Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

oh no! Was that just the powerstrip, or the TV going pop as well?

And poor Koenig!

Luckily just the power strip, TV is working fine and no other issues to see so far.

New Koenig is done, forgot to take a picture .

But I picked up the Battletech beginners box yesterday, two more mechs , and with a painting splurge this morning.

Got my final three from my first order as well as the two from the beginners box done. So 12 total mechs painted and based . I think this is my first “Complete” army ever .


So searching for things to print online today I found .stl files for the archer and the marauder....if I blow them up to 7” tall size they take 5 days to print ..... . Maybe later, as trophies or something. It would only cost about $6 each in materials, so not entirely out of the question.

Cura downloaded the 4.8 version yesterday, and I mistakenly erased my settings instead of porting them over. Luckily I had emailed someone the pics of my settings a few months back and I was able to retrieve them. Up now currently are the axe hands for the Minotaur. I might get the four of them done this weekend.

Great job finishing an Army! I loved Mech Commander, these guys look like they’re straight from the game. Will we be getting glamour shots?

Glamour shots . Obviously you are new to my terrible photo style. Some people use potatoes to take pictures. I use mashed potatoes in a poorly lit room with bad directional lighting

Proof that the above is true.

fresh off the printer, I did more clean up of supports after this shot. Downloaded the file for the Longbow (on right) and printed it out at a 0.08 layer height. Took about 4 hours and cost me a whopping $0.16 .

If that number doesn't get you to want to buy an Ender3.....well I have no Idea what could get you to save money while gaming. Just saw the Christmas sale of $157 for the Ender3 that I have.

The fact that I will more likely buy blank bases which will cost more than my printed models is a shear time saver. The bases I've seen from reaper will cost about $0.20-$0.27 each. Still much cheaper to make my own models. Files are free, software was free, and my cost above includes the cost of the materials.

damn you vile Theophony stop trying to get me to buy a printer

Longbow looks great. Interested to see who the printing handles the curvier inner sphere mechs.

Tongue in cheek moment here, but have you amortized the cost of the printer into your 0.16 printing price?

How many models would you have got out of your printer?

You've been busy since I last checked! Mechwarrior stuff looks great, but for me I have to say those Ice Giants might be my favorite thing you're working on of late. I look forward to seeing those with some paint on them!

Nice group shot of all those mechs and I love your Walters-Walruses

The cost of the printer has easily been recouped. Figuring the fact it cost me a couple dollars to get a table full of terrain for frostgrave that would have been a couple hundred dollars easily paid for itself.

So more printing has been happening, just too lazy to do anything more about posting it. But there’s always terrible gratuity shots to prove it.

A Marauder Ranger(that’s what it was called)

The ranger, longbow and a rifleman(which lost its radar dish ). Was trying to be careful while trimming but the spoiler on its head went flying. Not sure it even landed yet .

A second longbow has a base coat on it and may get some love tonight.

There were two mishaps though. Both with printing Pirrahnas. The first fell victim to a bad print, I think I has the infil at 10%, so a little nudge with it being tall and skinny caused the top half to misprint. The second I reinforced it to 30% infill, but the design I did had long tiny barrels sticking out of its chest which caused more supports and was just a mess. I’ll search for one with short barrels, should help.

A catapult is on the printer and should be done when I return home today.

You are building up a more and more impressive force of mechs, Theo. Earth will be safe from the Zentradi with you around

Thanks Syro, I will make sure I’m rocking some Linn Minmei during my next game

Tokens printed last night. I’ll need to make a few sets, or redo the file to do double batches as I have a feeling I’ll need a few sets for bigger games.

Also the catapult I printed yesterday is I need the shot. It lost a tiny piece of one of the missile box covers while I was hamfisting the supports off. I’ll just call it battle damage.

Your BT stuff looks good so far. If/When a slot opens up in my painting queue, I'll have to pull out some of the stuff I have hidden away in the Closet of Shame.

Thanks Josh , looking forward to it.

Painted for a few minutes last night. Got the first of the two Longbows that I printed almost done.


Then I got distracted with a baby before I had to get dinner going. It’s okay as he likes Battletech too .


I may have been watching Miniaturemarket’s website like a hawk waiting for a Battletech restock. I saw they got in some copies of Battletech: A game of Armored Combat, and I quickly ordered it. They all disappeared within a few hours. I also grabbed the BT book Total Warfare and picked them up last night. So that’s 8 more mechs for me to paint.

Thanks Syro, I will make sure I’m rocking some Linn Minmei during my next game

Sounds good. Too bad that I only remember her having one song,despite being the number pop star in the world.

 Theophony wrote:
I may have been watching Miniaturemarket’s website like a hawk waiting for a Battletech restock. I saw they got in some copies of Battletech: A game of Armored Combat, and I quickly ordered it. They all disappeared within a few hours. I also grabbed the BT book Total Warfare and picked them up last night. So that’s 8 more mechs for me to paint.

You can also watch Amazon.com, from time to time AGoAC is put up for about $15 on there. Not a scam either, I got one myself, as have a bunch of other people.

I'm really surprised how well those mechs seem to print on FDM. (Those are on FDM, right?) I have a Prusa i3, but have yet to print anything, but I'd love to print some mechs on it at some point. I was thinking of starting with buildings though, seems like they might be easier to do since most likely wouldn't need supports.

 H wrote:

 Theophony wrote:
I may have been watching Miniaturemarket’s website like a hawk waiting for a Battletech restock. I saw they got in some copies of Battletech: A game of Armored Combat, and I quickly ordered it. They all disappeared within a few hours. I also grabbed the BT book Total Warfare and picked them up last night. So that’s 8 more mechs for me to paint.

You can also watch Amazon.com, from time to time AGoAC is put up for about $15 on there. Not a scam either, I got one myself, as have a bunch of other people.

I'm really surprised how well those mechs seem to print on FDM. (Those are on FDM, right?) I have a Prusa i3, but have yet to print anything, but I'd love to print some mechs on it at some point. I was thinking of starting with buildings though, seems like they might be easier to do since most likely wouldn't need supports.

They are printed on FDM, my Ender3 to be precise, I have a bunch of new settings to try with the download of CURA 4.8.0 recently. Thingiverse has a ton of BattleTech mechs listed, but when you click them it goes to a 404 page.

 Theophony wrote:
They are printed on FDM, my Ender3 to be precise, I have a bunch of new settings to try with the download of CURA 4.8.0 recently. Thingiverse has a ton of BattleTech mechs listed, but when you click them it goes to a 404 page.

Yeah, much like 40k stuff, there was a purge a while back that culled a ton of models. I had a bunch "collected" on Thingiverse, but I hadn't downloaded any, which are now just dead link, or gone. But, one good thing is that this is the internet, so nothing is ever really gone...

I tend to download from Thingiverse as soon as I find something, just in case. There was a bunch of stuff taken down for 40k as it got too close to the design style and the artists were asked to rework parts rather than a complete C&D takedown. Those are more around tanks/scenery though than figures

Luckily some of the designs I was wanting were still available on other platforms such as cults3d, usually you can find them elsewhere, because like you said once it’s on the internet it’s out there forever.

Very little painting done this weekend. More yard work to prepare for winter and other obligations.

As I had mentioned about Battletech, I keep a close watch on Miniaturemarket’s daily update page to check restocks of items. I’ve scored pretty well lately with a copy of the A game of armored combat, but I also finally was able to get a copy of Massive Darkness: Elementals early last week and then a couple days ago they got in copies of the Massive Darkness Ratlings, I snagged the last one. Now I just need to paint it all


One elemental down. I think it’s my favorite of the bunch. Still need to do some work on the brick as I’m not happy with it right now.

He's a rocky chap. Could he do with a bit of moss for a green contrast?

 inmygravenimage wrote:
He's a rocky chap. Could he do with a bit of moss for a green contrast?

I need to punch up the green, it’s too dark in the photo and disappears, I’ll use something brighter and a better shot later.

In the mean time....21.5hours into a 39+hour print . Battletech scale miniature by the toes for size comparison.


Also water elemental is well on his way to getting done. More work on his shells to do still.

Guess I can start on fire and air next as the printer I started tied up for a while.

Hope you have also printed the fifth element, which according to Lu-Tze is "surprise" Current work on the elementals looks great.

Thanks Viterbi, these are not prints, but the expansion pack elementals from the first Massive Darkness game.

But print wise....I’ve been quiet while this 37.5hour print has been going in the background.
.
About an hour of cleanup later.

Battletech Archer printed at 400% scale .

Not sure if I’ll paint it up, or offer it to the local Game Shop as a trophy for the upcoming Battletech league.

I know I am being a pain now with my inane questions and also my ignorance.

But how do all of these files get around copyright issues? Or are they paid files that are licensing the IP from the parent company?

 Archer wrote:
I know I am being a pain now with my inane questions and also my ignorance.

But how do all of these files get around copyright issues? Or are they paid files that are licensing the IP from the parent company?

Well.....they are derivative works designed by people who really enjoy the designs. All of these companies have started to push back against the sites that post the designs, but just like GW, they can’t keep track of all the sites and designers. Since they put these files up for free, there’s a really hard time showing proof that it is damaging to the company. Sites where they charge money for the designs will quickly comply with companies which request they get pulled down.

Wow, that's a beast! Am I right in assuming about 300% would be about the right scale for 28-32mm figures given they only have one pilot?

You do like them big don't you? looks really ace, very imposing.

Nice! You should paint it up in the Wolf Dragoons colours, Make it Jaime's ride

 Theophony wrote:

 Archer wrote:
I know I am being a pain now with my inane questions and also my ignorance.

But how do all of these files get around copyright issues? Or are they paid files that are licensing the IP from the parent company?

Well.....they are derivative works designed by people who really enjoy the designs. All of these companies have started to push back against the sites that post the designs, but just like GW, they can’t keep track of all the sites and designers. Since they put these files up for free, there’s a really hard time showing proof that it is damaging to the company. Sites where they charge money for the designs will quickly comply with companies which request they get pulled down.

Actually, it's not. The 'free' STLs stop people from buying actual miniatures. Of course, there's the counter-counter argument that these people wouldn't buy the minis ANYways...

But, as the Chapterhouse and numerous other patent and copyright litigations showed, 'derivative works' of copyrighted and/or trademarked materials *IS* illegal.

Good luck chasing everything down, however.

--B.

Im only after a few items, not the whole universe of Battletech, but eventually I’ll find the ones I’m looking for.

Anyway, turkey has been consumed in large portions, sleep was intermittent due to waaaaaaaaay too much food, and paint has been painted.

I finished off the 4 elementals from Massive Darkness, just basing to do now.

I’ve been spending too much time thinking about a new AOS army with them previewing the Christmas box bundles. 4AOS (Sky dwarves, Tzeentchian,Ogor Mawtribes and Looncurse). Each one I see about $200, and nets just over $300 worth of models. They also are around 1000points in a box from my poor AOSmathmatics.

The two which draw my attention are: Looncurse and Ogor. Looncurse has a bunch of squighoppers and 7trolls, but it’s the least point wise from my understanding. The fear I have is all the goblin sword and squigs will get tedious very quickly. The Ogor box looks like the best deal with 1200+ points and looks like it has the most heft plastics wise. Lots of Ogors an artillery piece and even a giant. I can even see expanding the force out over time with all the various Man Eaters breaking up the monotony.

The other Option is building on Orruk Ironjaws army. Between my 3D printed Rogue Idol and the Shadespire warband I have a small starting spot. Even though theirs no special Christmas box, I can easily buy two start collecting boxes and a warboss to get a decent sized force (1000+ points), for the same price. Plus the Rogue Idol is 420 on his own and the warband from Shadespire is 80, so I’d be around 1500 points quick. It has a big draw for me and is decently competitive from what I hear.

I guess it will come down to if I can get my hands on the Mawtribes box or not.