I’m proud to announce our 3D printable Outpost Utility kit is available as part of the DriveThruRPG ‘AU Brushfire Relief Charity Bundles‘.
Every single penny of sales from these bundles goes to two Aussie Charities:
Disaster Relief and Recovery – Australia Red Cross
Bushfire Emergency – World Wildlife Fund of Australia
Check the bundles out here! https://www.drivethrurpg.com/promo.php
Crooked Dice were kind enough to send me copies of the resin Hover Car they’re selling based on my design. They’re available on the Crooked Dice site here, and here for 16GBP each. Here’s a quick review of the sample vehicles I received and photographed.
First I have to say these are lovely resin casts. They’re clean, have minimal flashing that’s easy to trim or file away and go together well. The parts are also very crisp, and capture all of the detail from the original 3D designs. Some minor changes have been made to improve the ease of casting – they are very subtle though and I only noticed them because I was comparing them to 3D prints of the original files.
Each car consists of 7 separate parts. Three of them are new ‘jet exhaust’ pieces that Crooked Dice created for the vehicles. They fit into the underbody and the front vents and give the vehicle a solid base as well as a lovely flying look on the table. The remaining parts are the main body, a separate front bumper and the jet nozzles that sit in the front wheel wells. The bumper is separate because that’s the pour point for the resin I believe.
I’m impressed at how successfully Crooked Dice converted a set of 3D .STL files into a physical model, particularly since I was not considering casting when designing the original files. It’s a testament to the skill of their design and casting folks, particularly when you see they managed to capture all the detail, including the (possibly excessive) underbody with no casting issues!
I’m a little biased of course, but I would definitely recommend these resin vehicles if you need some sci-fi vehicles. I also have to say the Crooked Dice folks are a pleasure to deal with generally too, and their customer support is excellent.
The Military Truck kit is now available on DriveThruRPG.
This kit lets you build a 28mm-32mm scale SciFi Military transport vehicle that comes with several options for the cabin, back tray, and chassis. The tray walls and tail are also hinged so they can be opened.
The Military truck parts also works with all our other released Truck kits.
Mixing and matching the parts in each kit allows you to build even more vehicles. For example, here’s the Military Truck cabin combined with the Prospector Rover parts.
Crooked Dice Design Studio have licensed our latest vehicle release, the Cyberpunk Hover Car. If you’ve reached us via their Colony 87 Kickstarter, the rest of our Sci Fi Vehicle collection is available on DriveThruRPG as well. These are a series of 28mm scale vehicles that are designed for easy printing using home FDM printers for your Sci Fi wargame tabletop.
I commented at the end of the Vendorum review that Titan Terrain’s Factorum also looked quite tempting. I splurged and bought their larger Warehouse building instead. This building is also part of a good bundle deal Titan Terrain offer.
The above photo shows you my final, assembled Warehouse and it is a commanding piece of terrain which will make a great centrepiece to any industrial Sci-Fi or Cyberpunk 28mm table. It’s around 45cm long and 30cm at the widest point, and from above it’s roughly ‘L’ shaped.
This photo shows the 10 sheets of laser cut MDF and corrugated cardboard that comes in the kit. It’s a fairly hefty package and I think it’s good value for the price of NZ$54.90 (excluding shipping, at time of review).
Instructions are emailed separately as a PDF which shows how it all goes together. This is a reasonably large build and it took me around 4 hours to assemble. That does include giving the glue time to bond the MDF parts together. You’ll need some PVA, a sharp Xacto and a decent file or scrap of sandpaper to clean off the small cut tabs. I also had a bag of long rubber bands handy to hold the large pieces together while the glue cured. Painter’s masking tape also works well to keep things together temporarily.
The build steps are as you expect: there are two basic structures in the ‘L’ shape which you assemble and then join together. Additional pieces add surface detailing, and there’s a sheet of white trim parts including door frames, control panels, and building lights.
One side of the finished building includes a long loading dock with two large roller doors, and a smaller garage door (shown above), and the other side (shown here) features a back door and the building generator. Although it occurs to me you could turn that generator into a sort of back office/staff room if you painted the gridded side with windows. The building has three separate ladders to get to the roof area, so folks with sniper figures will be happy with the commanding view from the top. The corrugated cardboard also helps to hold figures in place on the sloped roofs as well.
Overall I think a very pleasing piece of terrain for a reasonable price, and I’m looking forward to painting it up and gaming over it.
The Cyberpunk HoverCar kit is available on DriveThruRPG now.
This kit lets you build two mix-and-match Cyberpunk Hover cars for your 28mm sci-fi tabletop. It’s the second kit in a series of street vehicles I’m working on, and the parts also mix with the Cyberpunk Compact Car kit for even more variety.
The next kit I’m working to produce in this series will be either a sci-fi convertable with seating for 28mm or 1/56th figures, or a sci-fi urban taxicab.
I’ve always been a huge Blade Runner fan, so it was natural to try and take the Compact Car design and turn it into a ‘spinner’ style flying car. Unfortunately it turns out I’m not Syd Mead and after struggling with trying to get a spinner design working that didn’t look odd, or refused to gel properly in Fusion 360 I started working on a more traditional hover car.
Years of watching 80’s sci-fi movies like The Last Starfighter, Back to the Future, and Total Recall must have sunk in because a more traditional flying car just seemed to come together in Fusion 360 without difficulty. It started with a snub-nosed bumper, and a set of front hover pods that replaced the wheels and grew from there into the two vehicles I plan to release this weekend as a new kit.
Designing stuff is interesting. I think if you find yourself having to force a design, or you struggle to make progress it’s often a sign the concept is flawed, or not well thought out to begin with. My Fusion 360 account is littered with half complete or abandoned projects – which I never delete because I tend to raid them for parts and other sub-components – something Fusion 360’s CAD setup supports fairly well.
I’ve been painting test versions of the vehicles this week and just need to get a set of decent photos to show them off on DriveThruRPG.
Kim from Kreative Scenery has just released a laser cut 28mm scale Gothic Office Building. He was kind enough to give me a discounted copy to review here.
The kit comes as a series of pre-cut 3mm MDF pieces, and a set of 3D-printed parts for the window and door detailing. This first photo shows my assembled kit and the gray parts were 3D printed. They sit very nicely into the laser cut MDF framing, and Kim sensibly recommends you paint them separately before gluing them into place.
The parts are fully cut, which means the larger pieces are shipped loose in a box, and the smaller pieces included in a set of envelopes. This reduces the shipping weight for international buyers and means you can build straight out of the box using the emailed instructions. You can see the pieces I’ve scattered across my building table in this photo. The parts were assembled with PVA, with any excess being removed with a damp brush. That’s why some of the MDF looks a little pre-stained in these photos.
The build instructions are easy to follow, the pieces go together well and the resulting building is strong and light. It’s built in three sections: a ground floor, a lift-off middle floor, and roof. Each section is also built in two stages, the basic structure and then a layer of exterior detailing. This photo shows the basic structure prior to adding the roof and external detailing. There’s plenty of space inside too which means you could go to town with interior detailing if you’re playing skirmish games using the building.
Overall the finished building looks good. It definitely has the High Gothic Warhammer 40k feel but at the same time is restrained enough to fit onto pretty much any sci-fi table as an Administrative, Office or Apartment building. I could also see it sneaking onto a modern or WWII table with a few additional period buildings around it. The combination of the basic MDF structure, the external MDF detailing and the finer 3D printed window frames combine very nicely in the finished builing.
The front and back of the building are detailed differently as well which is a nice touch. It gives you two options to use depending on how you position the building on your table and also means you can place two of the same building next to each other with different facades. The front shown above has a nicely recessed doorway, with a set of smaller overhead windows, while the rear has a more industrial feel with a roller door and smaller side window.
Overall a very nice kit, that builds into a strong building that will look great on your table once painted.
The Cyberpunk Compact Car kit is available on DriveThruRPG now.
This kit lets you build two mix-and-match Cyberpunk Compact cars for your 28mm sci-fi tabletop. It’s also the first kit in a new series of street vehicles I’m working on. The street vehicles kits will work together with each other in the same way my earlier truck kits do, giving you more vehicle options with each kit purchased.
The next kit I’m working to produce in this series will be a flying / hover style sci-fi car that will include a stand. I’m also planning a police style cruiser and urban taxicab in the series.
David at ERA Warfare has released his 28mm 3D Printable Mgebrov-Renault Armored Car, and I had the pleasure of test printing and painting one for him. It’s available on DriveThru RPG now.
The Mgebrov-Renault is an early armored-car, and around 11 were built in 1915. It is an interesting design both from a historical, and a war gaming point of view. I think David’s done a great job of capturing the unique look of the historical vehicle – and the detailing including rivets and hatchwork prints surprsingly well on an FDM 3D printer.
I printed this on my Creality Ender 3 with a mixture of PLA from Wanhao and eSun. Rivet counters should be happy with the accurate design, and the vehicle also looks great on a Pulp or 30’s war gaming table. That’s why I couldn’t resist photographing it next to some of my own Pulp collection. He has plans to work up some more crazy Russian WWI/inter-war vehicles which I’m looking forward getting onto the paint station as well.
