Having gotten a 3d printer some time ago, I have had the opportunity to dig in to a lot of different figures, in all kinds of scales and proportions. In fact, the hardest part about having a printer is to use it for something that doesn’t become just yet another batch of unpainted miniatures in a pile.

Some models are free and some you have to pay for. I have an acquired taste in miniatures, and I prefer the oldschool bubbly heads to modern slim and realistic proportions. With Brexit and so on, acquiring figures from the UK has become all the more problematic, and therefore 3d printing really has a new role of cuttin away the distribution chain. Hence, I thought I would make a small reoccurring (maybe) segment here, for those who interesting in this subject.

My first review is of the miniatures from 3dbreed. Now, 3dbreed.es has run some very succesful kickstarters to get all the miniatures out there, and I was surprised at how few examples of painted miniatures I could actually find across the interwebs.

The first of these kickstarters, I believe, was March to Hell: Rome (or Ancient World as it appears to be called now), which featured Imperial and Republican Romans, as well as a host of enemies for them. Celts, Germanic tribes and Carthaginians are all there. As well as some nice gladiators and civilians.

The figures are, like many historical figures compared to their 3d fantasy counterparts, not cheap and not pricey either. I suppose that means they’re on level price wise. The pricing seems to somewhat mirror the expected amount of prints that goes into an army. So for instance a unit of horse is €15 while a unit of infantry is €8-10. Special characters/dog handlers and other rarities are €2-3 a set. Command groups are bought seperately to the units. There are two command groups for legionnaires and – I think – the other units have only 1. This is probably fitting for most armies. Overall purchasing the whole Imperial Roman range would be just shy of €120 (provided you purchase the discounted armypack).

The style of the miniatures is cartoonish, more than it is anatomically correct. The historical accuracy is alright I think, without being over the top. The miniatures are a bit bulky, which might stem from an original idea to use them for 15 mm. I do not think it looks bad though, and when printed and painted up, I think they really look great.

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The range also features some terrain, which is likely more feasible to print at 15 mm than 32 mm.

The printing

The files – or most of them at least – come with sets of presupports. On my Anycubic Photon system, the supports worked in 90% of the case. A few special cases I had to go in and add additional support. Especially a long unsupported pilum gave a bit of trouble.

The files for the Scorpion did not contain any presupports, and my attempts at supporting it with my standard surefire method didn’t work. I wonder if the sculptor had the same issues, and if that is the explanation for the missing supports.

The aforementioned chunky style, helps greaty in assisting the structural integrity of the miniatures after print… despite dropping them continually as I painted them (doh!) I did not have any breaks.

I printed mine at 100%, but the shields (which I have not added yet) I found to be much too big. Luckily at rescaling is easy, and I will attempt that for my troops at a later point.

The painting

I used my standard white undercoat, followed by basecolours and armypainter softtone approach. The results speak for themselves and at this pace I will most likely own a sizeable Lion Rampant (or equivalent) force by Christmas time 2021.

Here are some examples of painted figures printed from the 3dbreed stl files I have purchased:

Overall rating

Defintely an AYE! from me on these models. The main draw back is the price of buying the whole range of Romans. I think it is a little sad that there is not an option to buy the whole range at a discount. And ditto for the Celts/Germans and so on. You do get a lot of miniatures – or at least the STLS for – at €120, but factoring in resin, time and materials, I don’t think the plastic options are that far behind price wise.

Do you think this sort of review is interesting? Please let me know.