Topics

1

Modeling Q&A / Not 3D printing??

« on: April 19, 2024, 04:31:22 pm »

Through the constant deluge of marketing emails, one occasionally catches my eye and this one from last week* made me laugh out loud.


The careful observer will note that these are not the standard anniversary or birthday photos that are usually the subjects of Shutterfly prints, but these were good reminders of probably the best custom prints I have ever received from them.


I have had Shutterfly do fabric and vinyl prints for backdrops or tables, but these 1.4 inch full color magnets are printed on the reverse of convex glass that are perfect for planet objectives with a reasonably common size; here is another printed set on the left, versus the regular stock tokens  from Homeworld Fleet Command on the right.


Their email was a reminder that I need to keep a set of files on hand and be ready to upload them whenever a free shipping event comes back around because there is a surprising amount of products they now carry, just waiting for game resources.

*The only problem with these magnets is that they have a tendency to migrate to appliances, it took a while for me to track these down, and do not know where the rest are hiding.

2

The Shipyard / World War II

« on: April 01, 2024, 12:14:24 am »

New year, new time period… here is my first run at a WWII ship.  I have to say that I was skeptical of Warlord’s integrated bases for Victory at Sea but honestly they do help keep track of where the smaller ships are located on the table, this destroyer escort in particular.

3

News and Rumors / Dread Not!

« on: March 01, 2024, 03:51:27 pm »

Dread Not! just launched as a Kickstarter campaign for WWI naval battles in 1:2400 scale…
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dobbieshobbies/dread-not/

The Battle of Jutland starter set has the largest group of ships included at 26, with the other levels being split between the individual commands involved, and there are also multiple add-ons available for single or groups of ships that allows for a pretty high level of customizing your pledge.

4

General Discussion / AI and Naval Wargames

« on: February 29, 2024, 08:14:32 pm »

While I have never used a language model AI to prepare any writing project, or given any input or prompts to one, I did have an output only tag come up from Bing’s Copilot GPT that may be of interest.  I do disable the predictive assistant each and every time the browser updates, so the below tag was personalized solely from my search history…
What are some popular naval miniatures wargames and their rules and strategies

For the first time ever I clicked on a tagged suggestion, and Copilot then gave me the following recommendations: Victory at Sea, Black Seas, Topside Minis.

Victory at Sea at number 1 makes a lot of sense as it is probably the best selling historical naval game currently, with their drawn source being total searches.

Black Seas at number 2 was again a historical naval game, and the two sentence summary did give an overview of the setting and some of the mechanics, but not the initiative system which was its most innovative one.

Topside Minis was the biggest surprise at number 3, which I thought was a mistake at first but then found their pdf download for WWII actions on the site so there are starter rules available.  All in all, that would be a success for Topside’s SEO that their search presence is large enough to make it into Copilot’s top three picks.

I have searched for each of the above, but not for several months, so their detection algorithms are good enough to recognize an interest in naval games, but not very specific yet as each of the above are all historical entries instead of science fiction or fantasy.  As far as browsers go, on game searches, the predictors have a long way to go to reach HAL 9000 status, much less Skynet level, but I would start to be concerned if the above recommendations were all Armada and Homeworld though…

5

Misc. Naval Games / Homeworld Fleet Command

« on: February 08, 2024, 12:07:29 am »

Homeworld Fleet Command – 5060523345922 – MUH052367

Here is a brief breakdown on the base game components:
First of all, the ships arrive assembled and are a moderately soft and dense plastic, think boxed games from Fantasy Flight, or 1/72 historical miniatures from Hat Industries, not a sharply defined rigid polystyrene.  With that material choice there is less detail possible, but the modelers made the best use of the plastic possible, and the mold lines are well hidden.  At first glance this would seem to be a negative, but as these ships are not intended for stands or bases, in fact the game has them stored loosely in wells, a more durable plastic is a reasonable choice, and if the ships arrived on traditional sprues there would be much less room in the box for less ships.

At 101 total within 11 types, the number of ships is a good amount for variety of play, especially with the different unit cards included.  The careful observer will note that almost half of that total is composed of fighters, but I cannot criticize anyone boosting a ship count by including the smallest options possible.

The rulebook is 52 pages and includes 10 missions that roughly correspond to the events in the original Homeworld RTS game.  The first 7 scripted missions lay out the rules in order of escalating complexity which are in preparation of the final 3 that expect players to select their own fleet compositions.

Almost half of the box is composed of the other cardboard pieces required for play.  The board is hex based, and two decks of cards are used for activations and to track unit statistics.  Multiple tokens for modifiers, objectives, and statuses are included and in enough quantities for regular play.  All of these are good quality cardstock or board, but the one downside is that the molded inserts are tightly sized to their components, so much so that there is no room for card sleeves.

All in all, a good production given the design goals and that fits the majority of the original Homeworld onto the table.

6

News and Rumors / Halo returns

« on: January 05, 2024, 03:20:06 pm »

Mantic has the rights from 343 Industries to produce a new Halo game with previews coming up in March, which I assume means Adepticon...
https://www.manticgames.com/news/on-the-12th-day-of-xmas-special-announcement/

My predictions are...
1.  Larger scale miniatures ground skirmish, not compatible with Spartan's HGC...

2.  No Vault support due to license control... (please prove me wrong Mantic)

3.  And no HFB replacement, until at least 2025...

...anyone else's hopes and dreams?

7

General Discussion / Merry Christmas

« on: December 25, 2023, 09:37:01 am »

Hope everyone has safe travels to and from this Christmas, and makes use of all aids to navigation!


…and don’t forget that next week there will be plenty of light gear and round ornaments on clearance for anyone who may need space scenery.

8

News and Rumors / Armored Clash from Warcradle

« on: December 03, 2023, 03:41:17 pm »

The announcement and rollout of GW’s Epic has started not a few ripples throughout the miniatures world, the latest of which was Warcradle’s announcement of Armored Clash to be added back into the Dystopian setting…


Right now, the only solid product is under the Warcradle Scenics brand, a modular generic warehouse set with an advertisement of compatibility with Legions Imperialis and Armored Clash…
https://blog.warcradle.com/blog/january-releases-an-epic-battle-tears-through-the-industrial-district

…but no mention of Epic Warpath from Mantic, the second small scale mass battle announced this fall, but that setting is much farther future than either the steampunk of Dystopian Wars or the trademark TM of Games Workshop.

I understand the decision to tie their first release promotionally to LI, but why a generic stack building, why not a harbor, or airfield, or anything that is tangentially related to the core of Dystopian Wars, the sea and sky?

9

News and Rumors / Armada Campaign: Shadowed Horizons

« on: September 08, 2023, 06:41:49 pm »

This year’s global campaign has launched for Kings of War and Armada, Shadowed Horizons, along with fiction to be updated with the results from the game tracker.

While the majority of the focus is on the land side of the conflict, Mantic has set aside a portion of the campaign exclusively for Armada... the first entries in the story of Shadowed Horizons are broken up into [The War on Land] for KoW and [The War at Sea] for Armada.  There is no detailed map specific to the area being fought over as in the prior campaign Halpi’s Rift, but with each installment they are marking locations of importance upon their world map which should be highlighted as the event progresses across the sea and down the mountains.


The game reporting only covers the winning and losing fleets, with point total and scenario book besides, so the data collection set is not as detailed as the prior campaign, but every other piece of the campaign looks a lot more robust than before.

10

General Discussion / Perspectives on progress

« on: September 01, 2023, 08:45:05 pm »

Yesterday I put the final touches on my 300th model, a token holder for Armada, and I am pretty pleased with how it turned out.


Instead of stacking damages and speed tokens on ship cards, I find it easier to have them next to each base.  However, keeping individual markers lined up with their ships can be difficult when those ships are colliding with each other, and I wanted a solution to corral them in one place.  The most used tokens are double sided, so adding an angle to the speed location was a must, and I have a slight bevel in each damage recess to make it easier to remove and replace them.  I will probably print out more that are color coded for multiple players after a test run or two to see if play is sped up enough to warrant it.

But the main thing that has been on my mind for the past week or two was not this model, or really any other one in particular, but the whole of my modeling progression.  I have kept records of everything since starting the hobby again, and knew that I was closing in this milestone of 300 models, but is it really a milestone?  Is progress quantifiable… is counting even important?

I would say that it is, but with full notebooks and spreadsheets, I can recognize a slight bias.  For anyone who may be considering sinking into the unending spiral of recordage though, I would say three things need to be considered: accuracy of the count, consistency of the count, and usefulness of the count.

On accuracy, counting is meaningless unless everything is counted.  I really started to record print information in detail after some initial issues with my first 3D printer, as I wanted to know what I should expect the actual life of the replacement parts to be, and with that, the overall lifetime cost of the printer.  It took some effort, but I did work back through all of the print jobs and results to get to a total of 305 printed projects with a margin of error of +/- 2 including the final failed print which retired that printer.  Modeling records were an easier task as all of the stl files were on the hard drive, which is where model #300 comes from and this topic.

On consistency, counting is meaningless unless everything is counted in the same way.  I would say I have a system on counting models in particular, but unlike painting or printing, it does not have an easily discernable physical output.  The first ship I designed for my Clone Wars project was the Lucrehulk, 7 different component models, counted as 7; which I later rescaled requiring 9 different component models, counted as 7; while the final version of the Lucrehulk painted and posted incorporated 6 additional models more, counted as 4.  Meanwhile, last week I finished a set of transports with 4 different silhouettes, of which 3 also had alternate surface detail layouts, which I only counted as 1 model given that all of them were designed at the same time in a single evening.  All in all, and my method is honestly not really definable.

On usefulness, counting is meaningless unless it has meaning.  Maybe not the best way of stating that, but looking at my count of 300, what does that really represent?  It is not miniatures modeled, since a good number of my miniatures either require multiple pieces modeled and printed separately, or I have split them for greater variety after assembly.  It is not miniatures or models printed, since I cancelled several before even exporting them to the slicing software.  And it is especially not miniatures painted, as almost everything I paint is in multiples, and to date, only 45 miniatures have been painted of the 218 I printed in that first year.  Looking back through the list I can see that year over year I have increased the amount of different miniature results possible out of any single model file, but I doubt anyone else would be able to glean anything out of these records.

Overall, I would say that given the three goals of a meaningful count as a measure of progression, I am at a clear win, loss, and draw, and so solidly neutral on whether my recordkeeping is showing quantifiable progress in the 3D modeling hobby.  But then again, keeping up lists and looking back through prior years has been an enjoyable micro-hobby so far.  (200)

11

News and Rumors / Acheron's Fall from Ramper Design

« on: August 11, 2023, 07:48:50 pm »

First teased in the spring, it looks like more information on the naval game Acheron’s Fall will be inbound after next week.  The game is based on the universe of Infinity produced by Corvus Belli, and each player will only command 1-3 ships.
https://infinitytheuniverse.com/blog/acherons-fall-game

Infinity is one of the most granular miniature games on the market, and judging from the HUD displays and vectored movement shown on the first alpha preview from On TableTop that high level of complexity will be reflected in Acheron’s Fall as well, just based on resource allocation instead of action management...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21hg4rOsF7k

First public playtests are scheduled for the upcoming Interplanetario event in Spain with more details to follow afterwards.

12

News and Rumors / 2023 Great Wargaming Survey

« on: August 01, 2023, 07:00:51 pm »

The Wargames, Soldiers, & Strategy survey for 2023 is starting up, and this time every completed entry receives a WWII stl model along with the regular prize drawings from earlier years.  The survey is open through the end of August…
https://www.karwansaraypublishers.com/blogs/great-wargaming-survey-blog-wss-magazine/the-great-wargaming-survey-2023

13

News and Rumors / Shapeways May the Fourth sale

« on: May 03, 2023, 07:13:17 pm »

Shapeways is running a sale for 14% off of purchases from their SciFi miniature category up through May eighth...
https://www.shapeways.com/marketplace/miniatures/scifi

...the code is MAYFOURTH with a $50 minimum from the category, and while metals are excluded, all of the other materials qualify.  The incredibly careful cropping of Shapeways' image headers and promotional emails to avoid anything actionable is pretty great, quite in contrast to the user sale images.

14

Modeling Q&A / Silica bases / cases

« on: April 01, 2023, 07:59:47 am »

I have been researching many different historical solutions for basing, and think that I have rediscovered the best way to protect models on the table as well as while they are being packed up.  By totally encasing the model in amorphous silica there is little chance that it will be damaged in normal use on the table, but I am somewhat reluctant to see how it would hold up to the impact of a fall.  Another bonus is that there is no real need to varnish as there is not a chance of any paint being chipped off.  This dwarf ship from Armada was my test case, and I think it turned out well...


Special thanks to the ground-breaking work of Giovanni Biondo that was really the inspiration here... he is no longer with us, but look up his examples of scale modeling and they will astound you!

15

News and Rumors / Bismarck Solitaire from Worthington

« on: February 23, 2023, 07:04:06 am »

Just saw this on Kickstarter, a reworked version of their original book game with mounted boards and additional missions.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1456271622/bismarck-solitaire-board-game-edition/