3D Printed 15mm Raketenjagdpanzer Jaguar 1

While browsing through the net I found this very great collection of 3D printable cold war vehicles at Thingiverse and thought, maybe I could try to print one or two of them, just to check how good our cheap little Anet A8 would handle them.

Since this is a very low-end printer, I would not be surprised if the finished print would look crappy. But as you may have guessed this time the things went fine. I choosed this little thing, the Raketenjagdpanzer Jaguar 1, for a first try.

The piece directly from the printer. It took 3 1/2 hours to print and weights only 12 grams. I did not calculate the energy cost but the material cost for the Jaguar 1 is arround 25 cent which is not much, compared to the 20 Euro we paid for the whole filamentspool of 1000 gram.

I would like to know how many modelbuilders are using 3D printing technology since it is effordable for almost everyone. I think our A8 costed 250 Euro, including all extra parts, the printer itself was at 150 Euro, and this was 1 1/2 years ago. Nowadays you should get better models for this price.

But as I wrote before in previous posts, even this low-class 3D printer makes so many things possible. Maybe one day you will see the glorious troops of NOD defeating their foes in a game of TANKS.

After a cleanup the Jaguar is ready to get some paint. The quality and the grade of detail is good. I had nothing more to do then to remove the residue. A rought check of the measurements shows that the models height and width are in scale but its hull is 3 mm too short.

But I do not care about this, it would only be seen with another 1:100 Jaguar, e.g. from Battlefront, in direct comparison, that is why I definitively will print more vehicles from this collection.

As you have seen on the first picture of this posting, the tank has already got its paintjob. More pictures of finished Raketenjagdpanzers Jaguar 1 will follow when my mate Olli has painted his model.

Maybe I already made and uploaded a new custom unit for "TANKS The Modern Age" inspired from this, we will see in the later evening ;) when I will be compiling some future posts, but do not ask what I will be posting later, I am still unsure about it.

Postapocalyptic Car: Officer Friendly

Originally I wanted to get a copy of Gaslands last month, but I read that the new updated version will arrive this Fall. So I will wait some more months, hoping that also a German version of the game will be published.

But I already got some Hot Wheels from the 1 Eurostore and started to build my first car for Gaslands or other games, there are much car battle games, some free rulesets can be found at http://www.freewargamesrules.co.uk/.

This one was a nice distraction from always building warmachinery, even when it is some kind of it, too. I call it Officer Friendly, manned by the two ex-officers Law & Order.

I had a nice time modding this car. It got 2 Maxim machine guns from Escis ww2 Russians installed to the hood, a new set of wheels and some armourplates made from plastic.

Law, the driver which can not be seen, is a Hong Kong (?) clone of an Africa corps officer, while his co-worker is a cheap clone of the officer from Matchbox' German infantry set.

The original paint of the car was scratched, then the scratches and the new parts got painted in various rusty red and brown tones with minial steelcolored highlighting, also different washes were used. The figures got their uniforms Ultramarines Blue painted.

A layer of matte varnish was the final step after I added some Green Earth pigments by Vallejo.

Even when I still do not own a copy of Gaslands, I decided to host a car war game on this years birthday. I already have found a ruleset which I will modify heavily, in an old Warhammer Chronicles book I found simple rules for steamtank destruction derby, this should offer a nice basis.

But don't tell GW.

First Sculpting Try

Remember my method to make camouflage nets for tanks some days ago, when I had a little unused rest of Greenstuff laying in front of me.
I tried to create something out of it. To be honest, it was not my very first attempt to sculpt, some of the fur from this undead wolves and a NSFW thingie were made before, but this time I wanted to create something different.

As you can see, the back of the "figure" had not seen any sculpting tool, but as also the front did not, it was all done with the needle from the post I mentioned in the beginning.

Making this thing, I call him "Crappy from Innsmouth", took some efford, but I like it and strangely, somehow I am a little proud this piece.

Sure, he is slightly deformed, has no nose and looks more like Pepe the frog with hair than a human, but you can easily see, that it should show something human. Compared to a 1:72 mini and a tank from that scale, hmm, just find your own opinion, but I like it.

Now I will see what is next to do with Crappy, maybe I should paint him, or I could try to dublicate this little sucker with the method I used to dublicate stuff twice.

TANKS The Modern Age: Custom Unit #4

After I took a closer look at the BTR-80 apc by Zvezda in the last posting, I made a custom unit card for it, as I did for the Zvezda M2 Bradley too. Once again a new custom unit card for "TANKS The Modern Age" was created.

This new unit is a reskin of the US LAV-25, with the same values, it offers a high initiative AA unit. Compared to the original tank, the values are not accurate, but I wanted to give the Soviet player a new unit as I did for the US forces before. I think you can not have enough choices to choose from.

As the 3 units I created before this one, you can find the PDF file with the new card at my google drive by following this link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YcvFV4eeOjZTdmv7-6RmBngo77FHWbvw/view?usp=sharing

For the moment that are all custom units that I created until now. To give you a litte foresight, there may follow a German artillery unit in the future, but for the German version of the M109 I will have to do some modifications to the barrel of the Zvezda M109 kit.

Zvezda 1:100 Soviet Personnel Carrier BTR-80

A closer look at the Soviet BTR-80 armoured personell carrier model kit. This 1:100 kit is produced by the Russian manufacturer Zvezda for their game "Hot War - Battle for Oil". But as all 1:00 Zvezda model kits, this model could be used for any game with a matching setting.

As also the Bradley, I got this one for a discounted price. So let us see, what Zvezda has to offer with this modelkit:

The kit comes in 2 sprues. The cast is good, without any issues. A minimal amount of mouldlines has to be removed, but there are no sinkholes. 

This BTR-80 is made up from only 8 parts plus the 8 roadwheels, the turret is casted as a single piece.

Also included is a set of generic numeric decals. These decals are printed in good quality, there where no issues when they were applied.

Note that this is a different decal sheet than the sheet included in the 122mm "Gvozdika" howitzer.

After a look at the parts, it was time to get this model built:

Building this tank took me about half an hour. See the finished model on the pictures above, also you can see all tools which I used to complete this kit.

This is another nice kit by Zvezda. It could be built without the use of glue, the fit of the parts without glue is excellent. There are 2 things I do not like about this kit, first, the wheelhubs have almost no detail. Second, you will have to careful with the turret, the main gun is very fragile, but this is a matter of scale.

Overall, this is another nice kit from this range. 

But be aware, some of the "Hot War - Battle for Oil" kits are not as nice as the kits I already showed in previous closer looks at.