Posted August 18, 2025 by Martin
Come out swinging
Most kids in my son’s grade are enrolled in typical after-school activities: baseball, soccer, football, dance, and since we’re in Southern California, of course there are also plenty of computer programming and acting classes available. So we did what any responsible parents would do:
We enrolled our son in swordfighting classes.
Swordfighting, or as its modern practitioners prefer to call it, Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA), is fascinating to watch. It’s like dance class with swords. Success hinges not on how hard or how fast you can swing a sword, but on the confidence of your footwork, on being able to effectively position yourself in the available combat space, and using your movement to guide your partner to where you can most effectively thwack them with your practice sword.
So when I started designing a swordmaster miniature for my Dune campaign, I knew I had my work cut out for me.
In Dune, the Holtzman shield has made kinetic weapons obsolete in most combat situations, and due to the Great Convention forbidding the use of nuclear weapons against human targets (which also forbids firing a lasgun at a shielded target), most armed conflicts in the Imperium are fought using swords, knives, and other melee weapons. Thus, most Houses retain one or more Swordmasters. These formidable warriors serve as military advisors and royal bodyguards, and they often also train members of the royal household in close combat.
When I designed the Wild Swordmaster, I wanted his pose to really stand out on the tabletop. The stance you see here isn’t one you’d see in an kind of swordfighting manual, with his hips and feet pointing away from where his sword and eyes are pointed. It’s unusual. I like that this pose creates an interesting line to look at that takes a second to puzzle together. What’s his next move? How’s he going to pivot? Where will he strike?
Before I printed the miniature, I opened the .STL file in Blender to add a cutout in the model’s base that can hold an 8 millimeter color cube. I like to use these cubes to help keep track of which miniature represents which character at the table.
There were a couple of challenges when getting the mini ready for print. The blade, the right elbow, the left arm, and some of the hair needed supports. The flowing cape needs surprisingly little support, but it doesn’t hurt to add a little bit around where the cape folds over. I used tree-like supports for this print because I didn’t want the support to touch the base, and that worked out reasonably well.
The version in this photo was printed at 0.2mm layer height on a Bambu Lab P1S.
Side-by-side view of the model in Blender on the left and the printed miniature on the right
You can download the miniature .STL file right here. I use Hero Forge to design my minis; if you want to play around with the Wild Swordmaster model (maybe try a different pose, or adjust the model’s hair style, facial expression, or gender presentation), you can check that out here.
Until next time!