So I fall into the same camp as most miniature wargamers in that I have a ‘pile’ of shame. Mine is actually quite small, on a shelf and that’s in part because I spent a long time hiding from anything that might be considered ‘Geeky’ or brand me a ‘Nerd’ and although I cant pinpoint the turning point from caring to not (well not as much), it’s somewhere between having an incredible support group of like-minded individuals at work / a partner who although doesn’t enjoy it herself absolutely supports me doing it / becoming a Dad which changed drastically the way I viewed the world and peoples opinions!

As well as buying expensive plastic from Games Workshop, Warlord games and Wizards of the Coast I have fallen into the trap of owning not one but two 3D printers. I ‘only’ have 2 now, at one point the spare room had 2 noodle printers (FDM) and the garage had 2 resin printers.

Something I started printing early after getting the FDM Creality Ender 3 were objective markers for 10th edition 40K games. I only had printed one set of 1-5 quickly for a game day some time ago but I had some spare filament after finishing a server rack project for a friend so I finally printed the 6th marker for the few missions that call for it and a second set if we meet up and play multiple games simultaneously. In standard UK fashion they are a mixed set of standards for the size with a 40mm centre that is the actual objective and then a radius of 3″ to the outer edge which is the ‘control’ zone.

They are only a few mm thick so have basically no impact for miniature bases sat on them but allow a really clear visualisation of objective control, the 10th edition rule book infers the measuring of the 3″ radius from the edge of the 40mm tokens included in the chapter approved mission card decks. I can only imagine that this would become a source of argument / confusion. I also added some very sloppy (freehand paint is on my to-do list to be not awful at) numerals as for some missions objectives are specifically affected during gameplay such as being removed in certain rounds.

These might possibly be the first or second gaming print I ever did probably over 3 years ago now, I think I may have also given some out so might have to try to track them down as well and see how they look now. They only received a coat of primer very recently when I found them hidden in the bottom of a 84lt really useful box during a cataloging attempt to build a backlog of everything I own.

They are a very basic design of Dragons Teeth tiles that come in square or triangular and fit nicely together to form defensive lines across the board. I could only find 3 in the tidy up though I’m almost certain I made enough to zig zag across the 4′ width of a 6′ by 4′ gaming board.

They received coats of the cheap tomato paste tube style acrylic paints in green on the base and white on the teeth themselves. A coat of agrax earthshade (liquid talent) and then a wraithbone dry brush to bring the edges and some texture back finished the concrete. The ground cover I believe is woodland scenics blended turf foam flock, it now lives in a takeaway tub for easy dipping and the label is long since lost!

So to compound boxes bought from shops, printed from STL files and various bits gifted / traded between friends I also subscribed to the current 40k magazine run ‘Combat Patrol’ from Hachette partworks. This is the second muti part magazine I’ve had from them with the first being ‘Dungeons & Dragons Adventurer’.

I think that the 40k magazine gives much better value for money when it comes to the ‘stuff’ included (see the grey tide wedge above) with the paper your nominally paying for. The magazine itself is less content filled in terms of lore, stories and generally interesting articles as they largely include a good chunk at the start of each magazine on a building and/or painting guide for the attached models as well as a how to play and related practice scenario’s at the back.

Just as a point of note I did really enjoy the D&D magazines, they were full of lore, settings and in universe history that I would otherwise have been unlikely to read. The in cellophane goodies with that run were almost always dice… just so many dice… with the occasional plexi glass and transfer mini’s. They did include a run of oversized dice which my toddler loves (unfortunately I stopped the subscription before getting the full set) and a special extra of a giant metal d100 that has seen some use in my long running campaign.

Back to the 40k magazine run, across its 90 issues it comes with a lot, and I foolishly upped my subscription to the premium kind that comes with some special characters models in the form (so far) of the power sword wielding primaris company champion and the ultramarine chief librarian Tigurius as will as a run of bigger units in walkers, tanks and daemons shown above.

I currently sit at up to issue 42 having been delivered concerningly with 11 issues still un-opened.

I am in the middle of building the aeldari combat patrol also shown here a Kreig engineer from GW’s monthly free mini and a Primaris company champion which was a subscriber special. The plan is to build the full combat patrol and then try and paint them in a production line fashion.

As mentioned the magazine comes with painting guides and some paint issues (as well as brushes / clippers / mould line removers) that means these models will be going a bright red!

Another item that I completed recently was the creation of a ‘3D map’ for a now 3+ year D&D game I have been part of.

This consisted of a carefully pritstick’d twin A4 map and a pile of various printed fantasy / medieval style houses and ruins to form most of the village as well as some very small and hard to handle ruined walls from when the settlement was more heavily defended long ago. These all got a white undercoat and then different amounts of straight and mixes of washes from both citadel and vallejo to give some variation to the colour both between each building / ruin and also between the walls and the roofs.

Finally this month was nominally designated as ‘Jagdpanther Juni’ a challenge kicked of by the Fort (jagdpanther-juni-begins) and has even squeezed out a midway update (jagdpanther-juni-update) so I not only count myself behind in any kind of write up, but likely in models completed as well!

So the next post at the start of July(ish) will be a round up of what was built and painted against the challenge! As a starter for 10, I gathered some armour and monsters in various levels of build and paint at the start of the month that I would have liked to get done (spoiler: I wasn’t successful on all in the above image)