And on to Austrians...

 I have some HAT Austrians that I intend to paint at some point (some are currently painted as British, French and Dutch!) so I thought I'd tried printing a 54mm Austrian Cavalryman as a test.

Still needs some cleaning up but looks pretty good.

The cavalryman took 2 hours to print, the horse 5 hours.  I have a load of spare painted 54mm Napoleonic horses in the loft that I am not using, so I'll see if he will fit on one of those which might be easier to produce a unit.

Latest attempt at 3d printing 54mm

 

 I have now printed 4 54mm figures using my 3d printer and this is the latest of them after tweaking a number of settings.

The figures are Russian Napoleonic Infantry designed for 28mm and resin printing rather than the FDM printer I have.

The figure is scaled to 175% size and I have tweaked settings to thicken the walls of the figure, etc which means that the thinner scabbards now cast properly and don't break off.

I am pretty happy with this one and think I should be able to print off a unit to experiment with painting.

I have been asked about printers and settings so technical info follows:

The printer is a Cubicon Style which I bought in 2016 as it had an enclosed case (which made printing ABS easier and I wanted to use it to print components to turn into metal in vulcanised moulds) and it had an auto-leveling plate.

The settings for the figure above are:

0.4mm nozzle
ABS
0.2 layer height
supports are everywhere with an angle of 65 degrees, 10% fill and a grid pattern  (I find that these are the easiest to remove.)
There is no raft beneath the print.
Wall thickness is 6, top and bottom are 3

Playing with 3d printing of figures

 I have been watching the growing list of 3d printable Napoleonic figures with interest.  They are mostly available for 28mm with a very few people offering them printed in 54mm, but at that size they cost £5+ for a single figure.

I have an FDM printer (which I've had for 8 years) and have started playing around with a new version of the software and some 28mm Napoleonic Russian stl files to see what can be achieved.

The files supplied are really designed for resin printing but I have managed to work out how to create files that will print on an FDM printer.

This is a quick photo of my first effort.

On the left is a HAT Austrian line infantry man and on the right is a 3d printed Russian Fusilier officer.  He could do with some more cleaning up on the supports but I think he had come out quite well.

He is printed at 175% size of the 28mm original figure and comes out about the right size for matching with HAT.

If I can get some consistent results this would mean I could add a small Russian and Austrian contingent to my 1/32 Napoleonics collection at some point in the future.

One Hour Wargames

 

Played a game with my regular opponent Anthony today.  Still feeling a bit under the weather so I went for One Hour Wargames and the "Unfortunate Oversight" scenarion we have played a couple of times before (though not with the OHW rules).

This time used the OHW Rifle Age rules on a 4' x 4' table with my Franco Prussian figures.

I took the Prussians and rolled up a 6 unit force of 4 infantry, 1 Skirmisher and 1 Artillery

The French had 3 Infantry, 1 Skirmisher and 2 cavalry.

The Prussians have to get across the river and capture the hill in 15 turns.  Not having cavalry made that task slightly more difficult.

As with a lot of OHW scenarios and games it came down to the last turn and last die roll...

I had lost several units (mostly due to Anthony's excellent dice rolling and my habit of rolling 1's) but I finally forced the town and cleared the hill of all but one of the French Infantry.

On the French's last turn the french could have shot at my unit that had advanced from the town and onto the hill and would have automatically killed it (it had 13 hits already) but that would have been a draw as he would also not have a unit on top of the hill.  Or he could charge with his cavalry where he needed to roll a 3-6 in melee and kill me to win or he would fail to kill the unit and he'd bounce off the hill and I'd win.

He chose to charge and killed the unit, securing the victory for Anthony and the French.

Very close game as always with a lot of tactical thought going into unit positioning and how to take (or keep) the town.

Also both decided we would possibly have tackled things slightly differently with hindsight.  I would probably have put most of my troops over on the right with the gun and crossed the ford in order to shell the town from the start.  Then held back two units to attack on the town once the occupants were reduced in strength.

Anthony felt he would have been better to send his cavalry through the town and across the Bridge to threaten my rear and to keep the town free.

54mm Punic Wars

 

Been completely knocked out by a virus thing for the last few days which meant I didn't get to Warfare (first time in over 20 years) and now have a year where I won't have attended any wargames shows (first for over 25 years!)...  Too foggy brained to paint or concentrate on anything so I decided  to sort out some of my Punic Wars 54mm figures for the Command and Colours project and get them based.

On the right are all the Carthaginian Infantry needed barring 4 more light infantry(ordered), 12 slingers ( they are already painted) and some bowmen (ordered from Irregular Miniatures).

On the left are all the Roman Infantry needed barring the velites (already painted) and some bowmen.

I am planning on undercoating one side grey and one side white and doing the bases and painting the base edges the appropriate colour for light, medium, etc

Then I'll try a test game and get them painted gradually.

Next I need to assemble and base all the cavalry and the 4 elephants (I have 2 already based and painted) and the 3 commanders per side.

Basics of Dendermonde finished

 

Finished cutting and then assembling the Bastions and an extra piece of city wall.  It is all starting to look quite big now!  The city will eventually cover 4' x 5'.

I need to replace the longer piece of wall with one with a gate in it.

Next up will the demi-lunes, one with a road through it...

Bits and pieces

 Haven't done much over the last month.  We took delivery of our first caravan at the end of September so time has been spent sorting that out and we went away for 6 nights as our first trip back in October.

I have finally managed to get around to some painting and scenery building.

These are the Space 1889 Adversaries set that I painted for Anthony.  They are apparently used as characters in a Space 1889 boardgame.

I also finished cutting and assembled the 3 Ravelins for Dendermonde today.  They will need texturing with tissue paper and painting.

On to the 3 bastions which are partly cut next.