Welcome 2026!
Welcome 2026! I’ve survived my first week of work back after my vacation (actually it really wasn’t so bad - this year’s annual end of year break actually did what it was supposed to and recharged/reset my burnout a little bit). I’m somehow still ill? Whatever my household caught it lasts a loooooong time - some sort of annoying virus that just won’t go away ALL the way. Regardless, there has been quite a bit of hobby going on here with some big plans for running a game later in the month as well!
First off the biggest news. Back in the fall my Elegoo Jupiter died in a dramatic tank explosion accident. My wife surprised me on Hearth’s Warming (which is Christmas for the non-bronies) with a new Elegoo Saturn 16k Ultra! Now this thing is a small downgrade in print bed size but after discussing with my other 3d printing friend it seems like the tradeoff in ease of use and printer lifetime is worth the sacrifice. Setting this up was easy - unbox, plug in, adjust my slicer, hit print. I didn’t even do a benchmark (bad me I know) and went straight into a “real” production print. The autoleveling works extremely well - I’m not kidding when I say it was like 10 minutes from “open box” to “real print running” which is a huge change from what I am used to. The heated resin tank is a nice addition as well - I do think its made a difference in getting consistent prints. So far I’ve run several things off it (bunch of tanks, some terrain, a battlefleet gothic fleet) with zero issues (to say nothing of failures). Highly recommend if you are in the market for a first printer or a hundredth printer.
The machine. Slick. You’ll note if you are a longtime reader my printing setup has moved - the smaller printer means I can fit it in a more convenient spot. The webcam integration is pretty nice too - love being able to creep on my prints.
The first thing I printed were 3 T-64 tanks. Complex files with multiple parts. Handled it wonderfully. Here are the finished products. I must confess I spent a lot of time (like….a LOT of time) agonizing over which variant to print. I went with an early model (the A’s) but without the thermal sleeve to go with the “late 60s” theme my Cold War collection targets. These guys will hopefully hit the table soon because I have signed up to run a game at my hobby store’s winter festival at the end of the month! Its going to be a big chunk of American M48s and M103s with helo and “starship” support against a swarm of T-62s, IS-3s, and these three monsters. Should hopefully be fun! I’ve written up some optional rules for overwatch and more granular armor angles to make the base flames of war engine a little more interesting.
I’ve basically finished my terrain project as well, this is the full board I’ll be bringing with me to run the game on. I really rate the Cigar Box battle mat - the cloth is lovely and I adore how the hills look (much more natural than 3 dimensional hills). Will definitely consider more of their mats in the future!
Finished up this small Soviet artillery battery. Delightful new BF plastics. Really like all the extra kit you get like the staff table and the ammo boxes - helps sell the piece as a mini diorama.
Finally, I just finished reading the first novel in the Scouring series by Black Library (Ashes of the Imperium). I’ll save a detailed review for a future blog post but the Ultramarines are very much center stage in that story and it got me motivated to paint some Warhammer for a change from historicals. My Ultras lack a terminator chaplain so I decided to fix that.
Quite happy with how he turned out. I will probably print more Warhammer off of my slick new printer just because of how much I enjoy painting it! Perhaps I should do a Chaos character next to keep the balance….
This was quite a busy post! Hope you enjoyed and as always thanks for reading. I’ll see about putting together a painting tutorial for my method of doing 15mm Soviet armor since I’ve done so much of it lately and I’m quite happy with the results.