House of Stone – 100 Kingdoms Army

It’s a small detail but I like my models to have a bit of heft about them. I believe I have a bit of dyspraxia so dropping things is a regular occurrence for me, and I find it actually easier to hold and manipulate an object that has a bit of weight to it.

So looking at the bases the obvious answer was steel washers! They would add weight and also work with magnets should I decide to go that route.

When designing the base I decided to exaggerate the cobbles as I thought I could add some sand texture between them.

The end result is not too bad!

The process is quick and painless…

I have some PVA that is slightly watered down I just stipple a liberal helping of that onto the base. The surface tension gives a good degree of control so it doesn’t spillover.

I then sprinkle on a liberal amount of sand, and then gently wipe it from the top surface with a wet artists sponge.

Leave to dry and bobs your uncle!

So it took a couple of attempts.

I tried printing flat to the bed but the tolerances are just too tight so it comes out very flat looking

I then decided to raise and angle the whole thing and put a scaffold under it all.

This should help as the forces are spread out more during the print and I’m hoping the details come through…

And guess what! It worked!

I’ve put another on to print and I’ll sleep on it now to see if im happy with it in the morning. The details are quite ‘brutal’ but that may be a good thing when the rest of the basing process is complete… I need to think hhhmmmmm

So I got the bodies clipped out and was about to stick them to the bases, then realized – I haven’t even considered the bases, for a very rough painter like me the bases might be one of the things that actually give my army a little bit of glamour!

So I popped the kettle on and had a cuppa, to mull over my theme and how it might apply to basing.

So I’m going for this whole House of Stone, thing and I can’t help but get a bit of the old Game of Thrones vibe from it all. So I started thinking ‘hey I want to be a bit of a flash git!’ so I’m thinking a rich wealthy city-state a bit like the Lannisters!

So I thought mmmm fighting through the streets might be kind of cool I wonder how I could pull that off easily?

So I hopped into TinkerCad…

Now, this is a work in progress. My experience of 3D printing is its gonna take a fair bit of trial and error, but if I can make this work (and get it to actually print) then I could be churning out bases every few hours, and even play with things like steps, etc.

So I’m gonna have a play with this and pop it on the 3D printer, and I’ll record a little video guide on how I did it … if I can make it work!

So I have my first Milestone laid out before me, you can watch me discuss it with Leo here.

Next Step is to get clipping!

And I’m gonna start with the Militia!

So today I get started and this is my project diary for the next couple of months.

I have to grab and build the following to hit the first milestone

• Noble Lord x1
• Militia x2
• Household Knights x1
• Drillmaster x1

So that’s the next few evenings covered lol.

On top of that, I am going to theme the army around the idea of the House of Stone. (It’s actually loosely based on the Johnstone Clan in the 1600’s in Scotland)