Dipping my toes into Napoleonics

Oof, it’s been some itme since last update. It’d be unfair to blame it all on work being busy lately. As many may recognise, it is difficult to focus on one project. I’ve been planning a new Kill Team and … I’ve bought an FDM printer. So I’ve been messing about printing small terrain pieces and mainly tiny tanks for a ‘real life’ version of the classic GBA game Advance Wars. Now I’ve got the initial novelty of the thing out of my system, I noticed that I should get back to my paper Napoleonics.

Call me lazy, but I found cutting out the bases for the units from cardboard a boring chore. On top of that, the issue with the board bending after being applied with wood glue was still nagging on me. So, I though’t I’d use my 3D printer to fix this issue!

Behold! Technically I designed these myself, but the work was so minimal that it cannot be called ‘design’ really. They are just 1mm high blocks with the right dimension with ever so slightly rounded corners. They print really fast and are churned out at the press of a button!

With my filament being dark green I thought it’d be even more awesome, until I noticed that the dark green border stands out too much when fielded next to the cardboard bases. Also, the dark green really gives the flock on top a darker hue. I am ashamed to say that I proceeded to the perverse art of trying to make the plastic look like cardboard…

This was easier to achieve than I thought, just a brainmatter beige base coat followed up with a sepia wash. All in all, still easier than cutting out the cardboard bases myself.

In the photos above you can see the unpainted and painted plastic bases in the first two, which you can compare to an old photo of my units on coardboard bases.

Not unimportant: the soldiers that got the first set of new bases are the French Grenadiers! Vive l’Empereur!