Stormbreaker Half-Track, part 1.

In last month's Hobby Spending review, I mentioned that I had taken a punt on a 3D printed Half-Track off of eBay.

The item in question arrived safe and sound and I've been busy working on it, so decided to document it here.

For reference, the Stormbreaker kit is a 3D printed proxy of the Games Workshop Taurox transport for the Imperial guard (Astra Militarum for you new people):

I mentioned that it was safe and sound, because after looking at reviews from other sellers, and a previous experience with a seller on Etsy, it can be something of a shot in the dark as to whether you're going to get your item in a timely fashion or even at all.

Onto the kit, very well produced and packaged, my only gripe here is the amount of plastic used to send it in, nearly every part was individually wrapped with plastic, if you're environmentally conscious this may be a turn off for you:

Getting the rear hull/transport piece out of the bag, it's very nicely printed, and rather refreshingly cured and dry!

I've had prints before which have leaked as I've taken them out of the box and I've had to then take time rinsing everything off and leaving it to finish curing for a few days in a sunny window:

Hollowed out to save resin and weight, you can see the drainage holes, a thorough check of these ensured non of the leakage issues I'd mentioned above.

I was very impressed:

You can just make out the bobbling texture on the underside of the hull, this is where the support raft will have been and torn away after printing.

It leaves this sort of texture, but being well planned and on the underside of the hull is a blessing as I don't have to clear it up:

The full kit laid out on the cutting mat.

A reasonable number of parts and shouldn't take too long to put together:

A few details comparisons now, obviously the company cannot use the Games Workshop Aquilla symbol, so here is their "winged skull":

Likewise the Comms Array next to a GW Sentinel version:

And Autocannon, again from a GW Sentinel:

Getting into the assembly, the axles and motion units all have a T shaped connection so that you cannot assemble them upside down, hard to do, but I know someone who probably could:

And then there was this piece which took me a little while to figure out what it was for and why it wasn't just moulded straight onto the vehicle:

After looking at the photo of the kit on eBay, I realised that the other versions of this tank come with a Missile Launcher which gets attached here, and this is just a blanking plate to cover the slot:

The main parts assembled, the turret and motion units are complete, I'm leaving the Bullbar loose for painting, but wait...:

Drainage holes, in an awkward place!

I'm not sure if there was meant to be something to fit there or not as I didn't have anymore pieces in the box, but we can't leave a pair of holes in the main hull.

Out with the plasticard then, a 20thou section cut and glued into the space, bent into shape by pressing the front hull against it:

Now most of the kit was in fantastic condition, no warpage or misprints that I could see, then I got to the rear exhausts:

The kit is meant to have two rear exhaust stacks, one on either side of the vehicle, however in the photo above, one was slightly misprinted and wouldn't fit in the mounting hole, and would have been at the wrong angle hanging off the tank entirely.

I just added the correct on, as below, and will cover the mounting place for the misprinted one with some stowage.

The magnet in the photo above, I added myself, it doesn't come with the kit.

I was trying to be clever and thought I'd magnetise the Hotshot Lasgun Arrays to the side, as their mounting lugs were misprinted and wouldn't fit into the tank, also I could swap then off it needed, etc.

Whilst it worked, I'm not entirely happy with how I mounted the magnets, so I may ditch the weapons and just add stowage around the rear moving forward:

Finally, as a friend said that the above photo looked almost epic scale (6-8mm), I took a scale shot with my Vanquisher and a couple of Catachan Guardsmen to give a sense of the scale: 

I'm impressed with the tank itself and the service from the seller, as said something it can be a bit of a gamble buying 3D printed as sellers often don't cure or drain things properly and I've seen too many horror stories for it to be a coincidence...

There was no residue or resin leakage at all with this kit straight out of the box and it went together in about an hour, whilst cooking dinner as well.

There are a few things, such as the misprints on the exhaust and Lasgun Arrays, and the drainage holes which I had to cover, I'm not sure if i was missing parts there. 

The details on the track unit are a little soft if I'm getting REALLY picky, but I can live with that as it's a gaming piece.

When compared to a plastic kit, I don't think ANY 3D printer will be replacing them for quality, the main draw I find is cost:

Games Workshop Taurox - £35*

Stormbreaker Half-Track - £15*

I purchased this on a special offer from the seller for £11.40, which was less then the cost of a pub lunch*!

I'll provide a link to Ruins of Ashelnia the seller, and would highly recommend them given the service i have seen so far, it took about a week, maybe ten days in total from placing the order to being delivered to my door, which again, is very reasonable and impressive turnaround time as i imagine that these are printed to order, not kept lying around on shelves waiting.

Also, after being in contact with the guys who run the store, they informed me that the original al STL design comes from Surrogate Miniatures, who make many proxy models for various games.

I am tempted to go back and order a couple of other bits, looking at their Chaos Warlord kit in particular! I wonder if they have any Tyranid offerings?

I'll do a follow up post once I've detailed the tank to match my Vanquisher and gotten it painted, as it's going to join the armoured squadron.

Until next time, have nice day...

*At the time of writing.

The Second 3D Print Paint Challenge.

 

At the beginning of the year I ran a painting challenge for myself, Cardboard Fortress and Chris, where we all had a box of three mini's, each of which was guaranteed to have the same mini inside it.

The aim of this was for us all to paint the same model and then we could look at the different painting styles we all chose to use, and complete a group project together.

This is the second running of this type of challenge and I've managed to get a couple more participants this time.

The mini in question this time was the Pin-Up Sergeant by Across the Realms and we took advantage of Duncan's 3D printer to get a bunch printed, then I just had to mail them out to folks who said they were interested in taking part.

My own undercoated version is rather fuzzily pictured here:

I chose to add a couple of sandbags to the base to add interest, added some sand for ground cover and then primed the lot with white.

I started to think about possible themes to paint her and was eyeing my Catachan shelf in my display cabinet with a thought to have her match them.

Inspiration hit thought when a trailer for Street Fighter 6 popped up on the switch as I was waiting for Legend of Zelda to finish updating.

Cammy was a particular favourite character and the mini does look a bit like her:

No, not from the damned awful movie...the game version you dolt, although i can look at Kylie Minogue in that outfit all day.

Now as time went on, she had several different costumes, but the two which most stand out are NATO Cammy with the classic Green and Red:

And Brainwashed Shadaloo Criminal Syndicate Cammy, where she changed to blue, gained a watch cap instead of the beret, and wore a yellow neck tie...

Seeing as I was aiming for her to match somewhat with the Catachan's, I went with the classic NATO Cammy scheme with the green and red combo.

Now the miniature has a lot more armour plates on her then the Street Fighter character, so I chose to paint all of those red, her "fatigues" are painting in the greens unused for the Catachan's, then just picked out weapons with black and silver.

She gained one spot of gold for her cap badge, and her blonde hair and pale skin tone finished her off:

Grass tufts around the sandbags and painting the base rim black were all that was left to finish the model entirely.

I think she's come out rather well personally, and she definitely matches the character art I was working with as a reference, perhaps a little too much red in hindsight, but it works.

Onto other people's efforts now, and first up we have Cardboard Fortress:

The red fatigues contrasted with the blue weapons makes her certainly stand out.

I like how we had the same idea to paint the armour plates in a different colour entirely, dark grey in this case.

(I must ask him for his recipe of blonde hair, as this one looks good).

Next up is Duncan:

With a dark subdued colour scheme, the bright spot being her pink hair.

I know Duncan is a big fan of 2000AD, so could she be Tank Girl inspired?

The banner is taken from some other 3D prints he did for me and this was a misprint, where the tear is. It certainly adds a different take on the miniature which neither myself nor Cardboard Fortress used which makes this mini unique and one of the reasons why I organise this paint challenge.

We have DaemonForge next:

He's gone for a darker skin tone which is a nice change and the dark fatigues and armour contrast well with the desert base.

I do like the classic GW throwback with the hazard stripes on the chainsword, love the effort there.

And finally we have Chris's effort:

Chris's miniature is quite close to my own however he's used a Magenta paint for the armour (which he was mentioning he recently bought and wanted to use). 

Like DaemonForge he's also used a darker skin tone and gone for full pant fatigues.

So there is everyone's efforts with this free STL, again it's been nice to compare and contrast everyone's different painting style, for example compare the two skin schemes between mine and Cardboard Fortress.

I stippled lighter skin colours over a base of Guilliman Flesh contrast, whereas his looks like a classic lining technique over a shadowed base colour (I may be wrong on this, he'll correct me in the comments I'm sure).

I also find it interesting the different scales of colour shades we used, mine and Fortress are quite bright, Duncan and Forge are very dark and moody when compared against ours, and Chris' mini uses his usual desatured palette.

No doubt we'll do this again, maybe next summer or maybe a bit later in the year.

Until next time, have nice day...