Some walls and a door.

I thought I'd try printing a few walls that are a bit more "sci-fi" in appearance than much of my other scenery.  These ones come from the Novus Landing collection by Ecaroth, the Dungeon Sticks Space Port.  They're designed to fit together with little pegs.  Because they're designed for 28-32mm figures, I reduced them to 56% original size for my 15mm games.  I considered just reducing on the Z axis to make them shorter but keep the length, but they didn't look quite right because the rivet/bolt holes were all oval.  I'm wondering now whether I should have made them slightly larger, maybe 70% original size so the wall would be just above head height for a normal figure.

A short section of wall and a nice door.

Some of the wall sections with "greebles" have different designs on each side to add some variety.  I also labelled the door on one side only.  The walls were all painted in craft acrylic taupe, washed with sepia ink, then drybrushed in the basic taupe again, with some highlights of taupe + white.  The door is an old pot of GW blue-grey from the Space Marine Paint set, washed with black, drybrushed with blue-grey and given a highlight of blue-grey + white mainly in the centre.  A few GW chainmail accents were added and dulled down with black ink, and the door control panel painted in green.  The number was printed in 48 point "Microstyle Bold Extended ATT" and carefully cut out with a razor blade.  I stecilled it on using a small scrap of sponge and some Citadel Base "Mephiston Red" to give a slightly rough outline.

The other side of the door.

The walls come in 1, 2 and 3 inch sections (obviously reduced to less than 1" with mine), plus door sections, wall ends and various connectors/junctions.  The little pegs didn't fit mine without a fair bit of sanding, mainly due to the "elephant's foot" but I might not bother with them anyway.  The walls stand up pretty well without any connectors.

Component parts.

I also added a few bits of the Imperial Dungeonsticks set by gtrby117, which features extendable wall sections.

Imperial Wall sections.

This set didn't really work re-scaled, I think the walls are a bit too thin and the fit of the extendable sections isn't ideal, though that's a limitation of my printer and abilities rather than the actual design.

Components and demonstration of extendable walls.

I have noticed that one of the extendable walls has warped since being painted.  I know that if I print something flat on the build plate, the base can curve up at the edges afterwards if it's very thin, but I've never had anything warp this way before.  It certainly makes the extendable wall virtually unusable!

Warped wall!

It was an interesting experiment, and it will have cost less than £1 in materials, so it hasn't been a waste.  I'll probably print a few more bits at some stage, just to add a few interesting accents to some of my foamcore buildings.  Adobe/mud brick walls with a wall and gateway from the dungeonsticks should have a nice Star-Warsy sci-fi feel.  As mentioned above, I might make them slightly larger to completely block LOS, although the door looks OK at 56% I don't think it would look too large at 70%.

Epic Walker Week - Epi(c)logue - Castraferrum Dreadnoughts

I realised that I forgot my last 3 Dreadnoughts, these 3 came in a grab bag of Epic blister packs that I got when 3rd edition Epic 40K was discontinued.

Castraferrum Dreadnoughts

I have 2 standard Tactical Dreadnoughts equipped with Assault Cannon, Power Fists and storm bolters, plus a Devastator Dreadnought with twin Las-cannon and a Missile Launcher.

Tactical , Devastator, Tactical.

To be honest, I've never been as keen on this Dreadnought model with its slab-like armour and stumpy arms and legs, but they'll no doubt come in useful in a game some time.

Sheringham Viking Festival 2022

Having missed last year due to COVID, this year's Viking Festival in Sheringham (the name of which is derived from Viking "Home of Scira's People") returned at a new location on a new date.

In 2020 the event took place in the main town near the beach, this year it was on Beeston Common which gave plenty of space to spread out.  There were lots of interesting craft tents demonstrating working with horn, bone, antler, textiles and more.  There were also plenty of weapons for the kids to hold (only the blunted combat blades, not the "sharps"!).

Because the event is taking place after the move to British Summer Time (and also due to needing to be on an incoming tide), the boat-burning on the beach took place after bed-time for the youngsters btu hopefully we'll get to see it again next year.

We had a particularly interesting conversation with a Viking maiden about the dyes she used with her wool.  We already knew most of the substances she used (onion skins etc.) but one interesting fact we hadn't come across before is how water hardness affects the colours.  The same substance used in Norfolk (extremely hard water) can produce a different colour to the same thing used in a very soft water area.  We also found out that knopper galls can be used in dying.  We've made ink using marble galls and there are plenty of both types on the Oak trees round our village, so I think we might need to try a few experiments during the summer holidays.

Wool dyes.

Of course, in battle there are always casualties...

Hnefatafl.

Epic Walker Week - Plastic Dreadnoughts

We bring Epic Walker Week to a close with the most recently produced of my units, though "most recent" here means around 3 decades ago.  As Games Workshop ramped up their plastic army production into the second edition of Space Marine, they introduced Imperial, Eldar, Chaos and Ork Dreadnoughts, available in the "Epic Stompers" set along with all sorts of other goodies such as Terminators, mole mortars, Chaos androids, Ork Stompers and Shokk Attack guns

Plastic Dreadnoughts.

The Space Marine Dreadnoughts are equipped with an assault cannon and a power fist.  Being plastic, they're quite easy to convert with just a few chops of a craft knife and a drop of polycement.

Rampaging converted Dreadnought.

These have been retconned as "Contemptor" dreadnoughts and full-scale ones are available if you don't mind paying £35 (more than 700% what I paid for my original Rogue Trader dreadnoughts - Bank of England inflation calculator says that it would be under 300% price increase for my original one today), or you can remortgage your house and go for a Forge World one instead.