Apocalyptic Gaming

Fickle Dice Games (FDG) is a little known 3D file creator for wargaming. As far as I can tell they are concerned with creating content based around their own game and thus are busily beavering away creating content for their Gloom Trench 1926.

Gloom Trench 1926 is a weird world war style game set in the unending despair that is World War One…if it never ended. In this gloom ridden foggy world of despair, the main participants of world war one are continuing the war with a range of new experimental and conventional weaponry. This opens up a wide possibility of the imagination for different unit types and weapons, with the progression into the demonic. It is worth noting that the rules are experimental and are available on their website for FREE (at the time of writing this).

Fickle Dice Games asked the Ironskull Gaming Team if we were willing to do a review of their new upcoming kickstarter Gloom Trench 1926, more specifically their new trench system. As, out of the all collaborating channels in the Ironskull Gaming Team, here at Wargamingoldguys I have the most experience with 3D printers and so I volunteered to do the printing and review these STL’s. The Gloom Trench 1926 Trench system goes live on kickstarter 12th July 2023.

Now I am not a novice at 3D printing but up until recently (<12months) I was just using an Ender 3Pro, but for this I will be using my resin printer.

Before we start getting into the nitty gritty of the stl’s I would like to say that to do these prints I am using an Anycubic Photon Mono 4k, so it’s a resin printer on the relatively cheaper end of the market. I am using the stock settings as that has produced some very nice results for me and I use a layer height of 0.04mm as I have tried 0.02mm in the past but I haven’t really noticed enough of a difference to warrant the extra build time and wear on the FEP sheet. I thought this would be good to get out there to start with as to highlight that I haven’t done anything special to get these prints completed.

The slicing software I am using is Chitubox version 1.9.4

So now that’s all sorted lets jump into the files. In the download you will get the following

6 pre-supported files
11 unsupported files
NB/Now since actually downloading the files, printing the terrain pieces, and writing this blog (it only took about 1 week) FDG have come back to me and said they have now got all the files as pre-supported files

With these building blocks, it should be enough to build a nice trench system the size and scale is only limited to your imagination, available print time and the resin available. The modular bits contained within the file are:
1 Long Section
2 short sections
1 90° bend
1 small 30° bend
1 reverse 45° bend
1 45° bend
2 end pieces
Small set of sand bag
Trench ladder

Now by this stage I am chomping at the bit to get some gcodes produced and get the resin flowing.

So I started with the unsupported small straight. I did this at 20° to the build plate and used the auto generated supports. No I know what you are thinking “why use the auto generated supports” well it comes down to it that I haven’t had much issue with the auto generated supports before and it does save a bit of time.

Now from the first print there was a slight warp front to back of the print. Now the obvious reason for this is the supports not being substantial enough for such a big component. So I repeated the print of the same component using the pre-supported file supplied.

Now as the name suggests these come with the supports already generated and the supports vary in thickness throughout the STL, so it looks like it has actually been thought about. The small straight came out fine. The larger straight still warped slightly but not massively and all the other parts came out like the small straight, so I am more inclined that it’s the fine tuning of the printer settings rather than the provided files.

The pre-supported files print very well and if you are a complete novice (or veteran alike) and you just want to get some cool looking trenches on the table to battle over then that is all you need. The supports on the pre-supported files look like they could be optimised a little bit but it’s all down to effort over value added. I wouldn’t bother mucking around with them just to save 5ml of resin here and there as the results that I achieved were very good for very little effort.

Now, one of the things I really like about the files provided is that all of the pre-supported files have near enough hollow sandbag mounds. This saves a relatively large amount of resin over solid components. I think that you would want to print a few sets of these to have an imposing trench system to fight over, so this saves you a hefty chunk of material in the long run.

A couple of the smaller angle components are solid resin. I did redo the smaller angle with the hollow function with appropriate drain holes. This did not affect the form or print quality of the components.

Once I got how I was going to print them sorted I went about optimising the build plate to maximise the productivity and reducing the print time. I found that the majority of the time I could fit two components on the build plate without too much issue.

As shown by the printed components below the detail on the individual modules is quite nice and the guys over at FDG have got just the right amount of detail into the terrain to give them the feel they need. It is worth noting that printing all the components once took approximately 80% of the 1kg tub of resin used.

As a side note this set is meant to be able to be printed on a FDM printer so I did a trial of the short length and overall I am really pleased with how it came out. I used my stock Ender 3 Pro and apart from a slight adhesion issues the print turned out nicely. There was some layer lines at the top where the step change was more noticeable. I used 0.16mm layer height as that’s what I print most of my terrain at to keep the print time down but if you were willing to reduce your layer height and increase your print time these would become less noticeable.

So what are my critiques??

One thing I did notice is that there are 11 different unsupported components and only 6 supported files. Some of the small angles, the sandbags, and ladder are not included as a pre-supported stl files. Though they are not that difficult to generate supports for, so its not a show stopper. As noted earlier this changed right before publishing this blog. So now all of the files come pre-suppported which is great.( i kept this in here to show progression and how the guys at FDG are continuously thinking about these type of things).
There are only 9 different sections to the modular trench system. Depending on your plan and amount you are going to print of the trench system, will depend if the trenches start to have that same look. I don’t know what the guys at FDG are planning, if they are planning for an expansion pack for additional sections to allow a bit more variation.
The two angled sections that are solid could have the stl updated to reduce the amount of resin used in the print (i.e. hollow)
Overall the details are crisp and pack just the right amount of detail for terrain on a busy battlefield. The advantages of using this trench system for terrain out ways the critiques raised earlier on and would add a very nice feel to any battle field. I know they are designed to have a WW1 look to them but they are scaled to match 28mm-32mm scale. Below are some different manufactures models to scale against. There are some Warlord Games, Mantic, and GW.
While the trench system fits better with the historical and the grim dark sci-fi there is nothing stopping you from using the trench system in any historic era after and inc WW1 right all the way through to the high-tech future.
I would recommend this kickstarter if you are into your 3D printing and looking into a trench system for your board as things like this always do better with economies of scale, and no one ever wants a small trench system to fight over. It might also be worth going to check out their other 3D printing offerings to fill the trenches with some great looking fighting men also from their Gloom Trench 1926 range.

The Finished Product

Here’s some painted examples with miniatures from a Weird World War II game for scale and to show how the Kickstarter will lend itself to fans of other weird world war, trench based and grimdark games…