Epic - New Templars - pt5 - Air Support and Vehicles - pt2

Air Support - Part 2

managed to get myself motivated. pulled out the printer and got cracking.

started by printed off effectively the other half of the stormbirds.

and these bad boys are BIG!

now, compared to the thunderhawks and infantry they're more or less in scale. compared to other/original 6mm Epic gear they're BIG. by comparison (not show) these are longer than the Warlord titan i made is high. they're about 13.5cm length.

I'm actually pretty pleased with the overall scale for the army, however yeah, just worried they might be a bit of an anomaly on the table.

Fluffy-wise they're potentially too small!! the stats has them carrying 8 armoured vehicles (i.e. rhinos) which is clearly impossible unless they're flat-packed. similarly (depending on which version of fluff you're reading) they're ALSO meant to be able to carry 50 or 100 standard marines - so 10 or 20 stands - again unless there's some tardis action happening here it's gonna be 'notSoSqueezy'.
In practical terms i'm happy with it carrying 12 sticks of troops plus 5 landspeeders, which is my standard lander loadout.

The blocks that made up these prints did NOT fit together seamlessly. There's a total of 10 components per model. so there is a lot of green-stuff'ing sanding, scraping and fixing to be done.
while it would be nice to have the models just come out perfectly i'm not that worried about fixing them.   The wargear is meant to be ancient and battle-worn so replacement bits and battlefield repairs are the norm. 
So, alot of repair work to be done before it even gets a spritz of paint.

End result: i think they're gonna look rad when they're done.

[Update: 20191011]
Just a quick and successful print... xiphons....

this was a bit of a weird scaled model off thingiverse (someone elses) that i just set to width 36mm. turned out fine, single piece print.  nice model, not bagging it at all.   my one is fine for filament but am looking for nicer pieces for this project.

looks reasonable scale compared to the thunderhawk. am happy with the result.

counts as stormtalon, but i'm not a huge fan of stormtalons. 

i also ordered some clear 3mm perspex rod. will use these and some left over 30mm disc bases  for mounting this aircraft.   decided against wire and a terrain base for my 'true' ac pieces.
the land speeders will also get perspex rods, but will have printed and terrain'ed bases (square not round). 

i also have in the design phase a very (hopefully) cool idea for my space craft for this army (not to mention complex, time hungry and potentially frustrating...). and no, i'm not buying a trailer for my car to carry a full epic scale frigate.




... and Vehicles

so the printer cranking through the weekend and into the week - finishing off last night, tuesday. 

my goal here was to finish off 'everything with a vehicle base', i.e. the 32x32mm square bases. This was just 2 squads of 6 rhinos, and 1 squad of 6 vindicators.

So basically, (ground) vehicles done. Again, these probably aren't going to see much use, but it's nice to have them available as options if required.

i had extremely few failed prints and only one 'memory error' during the entire print span.

these can pretty much get a spray of paint and get on the paint table right away. probably not worth waiting for the Landers.

Something i did, and am not sure about (as is always the way), is scale up the vindicators to 110% original size. i'm slightly concerned that they're not a little too chunky. They're clearly 'visually' larger than the rhino when placed side by side but not by a huge amount - it's just a couple of millimetres.

my thoughts on that were that being primarily an attack tank rather than a transport they should be a bit beefier in order to handle recoil etc. it's probably on the grader on the front that actually makes them feel 'perhaps a little too big'.
definitely couldn't be bothered doing a reprint on them.  wasn't happy with the 100% model either. i think in time, once they're painted (and never used anyway) i'm probably going to care even less.

And that's that.    the weather recently (apart from yesterday) has been quite warm (being spring and all) but we're back into a rain and cold spell.    i think ambient temperature and humidity definitely have an effect on the consistent success of the prints.

also picked up another 5L bottle of iso. was cleaning with pretty grubby stuff, and bunnings is an absolute rip of for this product. $30 for a 500ml bottle, compared to 29 for a 5 Litre bottle.

Also replaced the vat film, 2nd time doing this and it's none too tricky. the old one had some scuff in the middle. wasn't seeming to effect the print result but in the print job before the change there was some potential leakage on the lcd that i had to polish off carefully.  not 100% that it came through the film but not worth the risk considering i've got a few spare. plus don't want to ruin the lcd with caked on resin.

printing, printing, printing... and more to come. 

Until next time...