3d-printable terrain for all your samurai wargaming needs
We have a new Australian retail partner to introduce to you today - OzWargaming, from Victoria.
They're offering our entire samurai collection of terrain, plus the sci-fi Necrontyr and Taui ranges too. Most noticeably, due to some very high-speed printers, they are able to offer some our bigger terrain pieces (the samurai castle and pagodas) at very reasonable prices! Take a look and see what they have for you!
The next big project for the samurai collection, the Samurai Lord's House, is moving closer to completion. The outer and inner walls, and the 3 gates to go with them, are all completed and have been test printed.
There's a photo at the end of this article to show how they look on the table, but for today let's start with some assembly notes about printing the new main gate....
▲ The new main gate starts with a one-piece frame, which is printed upside down and therefore doesn't require any print supports. In fact, all of these wall and gate sections don't require slicer supports.
The large double gates are printed side on, and simply slot into the top pegs. Then you'll need to slide in the two small peg blocks, into the slots at the bottom. That will hold the doors in place, and allow them to swing open and closed.
The photo above shows this construction from the back, so remember that the metal studs go on the front of the gate.
▲ Step 2 is to print the two halves of the beautiful roof structure, which are glued together and slotted into the frame. At this point you'll have a functioning gate, and you could use this model as is for your games (or customised models), but there are a few more bits which can be added to make it even larger.
▲Step 3 is to print the side door sections. These glue into the slots on the side of the frame posts. Note that the small wooden locks should be placed at the back of the gate. These door sections don't open, by the way.
▲ Finally, you can complete your main gate by printing these zig-zag wall sections. The bases are one-piece prints, but each side of the zig-zag wall is actually made from 4 small pieces which should be glued together. The wooden sides should be to the front of the gate model.
▲ Just a quick work-in-progress shot of the walls being modelled, in relation to the main house and buildings. It's quite an imposing entrance!
Okay, let's take a look at the wall models in the set....
▲ We obviously have new straight sections, on the same stone bases. The new walls have a wooden lower half and a plaster top part to the front, and a plaster and timber beam design to the back. These walls are fully textured, and include magnet holes as on many of our other walls designs.
▲ A wall set wouldn't be very useful without corner sections, and the upper walls are again printed in two parts and glued together.
▲ The outer walls (on the left) should be used with those big stone bases, but a lower stone base (on the right) has also been created to work with inner walls of the residence. You'll find that the inner walls butt onto the outer walls quite well, with the two heights of roof tiles fitting neatly.
One feature of the real-life historical residence this is based on, is these great heavy timber supports for the inside of the walls. These print well at 90 degrees to the print bed, but do require a little bit of support for the stone. They're not essential, but I think they're great little details that add some realism to the models. They've been designed to work with both heights of wall, as shown in the photo above.
▲ Okay, it's time to look at the gates included in the set. You've already seen the big main gate above, and usually you'll only want to print one of these, to be located right in front of the main house entrance. The roof is curved and ornate, and intended to intimidate visitors and act as a display of power and status.
▲ The medium gate is a re-work of the existing gate from the Stone Walls set. The wall sections have been modelled to match these new walls.
▲ The small gate is another new model included in this wall set, and is intended to be used inside the compound, as a 60mm section in the inner walls. There's a small stone step to both sides of the sliding door.
I've printed two of these smaller gates, to lead left and right from the main gate entrance to servants' areas.
▲ Here's one last photo for today, to show progress on the layout. This particular layout is the real-life layout of the Inaba Residence this model is based on, but obviously you're free to arrange your layouts as you want to. As you can see it almost covers the width of both tables - a massive 120cm (4ft) wide!
I've combined these new walls to the front with my older plain walls to the right-hand side. There is one main gate roughly in the centre, and two medium gates on the right, leading to the storehouses and gardens. These would be mostly used by servants and gardeners.
It's a little hard to make out, but there are also two small gates in the inner walls, leading left and right from the main gate approach. Just imagine the fights you'll be able to wargame, to hold those vital chokepoints!
Next on the work bench are the storehouses and outbuildings. Watch this space!
A new token cup (or dice cup!) is available today, themed for our samurai collection - the Wooden Sake Cup!
▲ A wooden sake cup that can be used for game tokens or as a dice cup, for use in games such as Test of Honour. The cup measures 90mm x 90mm and 70mm in height. It features a curved bottom inside to allow easy withdrawal of tokens.
▲ The cup comes in 3 designs, all with realistic woodgrain patterns - a blank version, a version with the kanji character for 'bushido' engraved on one side, and a version with space for a 30mm symbol to be placed at the front of the cup.
▲ The 30mm crest symbol for the Yamato Clan (also known as the Imperial symbol) is included in this set.You can also personalise your cup with your choice of clan symbol from this Samurai Clan Symbols Set.
This cup makes a great gift, as you can also emboss your own club logo or name on the front, using free software in only a few minutes. See the blog article on how to emboss your club logo >>.
▲ The new Wooden Sake Cup is available for download from today!
I've printed two versions of the new Wooden Sake Cup, and I've decided to paint one as a brand-new fresh wooden box, and the second as an older wooden box in darker colours.
▲ Here's a great example of how nice the cup looks in fresh wood. Note the slightly darker tones on the dovetail joints at the corners, which I'm going to try and replicate with paint. Also note the kanji characters branded onto the front face, in a dark brown colour.
▲ Here's the second reference photo, which I'll be using to paint the darker age-stained wood colours of my second box. Those lovely warm reddy browns might be hard to replicate, so fingers crossed!
▲ One other example photo for you - this has silver foil on the front, and you could try that (or gold) for the embossed kanji characters or the clan crests? The silver looks very eye-catching on fresh wood.
▲ NEW: I undercoated the new box in white, and used a base colour of this creamy Sand.
OLD: This box was undercoated in black, and base coated with Autumn Brown.
▲ NEW: I basecoated the dovetail joints and the base strip on each side with a richer Camel colour.
OLD: I went very dark for the crosscut wood pieces with Rhinox Brown.
▲ NEW: Next it was time for washes. I covered the whole box in a Sepia wash.
OLD: The box was given a dark brown wash to fill the woodgrain crevices.
▲ NEW: The dovetail joints were given a thin wash in brown, to darken the wood there a little more.
OLD: I decided to give the whole box another wash, this time in Reikland Fleshshade, just to redden the wood a little.
▲ NEW: Time to drybrush! The whole box was carefully drybrushed in the original creamy Sand colour once more, until it lightened up to match the fresh cut wood of my reference photo.
OLD: The box was drybrushed heavily in the same Autumn Brown as the basecoat, but this did make it lose some of the reddish tones a little too much.
▲ NEW: The finishing touch for this box was to carefully paint in the embossed text in Rhinox Hide.
OLD: To bring the wood back to its earlier redder tones, I gave it a light wash in Fuegan Orange, which brightened it up considerably. Then I just needed to (slightly messily) basecoat the clan crest in a Retributor Armour rich gold, and then highlight edges with a more silvery Shining Gold.
And with that, both boxes were finished! So it's off to the photo table to take some nice pics, and the new Wooden Sake Cup should be ready for release later today!
The new Wooden Sake Cup comes in a few different versions, but perhaps the most interesting is the option to emboss your own design on the front?!
▲ Want to emboss your own logo or name on the front, so it looks like it's been engraved or branded on (like on the version on the right)? Read on.....
▲ The only things you'll need (apart from the STL file for the cup itself) are a black and white version of your logo, and some free 3D modelling software.
* For this example, I used the logo of the Shrewsbury Wargames Society, as it's a nice simple design and looks cool. Apologies guys, for borrowing your logo :)
Some handy 3d modelling software comes included free with Windows10, called 3D Builder, and that's what we're going to be using today! The instructions below show the step-by-step process, and although the blog might look a bit long, it's very easy and can be done in as little 3 minutes. Yes, really! If you don't believe me, check out the 3-minute video at the end!
▲ 1. Open Windows 3D Builder, click on New Scene.
▲ 2. Select Insert from the menu at the top, and then the Cube button.
▲ 3. Click on the cube, and then the Scale button at the bottom.
4. Change the X to 90mm, and the Z to 70mm. This is the same size as the front of the box, which makes it easier to position your logo.
▲ 5. Select Edit > Emboss from the menu at the top.
▲ 6. Click on the Pattern button, and select Load to load your black and white logo file. A simple logo design works best for this, as some of the embossed lines will only be 1-2mm wide.
▲ 7. Unclick the Bevel button.
▲ 8. Click on the Scale button at the bottom, and drag an arrow until you have the logo at the right size (about 50mm x 50mm works best).
▲ 9. Click on the Move button, and drag the logo to the centre.
▲ 10. Click the Emboss button at the top to produce the embossed block.
▲ 11. Here's the finished, embossed block. But we have one more step, which is to reverse the shape because we'll be using the negative of this logo to cut out the box...
▲ 12. Click on the green block, and select Object > Mirror to reverse it.
▲ 13. We've completed the first part of the process, so save the file as a 3MF or STL file (e.g. 'embossedlogo.stl').
▲ Part 2
1. Open the blank version of the box in Windows 3D Builder (or maybe a copy of that file, just to be safe?).
▲ 2. Click on Insert > Add.
▲ 3. Select your embossed logo (e.g. 'embossedlogo.stl') from the thumbnail list or use the Load Object button to find and load it.
▲ 4. Click on the Import Model button at the top.
▲ 5. Drag your logo block next to the wooden box.
▲ 6. Place it against the side of the box, until it just touches. It will sort of magnetise itself to the box when it's aligned. You'll be able to see the logo in between the two boxes, from the side.
▲ 7. Click on the Y value, and add 0.5mm in the text box. In the example above, I changed it from -384.33mm to -384.83mm to move it closer. Push the Accept button.
▲ 8. Click on the embossed block, and select Edit > Subtract from the menu at the top. This cuts the logo block out of the front of the wooden box.
▲ 9. Save your wooden embossed box. You're done!
10. Get printing!
And just to show that the whole process in this really looooong blog can actually be completed in only 3 minutes, here's the video:
Samurai Wooden Sake Cup 
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