28mm Bolt Action Omaha

 Its been a while since I posted so here's some pictures of the items I have been working on.

Picture: from our previous game of Omaha

We have most of our Higgins ready for the next Omaha game but we needed some troop fillers to make the boats look full. We also didn't want to make it too expensive!

So I had designed a print which would give me some options...

The points below are useful if you are thinking about doing something similar.

1. The 3d printer I have is not great at detail at this level. Its a PLA printer not resin. So I designed a base 2mm thick and placed some legs on it (using Tinkercad). You won't see the bottom of the guys when its in the Higgins boat. 

2. I then ensure it fits into half of the boat easily. You need to be able to remove these without breaking parts. If you have it as a half boat section - then you can also use ammo boxes to mix up the loading pattern in boats (with other 3d print of boxes onto the same size of base) or just have 2 sections of troops in a boat. It just makes it more flexible.

Its also a good idea to twist the 3d image/sketch of the legs 5 or 10 degrees away from the front on some of them. This makes it more random. 

3. The next part takes time. You get you green stuff out and sculpt in some bodies and use the heads and arms from you bits box. Now on the new Warlord Ranger and Infantry plastic sets you actually get twice as many heads as you need. So this makes this an easy route for parts.

 Below: on the right you see the 3d printed base and legs. The picture on the left has a green stuff, arms and heads added to the base of the figures.  With some basic colours.  

You can then amass a fair amount of guys for your Higgins boats. Remember that most of the body is hidden by the boat and the second row wont be seen as much. You can also add back packs ...I just added these to the rear guys as its very tightly packed. Using a medic is a nice little way of adding a little detail to the mass of helmets (you can also use "officer helmet bars" for this job).

If you have a guy with his rifle up...its also an easy lift point to remove the section from the boat!

If you have the cash its also nice to just have full figures in the boats on a removable base.

Below: From our previous game we used a mixture of metal and plastic figures to create the image below. It does look great but does costs a lot more. 

I also did a a quick Belgian Gate or C-element print. This was inspired by reading that the engineers had to climb onto these metal structures in the sea - under fire - carrying explosives - in order to blow them up. That's some job!

Below: An engineer climbs up the centre strut after having placed other charges on the left hand strut. 

The structure is cut down to look like its in the sea with a clear base (with a helmet floating past!)

So now its just time to say Merry Christmas to all and we will see what goodies Santa brings.

Merry Christmas Everybody!