During my little 3D printing marathon a few weeks back, I decided it was time I made the effort to flesh out some of my Epic armies. And up first were the Orks.

I'd finally used up most of the old resin during the printing I'd done earlier in the year, as well as some more recent Gaslands and Transformer things, so I needed some new stuff to continue to print.

I went with some black ABS-like resin, as not only was it pretty cheap, it was also water-washable, which at the time I thought would be better. Typically for me, I've continued to prefer washing in IPA anyway.

My first task was to try some tweaked settings, for a test print that would use my remaining old grey resin mixed in with some of the new black resin.

I'm pretty sure this was the first time I've printed that test piece and had everything work perfectly.

So 2026's second printing marathon kicked off, even though I'd not sorted, prepped, assembled or painted anything from the one back in May yet. Come to think of it, I've still got things to sort out that I printed last year, too.

These marathons happen because I only have set times when I can print, so I have to try and get as much done as possible over the available days. Of course, the intention is to then deal with all these prints during the time in between the marathons.

This has proven to be a bad way of doing things for a variety of reasons. During a marathon, I'm only really focused on setting up Lychee scenes, the printing of the models, and cleaning them in IPA. Due to lack of available time, these printed models then get left for weeks if not months before I can get around to dealing with the supports, a final clean if necessary, and then curing. This all sucks, because to keep them out of the sunlight, the prints from earlier in the year remained in the loft in the dark over the summer, and many of the pieces have warped in the heat.

From this point on, I will just have to print a single thing, get it cleaned, prepped, painted and varnished all in one go, before moving on to the next. I've actually bought some UV resilient varnish, that I was planning on putting onto the models after I'd printed and cured them, to protect them until I got to the painting. I've held off on this, as I think a lot of the detail might get filled in before the paint layer, which would suck.
This varnish will just have to go down before I do the matt varnish last thing. I think multiple varnish coats will also help the strength of some of these models, especially the ones printed in the old grey resin.

One of the first things I printed this time were some new Gobsmashas. These are probably my favourite Ork vehicles from the old Epic 2nd Edition, and though I used to own some back in the day, I sold them for some reason and have always regretted it.

I'd printed some a few months back, but the wheels were attached by very tiny connections, and lots of them snapped off during the clean up. So I got hold of some alternate models, and sent a load of them to print. Somehow, I'd got the scale all wrong and they came out very small, so had to be reprinted.
Then when I started to remove the supports, I found that not only were some of the wheels not actually attached to the body, but neither was the turret. Whoever put this model on the internet must be giggling at how they booby-trapped it.

So now I can either just continue with these prints and glue them all back together, or finally get my ass into Blender and fix them all together properly and print them all again.

As the Blood Axe clan I'd put together from spare models back in 2018 was just not doing it for me, I then got to printing a ton of 6mm Orks, so that I could try and make a new one. In addition, I really needed to sort out the Kommandos and Stormboyz.

The removal of the supports for so many tiny miniatures was a chore, and as I alluded to earlier, some of the troops I'd printed in the old grey resin snapped during this process. This has got me nervous about using the rest of these prints in the final clan, but I really did not want to print everything all over again, so I decided to go ahead and use them.

Before I could re-assemble the clan, I first had to remove a bunch of old models from the bases they were already on.

It really did not feel good cutting up all of those original 90s bases, especially as I'm still unsure about my 3D printed ones. But I really needed those models off of them, especially the Stormboyz.

Gluing the models down onto the new 3D printed bases was easy enough, but the indents were too wide, resulting in many little gaps. To deal with this problem, I used a tiny pipette to deliver resin right to the necessary area, before curing it all. As I've had to use superglue rather than plastic glue, I'm also hoping this resin will help adhere the models to the bases.

This technique seems to have worked quite well, but I guess I will only find out if that's true after months and years of use.

I did however hit one stumbling block, meaning the Blood Axes are not quite as finished as I hoped they would be.

For some stupid reason, I must have miscounted how many Kommando and Stormboy models I needed, and both of these units are shy by a single troop. Why I didn't print several spares like I did for the Boyz and Nobz I do not know.

This all means that those two units will have to wait a little longer, until I can get the 3D printer back up and running, in order to print off the final models.

Sucks.

Anyway, despite all that, I'm happy with my progress on this clan, and now they look like this:

It's a hell of a lot better than what they were looking like back in 2018.

My awesome wargaming skills have again been on display over the last few months, as I've been continuing to scrap it out using our own 40K-S ruleset.

Up first, Gareth got his first taste of these rules after playing the Epic-S rules a few times.

He brought his new Space Wolf force to the table to face my Marines with their Battle Sister allies in a 3000pt game.

The first turn started with G having some terrible rolls, especially the Aggressors as they shot a hail of bullets at the Scouts and only killed two.

But on turn 2, Bjorn started his rampage, which consisted of him smashing up a Land Raider, a Rhino and most of a full Tactical Squad. I got him down to 3 wounds but couldn't finish him off.

I had also deployed my Devastators in a terrible position and they had little to do all game.

Probably the funniest part of the battle was when the Iron Priest met the Techmarine in combat, and they killed each other using their Servo Arms.

The Battle Sisters provided little but a distraction, as they were smashed to pieces by the deep striking Wolf Guard Terminators.

This ended after 4 turns with a comfortable Space Wolf win, 2413 to 1706.

A few weeks later, I met these Space Wolves on the battlefield again, though this time taking pretty much all of my Eldar in a 2400pt game.

As I have little long range with my Eldar, one of my Guardian Squads and the Dire Avengers were wasted taking up position on the fortification. I guess I thought more of G's units would move into range over the course of the game, but that didn't really happen.

Once again, I had trouble getting rid of the Wolf Guard Terminators. In order to do any real damage, the Fire Dragons had to get in close. The first group was already weakened, but the 4 survivors took out three Terminators. As the other, unharmed squad of 6 closed in, I was hoping they would do just as well, if not better, but yet they could only kill off two of the tough Marines. As you may then expect, the Space Wolf revenge was swift and bloody.

The bridges in the middle of the board became a blood bath, when they Banshees who were fighting the Grey Hunters were also attacked by the Terminators. Nearby, the Rune Priest smited the damaged Wave Serpent, which exploded and killed four Grey Hunters.

At the end of the third turn, Gareth had just snook over the victory point target with 1637, while I had 1292. Another poor showing from my Eldar, but a much better effort than when they last stretched their legs against Scoob's Tyranids and got absolutely smashed off the table.

Most recently, I again clashed with Scoob, who had also prepared a mostly Space Wolf force.

This time, I finally did something I'd been planning to do since all they way back in 5th Edition 40K, and put together a combined force of Tau and Eldar. I just wanted to see if the Tau's long range weapons could mitigate the huge weaknesses in my Eldar army.

Well, other than a couple of surprising events, this one went about as well as you would expect, and I struggled immensely to damage all of his vehicles and tougher infantry.

The thing that helped me most was on turn 2, after Scoob had dropped three scary looking units using the deep strike rules. This time, in contrast to the usual, I managed to get the initiative, so I could scupper his plans. My Wraithlord charged the Skyclaws to stop them getting their charge off, and the Wave Serpent carrying the Fire Dragons was able to escape Arjac and his accompanying Terminators.

Most surprising was that my five Scorpions and Karandras charged in against the other Terminators and managed to clean them off the table as Scoob rolled a plethora of ones on his saving throws.

Despite these minor setbacks, Scoob regained control, as the Wraithlord got hacked to pieces, and Arjac and his group got sweet payback on the Striking Scorpions.

One by one my units got taken out, with the exception of the Broadside battlesuits, who tanked a ton of damage. The last Fire Warrior also put up a fight, and must have made his save at least ten times against a hail of Storm Bolter bullets, before he finally fell.

As we added up the points each turn, it was clear I never really had much hope in this one, but we played it out until the point target was hit, with Scoob grabbing the easy win with 2349 to my 1454. I'm thinking I need to stop using these Eldar, at least until I've helped them with some reinforcements.

Or I could just be a better player I suppose.

There have been a few more battles waged across our available boards.

Up first, Gareth challenged me to another game of Epic, which saw us each choosing a 6000pt army.

G took command of the Chaos forces, and selected a smaller, tougher, more elite army, while I went with quite a lot of smaller Eldar units.

Things were pretty even in the first turn, but in the second, one of my detachments got completely minced as the Chaos army charged into close combat.

My long range shooting ended up being largely ineffective, and I couldn't quite take the last wound from several enemy units which would have ended up breaking them.

The game ended after 3 turns, with the score 3999 to G and 2598 to me. Even though the VP target was 4000, it was pretty obvious at that point who the victors were.

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The first of our two most recent 40K games saw a bit of a Tyranid civil war. Scoob went full on Nidz, while my little bugs mind-frelled some Imperial Guard and brought them along for the ride.

The first turn was pretty good for me, and I made some good rolls. But on the second turn, Scoob did his signature deep strike invasion, and was able to get many charges off. In addition, my rolling luck started to turn sour.

Dropping my own deep striking units for the start of the third turn backfired, when Scoob again got the initiative and was able to intercept my reinforcements. My rolls started to get even worse, such as when 10 Genestealers and the Broodlord attacked Scoob's Psychophage, which at the time only had a single wound remaining, and they somehow couldn't kill it.

This game saw us running out of time, so I had to withdraw. Though it was unlikely I could have clawed my way back into this one, at the end I only needed one wound to wipe the Psychophage, one wound to break the Hive Tyrant, and one wound to break the Norn Emissary, so may have got some good points.

But as it was, it ended 1351 to 1006 in Scoob's favour.

My man of the match was my Officer John Guyman, who Power-Fisted both the Neurolictor and the flying Tyranid Prime out of existence.

And our latest game saw some strange allegiances, when I took my Marines and Eldar to face off against Scoob's Space Wolves and Chaos.

In probably our fastest game yet for death and destruction, we both ended up with very little left after four turns.

T'was a shame then that I ended up with the most beat up of the two very beat up armies.

Highlights included yet another successful deep strike by Scoob's Bloodletters, that dropped in to annihilate my Assault Marines and Captain in one stroke. And one of my Dreadnoughts that exploded and took out several of the Blood Claws that had just wrecked it.

Most useless units in the game were my other Dreadnought, that ran backwards and forwards trying to find a suitable target, and Canis Wolfborn, who skulked down the flank and was unable to find any combat.

The game ended 2380 to Scoob and 1923 to me.

Our last game of 40K-S was the last game we played with the previous version of the rules from back in December. This is because I've finally pulled my finger out and created a slightly updated version for when we get around to another game.

In this one, I sent my Marines against Scoob's unholy trinity of Chaos, Orks and Dark Eldar, in a 3600pt game.

I started pretty weakly, but a string of good saves kept me in the game and I was able to keep kicking out consistent damage to win 3048-2547 after 4 turns.