Ship’s Ahoy!

Greetings, fellow scallywags! Another joyous hobby weekend awaits thee, so let’s set forth in style! And any dice shenanigans could mean you’re certain to walkin’ the plank, so stay sharp!

Longtime 3DRPGers are probably aware of our ongoing weekly Hovertrain series, where we’ve built up a pretty fun list of train-raiding pirates. Our team is all about modularity and reusability, as it’s very important to us to get as much joy as possible from beloved DnD 3D prints. So, if we’ve already gone through all the trouble to make 25+ pirate miniatures, they should also be able to sail the high seas.

Today’s post is actually our second completed 3D-printed boat and is the smaller of the two. So, we do have an impressive larger boat by Aether Studios, but we’ll feature that one in a future TTRPG post. DM Ben wants the larger ship to belong to the dastardly pirates, and today’s smaller ship to belong to, or be occupied by, our adventurers. Some ship-to-ship battles or chases are going to be some extra fantastic RPG fun!

Enough of the chitchat, ya lily-livered gamers; let’s get to today’s featured 3D print! Today’s impressive STL comes from EC3D Designs and one of their beautiful ships from their must-own Depths of the Savage Atoll Kickstarter. It breaks down into several playable spaces and comes off your FDM printer like a dream.

Our DnD blog pics will probably make this ship look bigger than it is, so don’t let that intimidate you. This one measures 15 d20 squares long, 30 squares wide, and 60 squares tall. We like to give you its dimensions in d20 squares so you can see how much of your gridded playmatte it’s going to take up on your table.

You’re going to love how much space is on this DnD ship for your players to maneuver their miniatures on, with enough room for some hand-to-hand combat. Now, before we showcase all the levels, let’s cover the paint steps that novice painter DM Ben used here.

• Prime Flat Black | Slapchop Base.
• Core Wood: GSW Skeleton Brown + Strong Tone Wash.
• Wood Accents: ASP Dark Wood.
• Sails: ASP Pallid Bone + Brown Wash.
• Nets: FAN Uniform Gray.
• Windows: FAN Mithril.
• Lady at the Bow: FAN Ancient Stone + Citadel Athonian Camoshade Wash.
• Metal Bits: ASP Enchanted Steel.

We also circled back and did light drybrush dabs of black in all the shadowy spots. The only kicker here is that we used a fancier hobby paint on the core wood. As many of you know, FDM prints can really soak up your pricier paint, so we consumed a decent portion of a larger 2-ounce bottle. No big whoop, as that costs us about $7 with shipping from Green Stuff World (which ships to us in the United States from beautiful Spain).

Starting with the top deck, you’ll see that this one 3D prints into several easy pieces. Please note the sails are also their own pieces, but we left those in so you can better visualize everything.

From there, you can go below deck, and there’s a decent amount of playable room here too. However, DM Ben will just sprinkle in a few pieces of scatter terrain, like maybe a couple of cannons or some Living Bombs standing at the ready. Any larger combat encounter, though, will be zoomed out and placed on a Dwarven Forge Lowtown planked Terrain Tray, as DM Ben cannot stand tight spaces for combat. It’s such a buzz kill.

We have some ideas on how to turn that zoomed-out space so it still feels like you’re still in a ship, so stay tuned for those future posts.

Here’s a zoomed-in shot of the cannon portals. DM Ben did some extra black drybrushing around them to make it look like plenty of cannonballs have been shot through ’em. Apologies for not including a cannon here. DM Ben left that particular firepower on his kitchen counter. We’ll show you how those look within in a future ship post.

There are two platforms off each mast that are ideal for placing a party member on guard duty, fighting off a hungry creature in the sky, or for some hair-raising combat. The two nets on each side actually clip the ship in place, keeping the entire boat firmly together as needed. The design team thought of everything here.

Honestly, there are too many details to count here. This skull design located on the stern of the boat is a perfect example. So frickin’ good, right?!! You could even populate this ship with an all-undead crew to pay homage to that design detail! DM Ben used that stronger ASP Dark Wood as his accent color, so the lighter wood would make this seafaring beauty pop!

Lastly, let’s end with this stunning lady at the bow of the ship, who has a mystery all to her own. Certainly the name of your boat will have to have something to do with her and the skull at the stern, right?! DM Ben dabbed some more black here and there to really make the stone look weathered. Your party is comprised of seasoned adventurers, so your ship has been around the block!

EC3D Designs calls this particular STL from the Kickstarter, the “Devil’s Scorn.” Not bad. But we’ll come up with something that amuses us a bit more.

Until next time!