Big Bada Boom

Sharp Practice continues to be a significant focus amongst the chaps. I have begun a series of regular games set in the Peninsular campaign of the Napoleonic wars of around 1809 to 1813 (ish). One of the more interesting facets of the game is the use of miniatures that we would not normally purchase for our normal larger format games.

I have had an FDM (filament deposit method) 3d printer for over 2 years and bought a resin 3d printer about a year ago. Both have been working constantly since purchase. This particular project would have been unbelievably expensive if I had to purchase metal figures for this. The big take home lesson from this is that it allows me to pursue projects that economically would have been prohibitive. As time passes the range of figures increases and also the quality of the scultps are also getting much better as the various scultpors gain in experience.

I recently purchased some new French Artillery figures from Nathan at Elite Minatures https://www.eliteminiaturesaustralia.com.au/ and realised that I didn’t like turning the minatures around on the table to represent being limbered.

After looking around for a while I found on the Wargaming 3D website a complete range of limbers, guns, cassons, horses and troops for the French. In general they are fantastic however I do think that the dismounted train drivers are a little to chunky for my tastes. However after a very mild re-scale I was happy with the results and then hit the print button and printed two complete sets of limbers and cassons. It took a couple of goes to get the alignment and exposure times correct but overall it was a fairly simple process.

I also designed and printed the bases on all the models, the guns and crew figures are on an FDM printed sabot style base and the gunners are on 20mm FDM printed round bases.

The printing time was roughly six hours for both sets of limbers and cassons.

I also had two pack mules that I purchased for my kids roleplaying game, I will have to replace them one day. And I had printed one more dismounted train driver then I needed. So I knocked up this quick set as a baggage handler

I think the result is rather good all in all, and certainly didn’t break the bank. Resin costs were roughly five dollars and the cost of the STL files about twenty five dollars.

As a postscript, when varnishing one of the cassons I picked up a can of white undercoat. Fortunualty I realised my mistake after only a quick squirt on the casson and was able to fix the issue, one of the cassons is now sun bleached!