What did you end up getting?

[Marshal Mittens]

9 hours ago, frankendoodle65 said:

I just got the Age of Darkness box set, or that was the plan anyway...

I found some great shoulder pads and heads on shapeways, some resin city bases on eBay and some kromlech and spellcrow bits to jazz up my Sons of Horus. I'm scared to do the maths but I think the accessories cost more than the boxset did in the first place! 

I have spent more on Red Warden stuff from shapeways than I have on the models they are going on, to be sure, for my Sons of Horus. 

[Orange Knight]

I bought the starter set, a Kratos tank, and various FW characters.

I have just ordered Guilliman, and am tempted to invest in 10 Invectarus Suzerains - but the price of those 10 models is almost the same as the entire starter set!

[Arkhanist]

14 minutes ago, Marshall Mittens said:

I have spent more on Red Warden stuff from shapeways than I have on the models they are going on, to be sure, for my Sons of Horus. 

My shapeways bills was precisely why I bought a 3d printer - one bill pretty much paid for it... I've been able to print far more bits for that than I could have ever afforded from shapeways and ebay this last year. Red Warden even sells additional STLs on cults3d that don't make it to shapeways, which is just deadly. I've also been getting into epicbasing.com for pretty cool basing bits now, and though they sell pre-printed bits, it's way cheaper to print yourself...

Edited June 29, 2022 by Arkhanist

[frankendoodle65]

@Marshall Mittens and @Arkhanist, it's a relief to know it's not just me getting carried away with shapeways! I must admit I've thought about looking into 3d printers, but honestly it seems like there's a lot of research to do and a pretty steep learning curve and I just don't have the time or mental energy for it at the moment, so for now I'm happy to stick with shapeways. 

[Arkhanist]

17 minutes ago, frankendoodle65 said:

@Marshall Mittens and @Arkhanist, it's a relief to know it's not just me getting carried away with shapeways! I must admit I've thought about looking into 3d printers, but honestly it seems like there's a lot of research to do and a pretty steep learning curve and I just don't have the time or mental energy for it at the moment, so for now I'm happy to stick with shapeways. 

They're not the cheapest to get into definitely, and you are working with somewhat hazardous liquid resin (gloves and a spot with good ventilation are an absolute must), but the learning curve isn't that steep these days with a modern budget printer like a mars 3/mars 3 pro, or the mars 2 if you're on a tight budget. I'd put it about the same cost as getting into  airbrushing with a reasonable brush, and a bit less complex to learn - I picked up all I needed for reliable printing in the first month. But it's definitely not at the 'unbox and go' stage quite yet.

[frankendoodle65]

@Arkhanist it's funny you compare it to airbrushing, I've got similar feelings with that too! From my understanding I'd consider airbrushing and 3d printing to be pretty advanced techniques, and just looking into the very basics of either totally overwhelms me so I'm happy to keep things simple for now - I don't have a lot of hobby time these days so I like to stick to what I know and have fun with it. 

 

Sorry to derail the thread so much, it's an interesting conversation to have though and I'd be curious to see if others feel the same way as me. Maybe we need an airbrushing and 3d printing for dummies thread somewhere on the forum!

[infyrana]

2 hours ago, Orange Knight said:

I bought the starter set, a Kratos tank, and various FW characters.

I have just ordered Guilliman, and am tempted to invest in 10 Invectarus Suzerains - but the price of those 10 models is almost the same as the entire starter set!

The box is cheaper by the cost of Fafnir than 10 Suz's.  I am currently waiting on breachers for conversion, maybe using the upgrade heads and shoulders to differentiate them along with the paint scheme.  This fits my background for my UM contingent not to have fancy ornate kit.  A set of praetor breacher shields would be cheaper on the mkiv but I worry the arms would be too small.

Bring on the Breachers so I can finalise my forces!

[Arkhanist]

51 minutes ago, frankendoodle65 said:

@Arkhanist it's funny you compare it to airbrushing, I've got similar feelings with that too! From my understanding I'd consider airbrushing and 3d printing to be pretty advanced techniques, and just looking into the very basics of either totally overwhelms me so I'm happy to keep things simple for now - I don't have a lot of hobby time these days so I like to stick to what I know and have fun with it. 

 

Sorry to derail the thread so much, it's an interesting conversation to have though and I'd be curious to see if others feel the same way as me. Maybe we need an airbrushing and 3d printing for dummies thread somewhere on the forum!

Last I checked, the B&C rules would consider a beginners thread on resin 3d printing as out of scope and off-topic; but we can discuss printing as it applies specifically to 40k models (in this case how to cheaply get a bunch of legion-specific bits to glow up the AoD box!), and obviously bearing in mind GW copyright etc. They recommend linking to external sites instead.

This is a decent guide for beginners. I disagree slightly on the best budget printer (the sonic 4k has been superseded since it was written!), but they also release new ones so frequently advice does quickly get of date on that. All3dp keeps on top of reviews for printers, so I'd use them for recommendation of best budget printers at a given time. This list is a good starting point for suitable resins for printing 40k minis and bits - what is best for you will depend upon local temperature, tolerance/ventilation for smells (some resins offgas a lot of VOC like vinyl paint and smell as much; others are near odourless) and price vs robustness of the models, but they all print at much the same quality. Solid resin is safe to handle (but not eat off), but liquid resin does definitely need care - as does IPA, usually used to wash the prints. The reddit community printedwarhammer is a good place for inspiration, though they lean towards printing whole models rather than conversion bits.

Trust me, I can understand it being overwhelming - hobby time is precious to me too, and I'm a slow painter because of it. And printing can become a hobby in it's own right and generate a huge pile of cool but unpainted stuff if you're not paying attention. (guilty!) It definitely will take up some space and time and the initial cost. On the other hand, I've got a whole bunch of diverse and amazing bits that aren't on shapeways (I'm going to print some contemptor elbows soon, maybe even a pair of kheres count-as!) and I've saved a ton of money, especially for that Other System that's not on B&C; and so much on resin bases, too. I've even started customising my own heads.

So I'm a convert; but I can entirely understand why people don't think it's for them, and there's obviously absolutely nothing wrong with that - it is totally an advanced topic compared to picking up a pot of poly cement and some brushes. Shapeways fills a really useful niche because it's simple, even if it's pricey - I would have *killed* to have that resource available 20 years ago.

Edited June 29, 2022 by Arkhanist

[M@verik115]

I ended up getting the starter, liber astartes, 1 rhino (already running 2 mars patterns), 1 kratos (OMG its so hot) and the heavy weapon and special weapon sets. 
I am definitely looking forward to the rest of the releases. 

[Uprising]

I was able to get 1 core box, 1 special weapon set, and 1 heavy weapon set.  I also got some alpha legion bitz together (pads, heads, torso), 20 mark 4, and a xiphon for an alpha legion army.  I did buy the loyalist book, but my copy seem to be missing the alpha legion rules and included the dark angel rules for some reason.  So confusing.  Emailed GW and still waiting for a reply.  Can't wait for the new dread to come out so I can buy about 10 for a fury of the ancient list.  

 

On the topic of 3d printing, mind have save me so much money.  Epicbasing.com has great stl and saved me so much money over the year.     

[Burni]

I ended up with a big box, a Rhino, special weapons and a Kratos. Only managed to find time to build a Rhino so far but got my 4mm magnets for the Contemptor, so that's next.

I did order the heavy weapons too but my FLGS ran out of allocation. So I ordered them direct of GW along with some DA transfers and the transfers arrived with a copy of the BL Anthology (thought it was a freebie at first!) So I'm in the middle of sorting that out with GW customer service. They are really slow to get back to you these days.

[frankendoodle65]

@Arkhanist really interesting, thanks! If I have a slow day at work I'll look over the articles you linked, out of curiosity more than anything because I can't see myself realistically getting a printer any time soon.  I'm sure your post will be helpful for others too, thanks for taking the time. 

[Marshal Mittens]

On 6/29/2022 at 5:54 AM, Arkhanist said:

My shapeways bills was precisely why I bought a 3d printer - one bill pretty much paid for it... I've been able to print far more bits for that than I could have ever afforded from shapeways and ebay this last year. Red Warden even sells additional STLs on cults3d that don't make it to shapeways, which is just deadly. I've also been getting into epicbasing.com for pretty cool basing bits now, and though they sell pre-printed bits, it's way cheaper to print yourself...

Yeah, when I move in a year or so to a bigger house, I am going to get a 3D printer. Just no space at the moment.