Having completed an entire podcast on clear-coat (here), I thought I would take Dan's advice an purchase a can of Tamiya TS-80 flat clear-coat. I gave it a try and it went well, having taken that medication (or placebo) I felt all better and have been enjoying the TS-80 flat and "not-so-much-colour-knockback" effect. Recently though I painted up 3 of the exact same mini and I thought it would be worth while doing a more objective test. Below are three soviet squad leaders looking out across the broken cityscape for danger in the form of enemy in grey. Click on the image for the supersized version. The minis are clear-coated as follows:

• One is sprayed with Testers Dullcoat
• One is sprayed with Tamiya TS-80
• One has not had any clear top coat at all

Continuing with my preparation for Moab 2019 I now have my 3d printed soviet medium howitzer painted up and ready to go, what it is missing is anyone to actually fire it. Being a 3D printed model of course it didn't come with any miniatures so off I went to the wargaming store to purchase Zis-2 anti-tank miniature (that I didn't really want) and team in order to get the crew miniatures because you can't buy the crew by themselves. 

Once I get them home, scraped off and ready to start painting I wondered if in fact being such a large gun it was only supposed to have 3 crew like the Zis 2 so I went to the rule book and had a look in fact it needed 4. Oh, there's a problem, in fact needed 5 because one of the main reasons that I took this unit over another Zis 3 was that it can have a spotter*. While I was on the job I had a quick look at my Zis-3 and to my surprise this unit actually has 4 crew as well even though only 3 come with the model!
Looking over the rest of the build I notice that my medium mortars have the required three guys but again no spotters soooo… in fact for my entire army including the Zis 2, Zis 3, medium artillery and 2 medium mortars (not that I would realistically use all of that at once) I am actually missing a total of 8 crew and spotter models so what's a man to do? Bear in mind at this point it's a week till the event and I still have to assemble paint and base all of these!

Solution; clone wars.
Obviously, I wouldn't do this to sell and honestly if I could just purchase the guys I would but I can't so out with mould making silicone and resin and "a while" later I have my 8 extra. I don't have a casting pressure pot and degas chamber so there are some small holes, and a few miscasts for the bin but at least now I'm ready to paint. 50 minute demold allows for a pretty quick turnaround.

The saga continues, now I only have 3 days to paint all of this and finish the rest of the army and "a fun challenge" is starting to wear a bit thin, more to follow.

Images below:

I have always wanted a 3D printer just the same as I have loved the idea of making a mold and casing things. That concept of "Xeroxing" something in 3D really gets me going, perhaps it's the wargamers "more, more, more miniatures" thing where your army is never big enough and certainly one army is never enough. Sadly, I don't have a 3D printer, its not that I couldn't afford to get one I guess, its more like a recovering alcoholic shouldn't have "just one drink". I already have enough in my personal life plus wargaming plus photography plus wargaming-photography, now plus blogging and podcasting and videography as well I really don't need another hobby…. do I…?

However, the 3D printing came in handy in preparation for the Sydney MOAB 2019 wargaming event in which I decided to take an artillery heavy soviet WWII force to play bolt action.

I went to purchase a medium artillery piece from Warlord games, hmm nothing there... OK what about Rubicon, hmm nothing there either. Finally, a general web search for 1/56 scale soviet medium artillery models revealed exactly …. Zero.

With time running out what is a man to do? One thing that my web search did uncover was a free 3D print model of a Soviet A-19 122mm gun.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2774391/

Now, even though I don't have a 3d printer I have a good mate Nathan who has one at his work, and being a fellow soviet player I though an offer of a free gun for him might entice him to print one for each of us, he took the bait and in a day or so I got a message to say the first one was done (sort of).

Now this is Nathans first try with the 3D printer and I don't know how good the free model was as well so I wasn't expecting too much but when I received the model, I was really pleased even though I could see there was a bit or work to be done and that plastic is HARD.

I got stuck in with scraper and sandpaper and a small grinder and some plastic putty and a few hours later I had something was passable. (See the progression of images below.)

So how did I go with my first impression of 3d Printing. On the plus side, in 4 hours I had a completed model exactly what I wanted, for exactly zero dollars. No postage no purchase and no waiting. Looking at the quality well its hard to just because this was a first effort, in the end the quality is passable, but it took a fair amount of work. Nathan says the second one looks a lot better and I assume different printers would give a better (or worse) result. 

I'm looking foreword to the future, if I could have purchased one (with crew) I would have done that instead, but if I need 2 or 3 (or 10!)... rock on 3D printing.

So now I have the gun the next thing I don't have is any crew, the story continues… 

THANKS Nathan!

More images below...

 Join Dan as he assembles and reviews the Med. Town Hall from Things From the Basement. available here;

https://www.thingsfromthebasement.com

This vid contains a tutorial of applying stucco texture to buildings and painting to a high standard for your tabletop- all suitable for a range of periods, scales and games.
We hope you enjoy this; if you do please "Like" , Subscribe and share this with others. Dan & Rex.

This miniature featured in my top minis from 2018 as discussed in this podcast. In fact its not from 2018 at all it was released as the special edition miniature with the Bolt Action V2 German army book (2016?) as shown here. But I received it in 2018 so that good enough for me.

I'm showing it here because:

1. Its great mini
2. It demonstrates how I prime (black first then a zenithal grey primer dusting over the top) check thiis podcast for the "why" of it
3. It demonstrates how I base, at least the starting point in the process, which we will cover in a future podcast and possibly a how to guide
4. It proves I have done something recently
5. And lastly, it *really* is great mini

Beware Vallejo paint colours, just one example….

"Nearly done, just do one final highlight with Green Grey (or was that Grey Green)… ill just do a quick search that should illuminate things?..." See image below...

Moral of the story, make good records of what you used or it's all going to go horribly, horribly wrong. Make it part of your painting workflow.