3D printers

          Getting the printers up and running again. The filament printer needs a cable created. As the manufacture is chapter 7, a new one is not available. There is a plan. Only time is required. The Resin printer needs only time and effort.

Goal completed

         This was one of the goals this year. Surprisingly the resin print came back on line first. It took 3 days screwing around with the tech support. Another day or so leveling and alignments, greasing, tightening whatever. Now it prints like a champ.

        Then there is the Fabtotum filament printer. Finally got a new ribbon cable. It was up for about 3 hours until it broke the probe thingy. I have a hazy idea for a repair without a part. The probe is linked to the ribbon cable. It is just that its a frustrating little bastard and I am minutes away from selling it as parts.
         The only reason why I have not is material. It prints for 14 dollars a kilo and the resin prints at 85 a liter. 350 would get me one that works out of the box, with available parts, and support. I don’t know how much longer I want to mess with it. I would rather paint.

        I normally run one detachment of Stealth. They are very effective and well worth the points. I the giant suit list, I run two detachments with ghost keels. And I was fine, fat dumb, and happy. Then good old Kal opened his mouth. During our after game chat about lists, mistakes, and the behavior of our dice; he said “if I was you, I would run multiple stealths.”

        Maybe it had always been that way because I had only one detachment. FW stealths are very rare. One of the few items I have never seen floating. 3D printing changes everything. There is no way we don’t go to a print on demand, like renting a movie, in the future.

         I printed a detachment about 5% larger. I have no idea how big a stealth suit is? It must be larger than a regular old Tau man/girl/fish alien. You can see the FW Tau dudes in front. My prints would 7.5 feet if a Tau was 6 foot. The difference is my prints are the new style stealth suits where FW was the 2003ish style. Or an infantry man with extra gear not a whole fancy suit thingy.

         So thanks Kal! Here is another stealth detachment. And they don’t fit in the case, jerk! Its full.

And two of these fighting position/tower thingies. I pretty sure the Imperial Fist list uses them.

     
        Samurai armies are problem army. There are a limited number of enemies they fight, Korea and Mongols. For the most part they fought themselves. Which means you would be painting both sides and hoping to host or run convention games.
        My plan to get around this and get the most usage out of them is to run them through the 3 rule sets above. The high frequency use is Warmaster. It is fairly easy to get 6 games in a year between the PA, NJ, and NE groups. Con games Warmaster Ancients, because it is easy to learn, fast paced, and less likely guess players will get board during the game. Killer Katanas is painful to get through. This would be the house hosted event and would represent samurai warfare less abstractly as the other two.

        The other issue is Samurai are a colorful lot. If one was to try and represent their style with a brush, you would be painting forever or give up. I have chosen 10mm to cut this factor out. There is no point in putting so much detail into such a small scale. The colorful nature can be represented by limiting uniformity across the individuals based together.