I’m back from my real job induced short break and ready to cover how my hobby plans for the year have been thrown out the window and replaced with different things and how I’ve had the 3D printer humming since I returned home a week ago.

28mm

Originally I had wanted to spend my 28mm energies this year on WW2 Pacific focused things, particularly IJA and KNIL forces. Well, the IJA force is still on the menu and the KNIL force will arrive at some point this year. However, a new project inserted itself into my hobby queue: Americans. Specifically we at Iron Dice landed on doing Battle of the Bulge for our Adepticon 2025 events. After a last minute scramble this year to get it all done we decided to get a head start this time. With that in mind, Ben already has some late war winter themed Germans, so I jumped at the chance to do some winter themed Americans.

I decided to approach this from as much 3D printing for the infantry as I could. I recently received the files from 3d Breed’s latest 28mm Join or Die Kickstarter and its a bountiful folder of sculpts for both Americans and Germans. Additionally I’d been looking for an excuse to pick up a bunch of American files from RKX Miniatures, so I indulged purchased a half dozen or so of their files for the project. Seeing as we can’t do Bulge without armor, I’ve ordered some Rubicon and Warlord kits from Kickass Mail Order to fill that out. Though I could probably find excellent STL options for printing those my inner scale model loves assembling the occasional kit. We’re probably painting up more than we’ll end up using but we wanted some options available for playtesting. Look for a bespoke article about it soon.

I’ve also been lured back into my French force by way of beautiful releases from both Colonel Muller Miniatures and Counlane Models. Colonel Muller continues to provide excellent French infantry sculpts while Counlane Models has brought a variety of STL armor releases to the table for the heavier support options. I’ve been printing a bunch, not sure when I’ll get around to painting them though.

15mm

My 15mm Panzer Grenadier project has been chugging along slowly since I originally wrote about it here. At this point I have all the core platoon infantry options assembled and primed, with a number of vehicles for it assembled. Soon I’ll start putting paint on minis and hopefully it’ll go quick (that’s the claim made by 15mm painting friends at least).

Tiny Planes

Ah, my favorite subject. I continue to work on planes here and there for different things. I painted a lot of them for Adepticon so I needed a short break…. or did I just need a different subject? A weekend at Adepticon involved flying some tiny jets around in various Vietnam and Korea scenarios thanks to the guys at Lead Pursuit Podcast. Doug seems to have infected me with a lust for small jets and so away to the printer I went recently. Truthfully I picked up Missile Threat last year with this intention, and now I have motivation to get some planes done for it and play some games. I decided a nice easy intro to the rules would be one of the nifty parts of Missile Threat; the Mercenary Campaign system. Essentially you fly whatever you can afford from semi-randomized tables of planes. I’ll go over it in a Missile Threat article sometime, but the quick and dirty is my two mercenary pilots bought two F-86 Sabres for some action over Southeast Asia in the 1960s. Luckily I had a few Sabres already printed.

My Bag the Hun campaign will also resume as soon as I have a chance to clear off my gaming table and get a game in. I have some planes I painted for it over the winter that I’m eager to get on the table.

Star Wars?

Ben is a master at pulling me away to side projects, this one just happens to be a long time ago and in a galaxy far, far away. Ben has been after the idea of some sort of skirmish size Star Wars action for a while, and recently tempted me by showing me some great sculpts and well, I’ve printed, assembled, and primed six of what amounts to clone trooper remnants (ed. – Just as planned…). I’m not sure where it’s headed from here or even what rules we’re using so…. we’ll see what happens next.

Age of Sigmar

My first wargame was a Games Workshop title, which is pretty common in wargaming. For me it was Age of Sigmar in early 2016 (also known as just a few months ago…right?. I played it hot and heavy until that whole COVID-19 thing pretty well tanked the local scene. Then the third edition came out and I wasn’t really enthused about it so it got shelved for…all this historical stuff. I still have an Ogor Mawtribes (Ogre Kingdoms for those of you from the before-times) army in the cabinet, and occasionally grab and paint something for it. This time the new(ish) Gorger Mawpack models were too good to pass up. They replaced a well-aged sculpt with a five model kit in GW’s current stylings. Personally I think the Age of Sigmar models are some of GW’s best so I’m excited to paint up another unit. Fourth edition is being previewed and seems to be an improvement, so maybe I’ll even play a game or two this summer.

---

That’s all I have for now, but I’m planning to return to regular authorship so you’ll hear (see? read?) more from me soon.
-Evan