I’ve got the 3d printer, I’ve got a tonne of models already printed, I’ve printed some gear from One Page Rules. All that’s missing is some cheap wargame terrain to pop onto the battlefield.
Enter the printer again and a couple of aluminium cans fresh from the recycling bin.
Now before we get busy with the cheap wargame terrain, a quick shout out to One Page Rules.
So it’s school holiday time here in Australia for my kids which means there’s never been a better time to find some budget entertainment to a) keep them off the computers and b) help pass the time before they go back to school and peace and quiet reigns across the house once more.
I’ve been aware of the various machinations of One Page Rules for a while now but only now did I print out some rules, get my little bloke across things and broke out my fair collection of both minis and dice. And just two games in having got the basics down pat, we absolutely love it. After the first game he couldn’t wait to try it again, deciding his current army list was more than enough needed to hand me my own rear end.
The game we play is Grimdark Future Firefight which is the quicker and less model heavy version of Grimdark Future and perfect for Jackson and I. The rules are free, they’re easy to get into, we build up an army through the official army builder and have at it, digging out various models from my collection and playing on the back table.
If you’re keen to get into tabletop wargaming and
a) Aren’t sure where to start
b) Find Warhammer 40k a little too complicated and bloated
c) Want a system that works so well with stuff 3d printed
d) Is easy for kids to absorb
Then you owe it to yourself to give OPR a try.
(One thing that helped us both immensely was watching a game of OPR played by someone else. Here GFN Gaming talk you through everything and it makes it so much easier to wrap your head around how easy this is to play, even for beginners.)
But we can’t have a tabletop out the back to battle over without some wargame terrain can we? And if it’s cheap wargame terrain? Even better. Especially if we need to fill a big battlefield, the cheaper the better.
How about a snazzy looking promethium tank to start?
For this all you need is a printer, a can, glue and some paint..
After a recent overnight camping trip with my best mate (hi Heath!) I came back with a spare Brick Lane Lager can which I promptly drank because how wasteful would it be to turn a full can of the lovely stuff into cheap wargame terrain? (I rinsed it out well too, the last thing you need is the battlefield smelling like a brewery.)
Jamiethe beer drinking Gobbo from Heroquest made sure every last drop was well and truly gone before getting down to business.
Next came the printed parts. I managed to download the original design from creator Tijnemanske a couple of years back but I’m struggling to find it online anywhere at the moment (I believe this is his blog but the links are now dead).
However in the world of 3d printing there’s always the chance someone might remix your work which means this bunch of .stl files right here has all the parts I used and by the looks of things, a couple more on top of that.
Ever since I bought my Ender 3 V2 all I’ve read is ‘Resin printers are best for minis, FDM printers (like mine) are best for terrain and scenery.’ Fair enough then, let’s print out some cheap wargame terrain bits to turn a brick lane into a terrain tank!
The parts were printed with just a standard printing profile (no need to go top quality here, it’s a terrain piece!) Things are glued into place with some run of the mill superglue because = it’s a terrain piece.
Now before giving the whole thing a nice black undercoat, I suddenly remembered I had some plastic primer going nowhere in the shed. This turned out to be fortuitous because the Abaddon Black paint was I using wasn’t that keen on sticking to the uncoated beer can but it certainly found some grip once the dura max primer dried.
A spray can version of the paint (or even a working air compressor) would have been ideal in this process of painting up our cheap wargame terrain but I had to make do with a pot of the black stuff and the biggest brush I could find. So I parked myself outside on a lovely day and got down to the business. Things started looking so go, I fired up the printer again and printed out what I needed to turn an empty Billson’s Vodka can into another tank, this one standing up!
To paint up the vent I went through the following order
- Abaddon black undercoat
- Vallejo rust orange around the joins and on random parts to signify rust. Don’t worry if it looks too bright, the paint going over it in layers will dull it down.
- Dry brush plenty of gunmetal on the tank itself and over the vents
- Dry brush a bit of copper/bronze in section so it looks like the metal is oxidising in parts
- Agrax Earthshade around the rust areas for a touch of brown.
For the tall slimmer can, I swapped steps 3 and 4 so it’s less oxidised.
And now we just have to find more pieces that come out just as well as these did..
Because at the moment we’re playing One Page Rules with whatever we can find which includes a box from my old phone, a printed rhino and whatever else within reach!
Still, lack of cheap wargame terrain aside, Jack still can’t wait till we go round again. Although next time we play I’ll have to keep an eye on his Ogre model, left to it’s own devices it can do some tremendous damage to my troops.
Perhaps if I load up on more gobbos.. yes more gobbos, hidden behind even more cheap wargame terrain!
