that are out of reach. I learned a lot doing this unit. Primarily something that looks 'correct' close up, isn't what you want on a figure. Our figures have over-exaggerated details like belts, ammo pouches and the like. Getting a feel for how oversized is still part of the learning curve for sure. 

Something as simple as a musket, the length, width and breath of which is well known and easy to scale properly, looks TERRIBLE when scaled to the proper scale. They need to be shortened and fattened in thickness while not in height from trigger to hammer. Building a library of these 'scaled for miniatures' features is definitely needed, just the same as traditional sculptors use existing features on their 3-up 'greenies'.  All said, these are more than passable and I'm quite happy to have them and the skills I've learned in making them.

 

Below, a sneak peek at the complete ten figures I made in total. The next two-stand unit will feature all of the new standing and firing poses I've created, four more in total, plus the two firing poses from above. After that, some other small 3D modeling projects that have come too fast for me to document here, but will be as I catch up.  

 When the STL files for these eventually become available for sale, they'll be listed on my store at Wargaming3D - https://www.wargaming3d.com/brands/ajswargaming

28mm Stone Bridge

This is a 28mm stone bridge that I recently 3D printed and painted up. I have a larger Warlord Games Stone Bridge that I use often, but sometimes I need two, or I want one with a smaller footprint. This one I printed just large enough to fit a Panther tank in 28mm and no more. I started with a base color of British WWII Uniform primer from a can leftover from my very large British WWII army. From there I picked out some extra colors, dry-brushed, and then added some washes to represent recent muddy wheels passing over. The latter matches up well to my homemade muddy roads.

This was liquid resin one morning and a fully painted terrain piece that evening. Sometimes I really love having a resin 3D printer available for when a need arises.

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!

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.

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.

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.

 

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.

'O' Group Tokens

This is a selection of casualty markers for 'O' Group. I 3-D printed these. The design for them is my own, available for free along with all other O-group tokens on my Thingaverse page.

We've recently started playing O-group and are finding it quite enjoyable, so much so that I figured I'd finally paint up these casualty tokens for our next game.

Here they are next to some 15mm figures. I use Flames of War basing since I have a sizeable collection mounted for that system. Thankfully O-group is mostly basing agnostic. 

22 Terrain/Misc created for this year's painting totals. I'm counting these. They were quite laborious to paint!

Two 28mm Finnish Komsomolets Artillery Tractors

I previously posted two Komsomlets artillery tractors that I painted up last August.  One of these was an FDM (filament) print from my friend Mark D. and the other was a resin print printed by myself. After visiting my friend Scot and comparing these to his Warlord model, I discovered that both of the previously-painted models, which were printed at 100% scale from the STL file Mark and I used, were 'true' 25mm and not the 1:56 'heroic' 28/32mm scale that Warlord uses. All of my 28mm WWII vehicles and figures are either Warlord brand, or brands/prints scaled to match Warlord's 1:56 scale. The previous two tractors were too diminutive in size and were dwarfed by my figures and other vehicles. 

These two models were printed at 110% scale from the same file that Mark and I used before. As you can see compared to one of my Finnish engineer figures, the scale is much better. It's not impossible to imagine a figure-sized 'person' inside driving this tractor now. 

I've gone with a dirty look but this time I opted for less mud on the tracks. The mud was mostly to compensate for the FDM print's layer lines.

Here in the foreground, the old resin print with the newer, 100% scale one behind it. Not only is the scale of the newer print better, but since I've learned more about tuning my resin 3D printer, you can notice that the newer print is much smoother with no real visible layer lines. 

These will count as two painted vehicles for my 2023 painting totals.

First .STL Files Created - Markers for 'O' Group

There are .STL files for 'O' Group markers available for sale, but they appear to be made for resin filament 3D printers. Because of this the markings on them seem a bit 'chunky' to me for 15mm figures. Since I have a resin printer, I thought I'd take this as an opportunity to spend some time learning Fusion 360 and design some for resin 3D printers. 

This is the suppression/pinning tracking triangle that is unique to 'O' Group. I've sized it so it will not only work with large and medium bases, but also small bases (not shown). 

My printer can print twenty (20) of these at a time, directly on the build plate. I've finally dialed in the printer well enough that 'elephant foot' isn't much of an issue for things such as these. 

 

 

 

Order and Company Order markers are also just now finished. I'll continue on the rest of the lesser-used markers later this week. I'll count this as one 'terrain/misc' created.