WH40K at 3mm Scale?

[javelin98]

FUD is pretty good and should work out well for these minis.  White Detail is slightly cheaper but you can definitely see the print lines on the models.

FXD is new, so I haven’t laid eyes on it yet, but I just ordered a bunch of stuff in varying scales so that I can get my hands on it and see how it looks.  It’s definitely pricier!

On the pack sizes, I went with 24 for a few reasons.  A lot of sci-fi gamers put 3 or 4 vehicles on a base, and 24 is evenly divisible by both.  Also, you’re paying a fixed set-up charge and then an additional charge by volume, so the more items you get in one pack, the less you pay for the individual items.  It’s actually cheaper in real terms and per-mini terms to order 30 of something lumped together on one pack than it would be to order three 10-item packs!

It could be that the purpose of your life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

[Mr. Average]

Well, by my figuring 24 works perfectly for a lot of reasons.  You either get two ten-tank companies plus four individuals to carry around some Commanders, etc.; or you get 8 three-tank detachments for support. Although the WUD seems more economical generally speaking, I’m going to splurge and go for FUD just to get a sense of how far the product can go.  Oh, and by the way, Fleet Scale minis from DP9 are back on the market for April only – I recommend looking at them, to anyone else building an army right now.  Though pricey (as DP9 material is ALWAYS wont to be) the little Battle Frame or “Mammoth” units might make pretty good Dreadnought proxies until something else comes along (wink wink, nudge nudge, Jav).  And the landships are pretty good not-BOLOs for any of your related 3mm-scale gaming needs anyway.

[Mr. Average]

I just ordered!  Ooo, how exciting! First time a thread on TWW has led directly to a game product being produced!  What an age we live in.

Oh, and by the way, if anyone else is considering an order, you can get 10% off on Shapeways through April 20, because of some foul-up they had earlier in the year.  Hey, I’ll take it!

[javelin98]

We live in a golden age, my friend!

It could be that the purpose of your life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

[Mr. Average]

Truly we are! Now all I have to do is decide what chapter to make them. Ultramarines? Imperial Fists? Blood Angels? Hmmmmmmm…

[Mr. Average]

Well, the Marine vehicles are in production over at Shapeways.  Unfortunately, I’ll have to wait a bit longer for the Marines themselves – the O8 “Venators” I’m using for them are on backorder until some time next month.  But that’s okay, it’ll give me some time to start painting the tanks.  I’ve all but settled on Ultramarines – I’ve had very good results with the blue color scheme I used for my St. Vincent Brigade, so I’m going to adapt it.  I’ll be using O8 “Badger” armor as Dreadnoughts (looking into it, all the other likely candidates are radically oversized for 3mm scale).

And I’m looking at some of the Reaper “CAV” vehicles for Thunderhawk Gunships.  This, for example:

While this would make a good, albeit rather more streamlined, Imperial Dropship:

[javelin98]

Well, I do have a 6mm ThunderSquak that I can resize to 3mm.  Some of the details will be lost, but it should still be pretty usable.

 

 

 

It could be that the purpose of your life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

[Mr. Average]

I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing it, for sure!  And it’s a nice enough model that it might be worth looking at that new “extreme detail” stuff, too, if it could be made cost-effective.  I recognize that there are limits in 3D printing.

[Mr. Average]

By the way, some of the Warmachine figures look very promising as Imperial and Chaos Titans.

[Mike]

javelin98 wrote:

FXD is new, so I haven’t laid eyes on it yet, but I just ordered a bunch of stuff in varying scales so that I can get my hands on it and see how it looks.  It’s definitely pricier!

Be sure to share your findings around it.
I find FUD to be too rough.

😀

[Mr. Average]

I found Frosted Detail to be a tad “dusty,” in the past, but still very workable with just a quick going-over with a sharp razor to knock the tops of the layer lines down. I ordered my 40K set in FUD, which I have little experience with, but if it’s carrying a better level than the old FD, it should be okay.

One never knows with these procedures, of course. My main concern is that the product be dense enough to paint without to pigments bleeding or running, as is the case with the Strong and Flexible materials, requiring a lot of shellacking and priming to get them useable, procedures that would kill the detail at this scale.

[Thaddeus Blanchette]

Check it out, Mat! A new Infinity miniature that would make a kickass Eldar Titan in 3mm: Fraacta Droptroops:

We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

[Mr. Average]

That’s practically perfect, actually! And as you’ve already said, the Sarissa is a superb Spirit Warrior.  I’m hoping that eventually Marcin releases some of the NVL figures at 3mm scale – the Huszari in partocular would be very useful as Aspect Warriors.

[Mr. Average]

Oy vey, the wait is KILLING me. The postal service tracking number tells me my Ultramarines have been sitting in a sorting facility for four days. Driving me NUTS! Well, anyway, I won’t get the marine infantry until PicoArmor restocks anyway, so I guess I’ll just be patient as best I can and work on my Quar in the meantime.

I have been thinking about scenarios and settings, and working the Imperial Guard into it, as well. As previously mentioned a lot of conventional vehicles from modern and WW2 ranges work well with just a different coat of paint. Still trying to find a really good, shooty Titan proxy, though I guess I’ll probably end up doing some modding no matter what. One or two of the Clan battle mechs from Ironwind Metals look promising. I’m really leaning more and more towards the Eldar, too, but I want to get the Marines in hand before ordering another round of printed figures, to assess the print material.

I hasten to add, by the way, that a full-size (read: 6mm scale) Thunderhawk Gunship is looking very interesting. I’d be interested to see how it might scale out against 3mm vehicles as-is, or if a dedicated 3mm scale version would be desirable, as javelin98 has offered above.

[Thaddeus Blanchette]

Now all we need to do is get Marcin to release some quar in 3mm….

We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

[Mr. Average]

Oh, dear Lord, yes. Have you seen the Microworld Not-Ogres, too? Double duty as a Squat Land-Train, if ever there were such a thing possible! It’s a Golden Age, truly!

[Rhoderic]

Maybe make some 40K-conducive 3mm terrain while you wait? A gothic fortress, a brutalistic refinery complex, an Ork adobe town, a collection of Eldar maidenworld ruins, that sort of stuff. Maybe some cliffs and jungles in that quasi-cartoonish Oldhammer-y style as seen in Rogue Trader and 2nd-3rd ed 40K. Surely the biggest draw of gaming in 3mm is the sweeping vistas you get to build (but maybe that statement is only a reflection of my personal leanings in the hobby).

[Mr. Average]

An excellent point!  And as a matter of fact, it seems that the Dystopian Wars scenery will be just about right!  The line between Steampunk and Techno-Gothic is pretty thin, and as they’re evidently rolling out a reorganized set of terrain and unit packs, that means the older ones may be available for a discount!  What can’t be done with resin bits can be meat for some PVC card and plastic glue.  I’m searching now…

[Thaddeus Blanchette]

I am waiting for my Dystopian Wars defense installation pack, myself.

We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

[Mr. Average]

If Firestorm Armada is anything to go by, they’re near-as-makes-no-difference to 1:600 Scale, even though they’re supposedly half that on paper.  By the way, in re: Imperial Titans, the Critical Mass walkers seem unusually promising, albeit somewhat larger than I might have thought proper for the scale.

http://criticalmassgames.com/default.asp?category=mecha

The variety of oddly Titan-Legions-esque weaponry is particularly interesting.  But they’d clearly outscale any available Eldar titan proxies, I think.

[Thaddeus Blanchette]

Yeah. Unfortunately, they’ll be far too big. However, you could have one as an Emp’rah Class Titan, I suppose.

We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

[Rhoderic]

Possible Eldar titans of the smaller, less humanoid variety?

http://www.oldgloryminiatures.com/proddetail.asp?prod=15ALN-117

I can’t vouch for their size at all (but they’ll definitely be smaller than many of the other figures mentioned as Titan candidates in this thread), nor do I know how big Titans ought to be in 3mm.

On the subject of scratchbuilding terrain, the old 40K computer strategy game Rites of War had some interesting Imperial and Eldar structures of a size and “scale” similar to what one might model for 3mm. Don’t expect to be able to get the game to work on a modern PC (I can’t), but there are screenshots online.

[Thaddeus Blanchette]

You can see some of those painted up for 3mm here: http://godstruescale.tumblr.com

We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

[Rhoderic]

Oh. Too small for titans, then. I’ve underestimated the size of 3mm infantry.

[Thaddeus Blanchette]

Well, they could work as scout titans. Smallish scout titans, but…

We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

[Mr. Average]

I actually wouldn’t mind over-sized titans.  If, as seems likely, my initial games will be set in the Horus Heresy, when it’s Imperial-vs-Imperial, then the scale issue isn’t such a big deal.  The idea of the titans being, well… titanic… not such a bad thing!

I’m about to order up some of the Dystopian Wars scenery, as well.  And I think some of the smaller tank units (the ones not permanently stuck down to tokens) might make decent Baneblade/Shadowsword/Shadowblade/Banesword/Banebane/Shadowshadow tanks, or at least reasonable material for conversion.  As for my current order – Well, I’ve filed a query with the post office.  It seems to have left one of their facilities for parts unknown at 10PM on Friday, and then disappeared.  Which is just great.  We’ll see.

[Thaddeus Blanchette]

Let us know how the conversion works. I have been eyeing Planetfall, myself, but I’m happy to let the rich imperialist Canadians take the first risks in this endeavor… 😉

You don’t want the titans to be TOO big or they will simply visually overwhelm everything else. Take my word on it: 40mm is about what you need for a titan at 3mm scale.

That said, if you have 3-4 40mm tall titans on the board, you can stick in 1 60mm tall titan, as the eye will scale up from smallest to largest.

Visually speaking, that’s what you need to do: have a set of figures that flow from the smallest to the largest in a believable fashion. So 3mm infantry, 10mm walkers, 15mm mecha, 40mm titans, 60 mm mega titan.

That would probably work, given a paint job and design styles that visually tie everything together. Again, the smallest stuff needs to be the brightest, too.

We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

[javelin98]

What about some of the Reaper CAVs for Titan-proxies?  Not the newer ones, but the original pewter minis?  Might be about the right scale, and you just have to add craploads of purity seals and spikez to give it that right 40K flavor.

It could be that the purpose of your life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

[Ivan Sorensen]

My gut feeling is still to liberate some 40K terminator marines for titan use.

[Mr. Average]

If only Terminators weren’t $50 a pack.  However, there are some Battletech mechs that might suit the purpose,  To wit:

Daishi

Blood Asp

Malice

Pillager

Jupiter

Salamander

All would need some modification to be useful as Titans but they have a generally good shape to them for the purpose.  I recognize that the per-part cost of these is probably the same as Terminators, but at least you can buy them one-off.

[Mr. Average]

Hooray!  The Post Office finally got itself sorted and delivered my Imperial armored vehicles!  Want to see?  Yeah, you do:

Because the material is transparent and right out of the box the detail isn’t resolving well in the photo, but let me advise you that it’s very, very good.  Far better than the 3D model pictures might lead you to believe.  Left to right, we have a wayward Imperial Guardsman separated from his Regiment (III. Saturnine Hoplites),  then a Not-Land Raider, a Not-Rhino, a Not-Whirlwind, a Not-Vindicator, a Not-Predator, an O8 U.S. M60A3 Main Battle Tank caught in a time warp (for scale), and a nickel (U.S. 5-cent coin), which is about 13/16″ or 21mm across.  The grid is 1/2″ (Imperial) square, that’s about 13mm.

They really look great.  I couldn’t be more pleased.  Next step, of course, is priming, which will bring out the detail I think, but I already have to recommend the Frosted Ultra Detail – the resolution is very sharp and the plastic feels quite dense enough to take paint quite well.  They were, naturally, a tad pricier, but as a pioneer in the 3mm NetEPIC world I hope will develop out of this, I felt it only fair to take the long road on this, for the benefit of those who follow.  These are going to be Ultramarines, and some may be the start of an opposing force of Word Bearers, as I’ve all but convinced a doubtful opponent to give the system and the scale a throw by promising to stage for him his favorite battle of the Horus Heresy storyline, the Battle of Calth.  I’ve already identified (above) a number of suitably Imperial-Guardy O8 vehicles to serve as proxies of one sort or another for primitive Guard vehicles from that time period (Panzer IV’s, StuG’s, , and with these in hand I think we’ll have quite a bit of a show this summer!

Cheers and tons of thanks to javelin98 – you rock!  Here’s hoping you expand the horizons and move on with the Not-Eldar, and perhaps the Not-Imperial Guard!  The figures are well worth it!

[Mr. Average]

The Land Raiders just went into the paint box.  So far so good!  I want to give a word of what I consider good advice: the small details on these models have a significant film of support material on top of them – if you’re unfamiliar with 3D printing, support material is a waxy, semi-soluble material used to protect fine details during printing, to keep them from falling off as successive layers are laid down by the printer.  Unfortunately, it’s very slick stuff and sheds paint, a lot like mould release on resin and metal figures.  Hard to see, but it’s there.  The solution is simple: pipe cleaners.  A few seconds’ brisk scrub with a loop of pipe cleaner wire cleaned them up beautifully and brought all that nice detail into high relief.  Lovely!

When the primer hardens in a few hours I’ll post some progress.

[javelin98]

Awesome!  Looking forward to seeing how they progress!

It could be that the purpose of your life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

[Mr. Average]

Not-Land Raiders: Primed and ready to paint!

As you can see, not totally devoid of layer-lines or other such 3D printing artifacts, but in no way does that diminish the level of detail or the workability of the models.  A good cleaning in warm, soapy water followed by a brisk brushdown with a pipe cleaner and a good solid but very sparing coat of white quick-dry primer has brought out the details something wonderful.  I’m extremely pleased!  Quality: high, Detail: high, Workability: moderate-to-high.  Naturally, 3D prints can’t compete on cost – these are significantly more expensive than cast metal items would be.  But I doubt we’ll see them in metal any time soon, anyhow, so this is kind of an all-or-nothing proposition, anyway, on that score.  Still and all, very nice little models and we are definitely on our way!

Courage and Honor!

[Mr. Average]

Wellp.  They paint up quite well, that’s for sure!  Here’s the first Ultramarine Not-Land Raider:

As always, I’m designing base labels for these – not sure yet how they should look or what information is worth having on them.  Also I have to consider basing materials, too – color and texture, etc.  I’ll do some experimenting.

[Thaddeus Blanchette]

For basing – and seeing how it is sci-fi — maybe go for maximum contrast? Use Marcin’s tecnique, but make the ground color a reddish-orange to high contrast with the blue, flocking small batches with yellow turf?

That landraider is almost enough to get me back into WH epic. It is really great!

We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

[Mr. Average]

They take the paint very well. Much better in fact than I’d imagined they would. I’ve had issues in the past with resins being slightly slick or oily and rejecting primers.  Although I still advise through cleaning before priming, and the tiny details can result in a little bit of wearing off or chipping due to handling, once fully painted with acrylic and then matte lacquered, they’re as good as any figure I’ve worked with so far. Consider that they’re essentially unique items, too, available more or less exclusively in this form, and it’s a pretty attractive little system.

I already have my mind on yellow and red-brown basing. I’m not totally sure if the plaster is going to work though – it might be a tad fiddly at this scale (since I’m basing individually and by squad, for use with NetEPIC rules). Also my plan at the moment is to use PVC plastic bases, which precludes plaster since it won’t bond to a non-porous surface.  I might have some 1.5mm ply laser-cut, though it’d mean a month waiting for the laser shop to get them done.

Most likely I’ll go for textured paint as a basic layer on plastic, painted over in yellow-ochre and red-Browns, and then with a little additional extra-fine talus and some yellow turf here and there to build up some texture. Kneading up tons of plastic putty feels very tedious to me and I doubt I’ll have the patience for that, and modeling a huge batch of plaster bases on wood seems unnecessarily time-consuming as well.

The big imponderable is the infantry. Getting those bases to sit properly without looking like strips of stuff glued to a board – always a challenge. I’ve come close with the plaster basing, but seating and blending down the little bases is time-consuming and labor-intensive. But that might just be the way of things.

[javelin98]

You could take some sand paper, cut it into squares to match your base sizes, then bend it up a bit to create some creases and whatnot.  Glue the square to your base, dab a few dots of white glue on it, and dust it with some flock.  Then mount the figs onto it and you’ve got yourself a sandy base without having to use any actual sand.

It could be that the purpose of your life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

[Thaddeus Blanchette]

I used to try to level out infantry bases with resin or plaster, but I gave it up as far too much work for far too little pay back. Paint the area around the infantry’s feet black or earth colored and flock around but not on top of the figure bases and you’ll only notice the difference very close up.

We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

[Thaddeus Blanchette]

javelin98 wrote:

You could take some sand paper, cut it into squares to match your base sizes, then bend it up a bit to create some creases and whatnot. Glue the square to your base, dab a few dots of white glue on it, and dust it with some flock. Then mount the figs onto it and you’ve got yourself a sandy base without having to use any actual sand.

It’s probably less work to just dab on the glue and toss it into some very fine grit.

We get slapped around, but we have a good time!

[Author]

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