"Fabricator Cart" Complete

The rolling cart for my Prusa 3D printer and cricut cutter is complete.  The cart was originally designed to allow the Prusa printer to fit on the bottom.  Why? because the lower center of gravity reduces any wobble cause by the printer as if prints.  That idea was abandoned after realizing the cart is really solid (it doesn't wobble when the wheels are locked) and I tend to need to fiddle with the 3D printer a lot more than the cricut.  The Cricut is super dependable but I'm batting under .500 for 3D prints.  That's not a knock on the Prusa it's a superb machine and the companies tech support is one of the best I've experienced.  There are just a lot of factors the impact the success of a 3D print and I have yet to really grasp how they all work.  Good old bog standard "user error" at work here.

A ways back, I made a simple tool caddy for the 3D printer which was attached to the cart.  Almost like I planned it that way - which I, of course, did not.  

It's always better to be lucky than smart.

The cart has a big drawer to store the bits and bobs associated with both tools.  It also fits the chip and mat board used with the cricut.

I may add a shelf in the middle to hold filament spools for the printer.   It will be really nice to have all the tools and supplies I use with these two machines located in the same place.   There is a good bit of terrain work remaining for the Stalingrad project so this setup should get a good work out.

It's not very pretty but hopefully she'll be functional, which is a type of beauty all its own.

The cart is built out of construction grade materials.  The four legs and cross braces are 2x4 studs I cut down to 1.75x1.75 inches on my table saw.  The two platforms and drawer unit from scrap 1/2 inch plywood.  The drawer face and sides along the top are cut from a 1x6 board.  I think the total wood cost is under $20 bucks.

Doing little projects like this one to organize my workspace always proves to be a nice break when I get in a hobby rut and helps me figure out ways to change up my modeling workflow.  This hobby of ours has a lot pieces to it between paints, minis, terrain materials and tools so doing a little thinking on organization is actually very helpful.  I also tend to find things I forgot I had when doing these projects which is kind of like getting a prize at the end of the project.   

6mm Ancients - UNLEASH PRIMER!

 

With the start of the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge (version 11.0) a little more than 3 weeks away, it's time to start prepping mini's.  In addition to finishing up my 15mm Stalingrad project, you'll be seeing a lot of 6mm Ancients - literally thousands of the tiny blighters.

My first of two orders from Baccus has arrived.  In that tiny box were figures for a Republican Roman army and a Parthian one.  The second order, which is still being processed has a large Sucessor Army and my favorite - Dacians.

First up for priming are some Roman Hastati, which I will be basing in 3 ranks of 8 on 40mm square bases.  40mm squares are the standard used for the rules Age of Hannibal, which we use at the club and I highly recommend.  I also used 40mm bases for my Russo Japanese armies.

Lighter infantry, such as velites Velites will be less dense, with maybe 6-8 figures per base.  Dense formations like Phalanxes will have 6 ranks of 8 figures so 48 per base.  Steve from the club has a beautiful Macedonian army and has 64 figures crammed onto a 40mm square base.

My Republican Roman army will have 16 bases of Hastati/Principes, 2 Triarii, and handful of Roman cavalry plus both Italian and Spanish allies (mostly light troops)  

 

Fabricator Cart

Building terrain is the aspect of the hobby I enjoy the most but it's both messy and some of the tools take up a lot of space.  The biggest culprits in that last category are my 3D printer and Cricut cutting machine.  Rather than take up precious gaming table space, I decide to build a rolling cart so I can stack these devices and store them out of the way.

The first picture is the base frame flipped on it's side while checking for square.  The joinery for the frame is a "floating tennon" which provides a great opportunity to get some practice with my Festool Domino cutter.  I need that practice because the next big woodworking project is building some new nightstands as a Christmas present for my wife.  Given the year she has had treating Covid patients, she deserves a really nice Christmas.

Here's a picture of the frame right side up and clamped while the glue sets.  There will be 2 main shelves - one at the top and one along the bottom.  The 3D printer goes on the top shelf and the cricut machine on the bottom.  There will be 4 locking caster wheels which will keep this unit from shaking as the machines do their thing.

Todays task will be to add a drawer along the top section for storage.

I should get this unit done in a few days.

The overall dimensions are 18 inches wide, 24 inches deep and 30 inches tall.  The wood is cheap construction grade pine 2x4s cut down to a 2x2 size.  The plans are - well there aren't really any plans, I'm kind of making this thing up as I go.  Usually not the best method for woodworking are building anything.
 

Quatre Bras at the Club, Part 2

 

Last night we finished up the Quatre Bras game.  Tom and Ed returned to command the Allies.  For the French we had new commanders in the form of Greg and myself.  The ruleset was General D'Armee.  Since I was playing, I didn't take any pictures except at the end.

The game resumed at turn 8 and the French attack continuing with the Allies getting ground down.  Last game Josh had effectively formed a grand battery of all the French Artillery and it continued to pound the Dutch troops.

Greg sent in Jerome's Brigade, which had the best French troops in a series a attack columns and punished the Dutch the Dutch in the center.  At the same time both Ed and Tom launched calvary attacks on both Flanks - one forced a French brigade to retreat while the other was me by French Cavalry and pushed off.  Their two British Infantry brigades deployed along the cross roads and became a formidable defensive position.

After a few turns of trading blows, the French managed to break the 2 Allied cavalry brigades on either flank.  That brought our broken Allied Brigade tally to 4, which was enough for a French victory.  It was kind of a cheap way for us to win but there you go.  Taling on those British brigades would have been difficult as the French infantry was pretty chewed up by then.

Greg did comment that the club has played Quatre Bras a number of times with the "Age of Eagles" ruleset and every game resulted in a resounding French Victory.  It's a tough scenario for the Allies to win.  Our game was a little closer run but the French moved with a bit more alacrity than they did historically.  Perhaps a better way to balance the scenario is to put some limits on the French command dice.  I really like the overall scenario and will run it again with some tweaks to make it a little more fun for the Allies.

Announcing LWTV "Caesar Awards"

 

We have a new project on the LWTV channel - The Caesar Awards - which are meant to celebrate excellence in wargaming video and other online content.  There are 10 categories of media type which you, the great unwashed public, can make nominations to by going to our web page CAESARS AWARDS.

Categories include Favorite Wargaming Youtube Channel, Best Painting Tutorial Video, Best Wargame Podcast and even Best Wargaming Blog.  The only rule for nominations is that content from the LWTV channel can not be nominated as it would be a little unseemly to create an awards show just to give yourself an award.

Did I mention there is a "Best Wargaming Blog" category?

Anyway,  Please take some time to nominate your favorite content creators.  People put a lot of work into this hobby and there are some really very well produced videos and other online content out their - even humble personal blogs about geeks in their lairs pursuing the hobby at their own personal uber level of effort.

I think I mentioned there was a category for Best Wargaming Blog.  Yeah I'm sure I did.

OK, unsightly groveling for blog nominations aside, please take some time to nominate your favorite content creators - who knows - maybe they'll win one of the coveted Caesar Awards?

Quatre Bras Using General D'Armee

 

Last night at the club, we re-fought the Battle of Quatre Bras using my 15mm Naps and the General D'Armee ruleset.  I was the GM with Steve and Josh playing the French and Tom, Greg and Ed commanding the allied forces.

I used the scenario for the excellent 100 Days General D'Armee scenario PDF which you can get from TooFatLardies.  The scenario started with 7 French Brigades on the board against 2 Dutch brigades of questionable quality.  The allies will receive a brigade or two per turn.  The French have a heavy Cavalry Brigade coming on mid game and by then the sides will be "evenish" with a troop quality advantage to the French.

The French attack got off to a slow start given some bad luck with ADC rolls and a good number of resulting Hesitant Brigades.

Finally the French made contact Bylandt's Brigade - one of Bylant's battalions managed to form a square and the other, well, didn't.  Lancers and Infantry don't mix well.

On the other side of the table Steve's French finally started moving and began enveloping the Dutch - to their rear there are two British Brigades coming on the table and none-too-soon.

We got to turn 8 of 18 last night and will continue the game next week.

This will be a hard one for the Allies to pull off.

Stalingrad Project: Practical Issues

 

Scenery progress is a little over the halfway point.  One of two 6x4 boards is pretty much done and most of the iconic buildings for the second have been scratch built.  The needed miniatures are also in process and I’m getting some help there from some club members which is greatly appreciated.  

The term “done” is a bit misleading as I’ll keep tweaking with the terrain.  I “may” have found a source of images of a newspaper from Stalingrad dated August, 1942 that I can shrink down to add to the rubble look.  They will be illegible at 15mm scale but still period appropriate.  I’ll pause here while you all roll your eyes......

Finished?, great lest move on.

Terrain making has been paused as I need a break and want to test some rules - I might even publish a set of rules for city fighting.  Sadly, the later point is likely more an act of personal ego inflation than actual contribution to the hobby.

There is one practical issue to work out - how do I organize all this stuff for both storage and transport up to the club or a convention.  The full table is 30 x18 hexes and each hex will labeled on the bottom by row letter and column number (01A all the way to 30Q) so that will aid in setting up but still its 540 hexes.

I need to source or build some containers to hold all this stuff.  Weight really isn’t and issue given the materials I’m using and hexes can be oriented to reduce wasted space in a container.  The total volume of the entire table setup is roughly 20 cubic feet, with the mini’s adding maybe another 5 cubic feet..  All of that will fit in my vehicle and likely may be a lot easier to transport than most of my convention games.

I’m leaning toward just buying some bog standard plastic bins but am intrigued by concept of how cool it would be to rock up to Historicon with all this stuff packed up into replica Soviet ammo and rifle crates.  The mere fact that I could even conceive of such a thing as “cool” proves this blog is aptly named.

Stalingrad Project: Playing with Pigments

 

The final step in scenicing the Stalingrad table is weathering the buildings.  My normal goto method is somewhat crude - washing with a black/brown wash and then some quick dry brushing.  That usually works "OK" but may be problematic for this project as the vast majority of the buildings are made of MDF, chip board or mat board.  All 3 of those materials don't react well to water and I was worried I'd end up with warped or fraying buildings if that tried and true method was use.  So it's time to try something new (for me) - Pigment Powders.

I've used pigments from my days as a model railroader and had some black, orange and red/brown on hand.  I also went on Amazon and picked up 4 vallejo pigments (Light Slate Grey, Desert Dust, Dark Slate Grey and Natural Siena).  I'm using air-brush thinner as a fixative.

Lets look at some before and after pictures of the test subject - a one hex MDF building.  The building is from a polish company Terrains4Games and I am really impressed with their products.  I'll do a post about them later on but they make really great stuff.

Here are the before pictures:

I added a styrene angle piece along the corner to cover up the seam.  I should go back and mask the floor tab slots with wood filler....

It's a nice little building with a hint of rubble

Now lets look at the same building after my first attempt at using pigments for scenery.  

I ended up using mostly black (for soot) and the light slate grey (concrete dust)

The pigments were applied in two ways - for horizontal surfaces (ground, rubble piles) a old worn brush was used to apply the pigment directly and then it was fixed in place bu dropping a little air brush thinner using capillary action.  Because everything names a name, this method has been dubbed by me the "Direct Method".

The method used for vertical surfaces was very similar to a wash - I mixed some pigment with the air brush thinner and then painted it on trying to simulate streaks.  Lets call this one the "Slurry Method"

The "Direct Method" seems to work really well and is fairly easy to apply (remember there are a lot of building and rubble hexes to weather).

I'm not the happy with the "Slurry Method" as it looks streaky.  A replacement for that method could be applying the pigments directly and then fixing then with a short spray of dull coat.  I've got plenty of buildings to experiment on 

For me the key to weathering is to put just enough on to suggest dirt and grime without going overboard and hiding the model details.  It's something that I'll likely never perfect but just get closer and closer each time I try.

Let me know what you think

Stalingrad Project: The North Section of the Board is Just About Done

 

Like the majority of wargames projects, the northern section of my 15mm Stalingrad board is 95% done.  I'm waiting on an order of styrene strips and other bits and bob's from Evergreen so I can add the rails to most of the track hexes.  Then the last thing to do is add a wash to all the building to tone down the colors.  I need to experiment a bit before doint that.

I'm really happy with the progress so far.  The southern half starts on the left side of the second picture and will run all the way down to Red Square and will have such iconic buildings as the Univermag Dept Store, the Nail Factory and the House of Specialists.  Technically its the lower 60% of the board.

The Western side of the board

Grudinin's Mill defended by a Soviet Rifle Platoon.  I had to get some mini's on the table just to see how things looked.

The Mill is way to "bright" and that will get toned down during the wash process.

and a German Grenadier platoon attempting to cross January 9th Square - that's a lot of open ground to cover under Soviet fire.

We'll keep chugging along here in the Lair

The Seven Steps to Hex Making Nirvana

Several people have asked "How do you make your hexes" so I thought I would publish a step by step guide.  My hexes are sized at 4" across (flat side to flat side) and match the standard used by GHQ.

In order to use the method I'm describing you need 3 tools:

- A hot wire cutting table.  I use a proxxon, which is superb but there are other options out there.  Don't go cheap on your hot wire table - you use it a lot in terrain making.

- A hex cutting jig - these are not all that hard to make  and are required to make precise hexes.  How I made my jig can be found this link: Hex Cutting Jig

- A robust straight edge cutting guide - super easy to make and really is the first thing you should add to your hot wire table tool.  How I made mine cand be found at this link: Straight Edge Guide

Cautionary Words:

Cutting EPS foam with a hot wire cutter does release toxic gasses which you should NOT breath in.  How toxic?  I'm no medical expert but have reliable information these fumes are worse than those produced by two day old gas station burritos.  Yeah, it's nothing to screw around with.   I do my cutting in the garage with the door open and I have a fan behind me blowing the fumes away.  Doing so also gives me a wind blow hair look which is a truly glamorous thing to behold.  Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.

So without further ado, I present to you :

The Seven Steps to Hex Making Nirvana: 

Step1) EPS Foam Prep:  

I like to use pink or blue insulation EPS foam panels that are 1 inch thick and 24 by 24 inches in size.  Given there is some precision cutting here that's the largest size I can easily manage.  I get mine from Amazon in a set of 6 for $35.00.  There are cheaper ways to source this material but none that are more convenient.  Time is money

Make sure to clean up the material if it's been stored in the open - a few shakes and quick brushing and your ready to go. 

A word on dimensions - the thickness of 1 inch is rock solid but the 24 x24 inch sizing is more aspirational - these panels can vary +/- 0.5 inches on the length and width.

Step 2) Set the Guide to 4 inches: 

This is the most precise cut you need to make so it's important to take your time.

One of the most valuable tools I have for model making is a set of steel rulers that a have a flat end.  These are way more helpful than a standard tape measurer for precise marking.

Step 3A) Make Your First Cut:

Place the EPS foam up against your guide and passi it across.  Using a guide is really important - free-hand cutting just ends up with wavy sides.  

Friends don't let friends make hexes with wavy lines

Step 3B) Check Your Work:

With the first cut done, double check to make sure the width is 4" inches.  Surprisingly, I got this one right.  

Once you're sure your at 4 inches go ahead and cut the rest of the material into 4" inch strips - you'll end up with 6 but make sure to keep track of the last one....

Step 3C) Check the Last 4" Strip:

As I mentioned earlier - sometimes these 24 inch panels are actually 24 inches and the one I used was a little short so the 6th strip of foam is only 3 and 3/4 inches wide.  This one CAN NOT be used to make hexes so needs to be put aside.  It's not really wasted as I'll use the off cuts for other scenery projects.

Step 4) Set the Point to Point Distance:

The next step is to cut they 4x24 inch strips into blocks that are just a tiny bit longer than the hex is point to point.  I made up a few 4 Inch (flat to flat) hexes to use a marking guides and use that to set up the cutting cutting guide.

If you want to get into hex terrain having a few of these lying around your shop is really helpful

Once the 4 5/8" cut distance is set cut the 4"x24" strips into 4"x4 5/8 inch blocks.  You'll end up with 5 blocks that will make full hexes and one short block that can be used to make hal hexes or be tossed into the "available for future scenery projects bin"

Cut the 4" strips into blocks,

At this point you should have 25 blocks that look like this.

Step 5) Break Out the Hex Jig!  

Place one a block in the hex cutting jig and make sure it's firmly seated as shown in the picture to the left.

Make a pass across the wire by pushing the jig forward.  Turn the block leaving the first cut on the same side as the cutting wire and pull the jig back across the wire.

Now flip the block so you newly created point faces away from the cutting wire and repeat the two step process above

Wala' you now have a perfect 1" thick hex and four right triangles

Step 6) Set the Guide to 1/2 inch:

We now need to reset the cutting guide to 1/2 inch so we can cut down the 1inch hex into 2 1/2 inch ones.  Rather than risk messing up one of our shiny new 1" hexes I test my guide set with one of the triangle cut-offs

They're great to use to test the 1/2 inch setting.

Step 7) Make the Final Cut:

Place the 1 inch thick hex up against the the guide and ....

pass it through the wire (I'm pretty sure you knew that was the next step)

At this point most of you will be doing the happy dance that all hex makers are legally required to perform after their first successful hex.  This dance can be physically taxing so make sure to stretch before your performance.

Do that 24 more times.  Performing the Hex making dance is really not recommended after each hex as, frankly, most of us are just not in the proper shape to do so.

and boom you've got some hexes!  The yield this time was 50 hexes from a 2x2 sheet of EPS foam - sometimes if the foam is cut a little large you can get up to 60.

It took me longer to write up this blog post than to cut 50 hexes.  Start to finish the entire cutting process took 33 minutes, which include the time I took to take pictures and added a few minutes to the production time.

There is some foam wastage - I don't find the triangle cut offs all that useful and end up throwing most of them in the bin.  I do keep a few as they can make nice braces to pin in place and support a glue up but most, sadly, end up in the bin.

I've been making a lot of hexes.