Monthly Archives: May 2024

Asides

Z1 Design’s Precinct 187 Kickstarter 7 years later

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7 years ago, at the beginning of my 3D printing journey, I backed a now partially-failed Kickstarter called Precinct 187 from Z1 Design. A few years later the designer and his company stopped responding to messages and as of 2024 have apparently vanished off the internet, save their FB page. At the time, I didn’t even own a 3D printer – I bought the Ender 2 a few months later. Ironically, I’ve actually only ever fully printed a single building from this range – the Blackhollow Pub (not even really part of it – it was a free addon to sell the next kickstarter – Black Hallows Town’s Folk that I never backed).

A few years ago, the creator, Jon, shut down posting in the Z1 group too, which stayed dormant until today and apparently he deleted his FB account, so that meant the group was admin-less. And so a random group member became admin today.

Given Z1 Facebook group is back again, I wondered just how much of the Kickstarter had actually been delivered. Hence this blog post.

Delivered Files

As far as I can tell, here is what was delivered.

Core

  • Town/City Hall
  • Fire House
  • Mel’s Diner
  • Tenement
  • Big Joe’s Donuts
  • L Train
  • Construction Site

Stretch Goals

  • Billboards
  • Block Z (I’m missing these files) Received from a kind soul
  • Car Park
  • Cinema
  • City Bank
  • Docklands
  • Docklands Building
  • Docklands Fish Boat
  • Docklands Coastguard Boat (I’m missing these files) Received from a kind soul
  • East Coast Shopping Mall (appears half complete)
  • Factory
  • Gun Store (received)
  • Hotel Empire
  • Mini Mart
  • Pawn Shop
  • Police Station
  • Prison
  • Restaurant/Bar
  • Road Tiles
  • Subway
  • Staircases
  • Street Furniture
  • Street Barricades
  • Water Towers
Construction site
L Train – printed (Z1 work – not mine)
Fire Station printed and painted (Z1 work – not mine)
Hotel Empire
Mel’s Diner (Z1 work – not mine)
Police Station
Road Tiles
Tenement
Big Joe’s Donuts

Stretch Goals & Addons – Not Delivered

To my accounting, here is what wasn’t delivered (I’ll update this if others can correct me)

  • Wonder World
  • Block Z This was delivered, I just didn’t get it (now received from kind soul)
  • Police Station Cell Block & Compound
  • Post Apocalypic Add-ons
  • Road Markings
  • Prison Bus
  • Security Truck
  • Roberts Fish Merchants
  • East Coast Shopping Mall this might have been partially done
  • Subway Station This was delivered, I just didn’t get it (now received from kind soul)
Z1 Block
Wonder World
Post Apoc stuff

Black Hollow freebies

  • Blacksmiths Shop
  • Tavern
  • Stables

What I’ve printed

Well, in 7 years, not much. The Tavern and a few copies of the dumpster. In a way, you can say that this Kickstarter started my digital pile of shame opportunity.

Z1 dumpster in my scifi table
Black Hallows Tavern in the lower right

EDIT: I forgot – I printed the donut at 200% size for a Gaslands jump ring

200% Donut!
Donut with paint

Did you back the Kickstarter?

Curious what others who backed the Kickstarter thought. Are they happy? Are they missing files as well? I’m happy to help other lost souls with instructions and some of their missing files (within reason, need to be able to prove you actually backed it)

Conclusion

I’m sad this project didn’t finish, as although I’ve never printed the buildings, I have them if we ever seriously get back into moderns. And I feel it would do well today – the buildings were well designed, had clear instructions and would have been perfect for things like Marvel Crisis Protocol.

Anyway, will close by giving a plug to one of my favourite creators, Corvus Games Terrain, who make many similar buildings including an awesome elevated rail (below). And no, that’s not a sponsored or affiliate link, I just like his stuff.

Conventions, Gaslands, Historicals, Science Fiction

Photos from Trumpeter Salute 2024

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Last month was the annual Trumpeter Salute convention in Vancouver, BC. Usually right around the same time as the big Salute, this one is decidely smaller but still fun. It runs over the whole weekend rather than just one day, with one slot Friday night, 3 slots on Saturday and 1 big one on Sunday.

Friday

This year I ran other Under Alien Suns game in the Friday slot, this time using both my scifi and hellscape terrain. It was a lot of fun – we had 5 players and the usual set of hilarious moments. One player managed to roll a natural 1 on two different healing checks, dealing out 1 damage instead of healing. And my brother’s PC was bit the zombies but only died in the doorway to the exit, bottling up the PCs

Besieged players, fighting off zombies
As the players escape the zombies into the alien cave
The alien cave, looking in
Trying to escape the alien cave

Saturday

In the morning we played Roman on Roman naval violence with papercraft and small figures. Romans won, Romans lost, it was a good day for everybody but the Romans. As is our tradition, Brian and I played opposite each other – him playing the defenders and me the attackers.

Ship cards
Enemy fleet with their transports
Lead attacking ships close in
The first of many boarding actions
Yet more boarding actions
Just so many boarding actions
The end came for the defenders, with all transports boarded

Midday Brian and I played a nominally cooperative WW2 Italian partisan game – we all played different factions of partisans – both Brian and I picked flavours of communists, which are as opposed as you can get in a coop game. In the end, luck had my team closest to the scientist we had to get off. And the Nazis were rather crap, so in the end the partisans got to engage in their favourite activity – shooting at each other, which mostly meant everybody shooting me and nearly taking on the scientist before I got him off the table.

Entering the building with the scientist
Dispatching the guards
The final guards succumb
Waiting for the Nazis
Fleeing the scene under fire from my own side

The evening I played some Canvas Eagles, always a good game. This year I played with Troy Tony Chard’s 1/144 planes, which are very hard to photograph well, so did get some good photos.

During the day I managed to get a few shots of some random games at various points.

There were horses
Morning viking game – run by my local club
Morning viking game 2 – run by my local club
Battletech grinder
Demo game of Close Quarters Battles
Another demo game of Close Quarters Battles
Full Thrust
It was Russia and it was cold
Pod racing
15mm scifi
15mm scifi 2
15mm scifi 3
Afternoon viking game
Afternoon viking game 2

Sunday

Last year I ran a pickup Gaslands game, which was a lot of fun, so this year I decided to formalize that. We ended up with 8 players and had a brawl to the death with 2 spec cars each (HMG front & either napalm or mines back). The winner was a car initially piloted by myself, then Brian’s daughter E (she of double jump last year) and then E’s aunt – who smartly drove away from the carnage at the end.

Don’t drop a mine and wipeout
First of the jump takers
Glorious slide
2nd and last of the jump takers
Jumping through the fire
Fire is a contagious disease
E’s 2nd car fails to make its own jump
E’s first car slides around the mine for a hit
Walls are to be avoided
The end hit as the two foreground cars took each other out, as E’s 2nd car drives away with the win

All in all, another fun convention and thanks to the organizers again.

Science Fiction, Terrain

Build Something is done for 2024 & I finished!

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Another year keeps marching on and Build Something 2024 has come to an end and unlike nearly every prior year, I actually finished this year! No pictures of the painted model yet due to the rules, but here are some updates on the construction.

Build Something 2024: A starport

Overall, I managed to only get the warehouse done of the whole set I planned – will have to do the actual landing pad later. But I was happy with where I ended up with the warehouse.

For the warehouse, I ended up with a more “ruined 20th century concrete” vibe than I initially planned, largely because of the design of the windows – rectangular with thin frame pieces.

With that, I switched out a lot of my concept and leaned more heavily into that look. Here’s a few pieces of inspiration I pulled from the internet:

Closed old white metal door in an industrial building

I then decided on a heavy, old-style large doors, with a small door that roughly followed the inspiration above. Both were modelled in FreeCAD and then printed on my Ender 5. The large doors…

FreeCAD design for the large door and hanger
Large door test
Large door hangers glued in place

…and the small door. I first did a test with it printed flat to the bed, which worked. Once I designed the door itself, I tried it vertical. That failed, so I switched back to horizontal and printed it at 0.12 layer height. The white you see on the final image a piece of styrene rod which acts as the hinge.

Small door early test
Later test that failed
Final print

After the doors were printed, I moved onto the interior walkway, which by pure accident ended up being perfect height for a figure to shoot out of. I really didn’t plan that at all, but it was awesome. There are two levels of walkway – one at 3″ where the small door opens and the main walkway at 4″.

FreeCAD design
First test of the walkway
Final piece, with mesh glued on

And then onto the windows. I ended up printing them twice – the first round I didn’t think were thick enough, so I ended up printing them a second time at double the thickness. I decided to keep the first round windows and used them as external frames, to which I glued clear PETG and styrene too to make broken and boarded up windows.

FreeCAD window design
Finished windows

And with all those pieces, the design was basically done! I decided to assemble as a I painted, so this is the final shot before painting:

All the final pieces of the building, not yet assembled.

Onwards to painting, which I can’t show you yet, but here’s a photo of my photo setup. Good photos needs lots of light, so I did just that.

Other photos and notes on my forum thread and voting will start fairly soon on the Build Something Competition subforum here.

Links, Misc, Painting, Terrain

Still Around, I Promise!

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Been doing gaming fairly regularly, had a good weekend at Trumpter Salute 2024 in Vancouver early in March, but apparently haven’t managed to blog a thing in ages.

Here, have a chill painting video in lieu of original content.

Bunch of stuff in progress including a gloriously over the top Gaslands war-bus based on a city busy chassis, which I have been taking a bunch of progress photos of and will try to assemble into a gallery here to show off sometime soon.

Speaking of Gaslands, and somewhat time-sensitive as the Kickstarter closes in 3 days, Fogou Models are running a KS for various Gaslands-scale scenery items. These aren’t STLs but actually physical cast resin pieces. Rad Trax Toy Car Scale Terrain on Kickstarter. The items will likely be available on Fogou’s webstore post-KS, useful for those of us who (say) just had to cough up a home insurance deductible after a plumbing leak and are a bit short on cash…

Note to self, remember you have a blog, dude.