A Little Is Better Than None

I didn't want to go to bed today without doing anything with my miniatures, so I rebased and primed my Sisters Repentia squad and my St. Celestine figure. I doubt that I'll get anything painted before I go to Annual Training for the National Guard, but at least I'll have plenty of figures waiting for me to paint when I get back. Hopefully I'll have the rest of my Skaven assembled soon. Then I can paint that army all up and get the rest of my Witch Hunters done. Then it'll be time to buy more miniatures. I ordered an Ork Codex off of eBay, so I will have some fun planning an Ork army to oppose my Witch Hunters.

I've been thinking that I may have to do something with the Priest's power sword, but I'm sure that I'll never get around to it. I didn't get any more Skaven put together. I don't have much of the army left to assemble, so I should be more excited to get it all together. All I've got left is 25 Clanrats with spears, 20 Clanrat Slaves, 5 Jezzail Teams, and a Warp-Lightning Cannon. The painting is going to be a chore. I've been trying to decide what my second armies for each game are going to be. I don't see myself ever getting together with a group and playing, so I'll have to put two armies together and play solo games or something. I think I'll do Orks for Warhammer 40K. For Warhammer Fantasy I was going to do an all tree-spirit Wood Elf army, but now I'm sort of leaning towards a Dwarf Army. But with the new rulebook coming out I'm wondering if my Skaven are already going to be obsolete and maybe I should just give up on them. I guess if I'm not playing against anyone but myself it won't matter much, though. I can always play 6th Edition at home.

Finally Got Something Done

I've been pretty busy the last couple of days, as we had a long weekend due to Memorial Day.

Yesterday my first order of business was to locate some Simple Green and soak all of the minis that had been afflicted with crusty primer. I also bought a new can of primer, which worked out just fine. I tried a bunch of brush-on primers, but the smell and inconvenience were too much for me and I decided to see if I'd just picked up a bad batch. That turned out to be the case, so now I can return to my lazy spraycan ways. Then I started painting the Priest for my Witch Hunters army. I wanted to do something different, so I painted him with blue robes. It looked awful. So I dunked him in the Simple Green as well. With the rest of my evening I finished assembling a unit of Clanrat Slaves for my Skaven army. I also repaired all of the figures that were damaged when I kicked over the box.

Today I pulled all of the crusty miniatures (5 Sisters Repentia, 1 Mistress, 1 St. Celestine figure, and the Priest) out of the Simple Green and scrubbed the old primer off. Then I reprimed the Priest and started painting him. I went with brown robes this time and it worked out a lot better. It feels good to have a completely painted figure done. Maybe tonight I'll assemble some more Skaven. And now for the pictures:

It Was A Rat-Astrophe!

A few days ago as I was sitting down at my desk, my foot hit the box containing my Skaven army, jostling it. The minis inside started sliding, and the weight of everything moving to one end of the box flipped it over and off of my Witch Hunters box. There was a terrible sound and I said a few very naughty words to myself as I was sure that there was rat-astrophic damage. I didn't even want to open the box. Luckily, only a few figures were injured, and the ones that broke weren't painted yet. In all, my standard bearer lost a few pieces from his banner and a couple of figures from my Stormvermin command lost arms. It could've been a lot worse, as all of the metal miniatures fell on top of the plastic ones.

Although the damage wasn't terrible, my motivation was crushed and I haven't done anything with miniatures since the 14th. It didn't help much that my wife went home to Georgia for a funeral and I was left alone to fend for myself for five whole days. I nearly starved to death. I may get motivated again, but I may not. It's hard to say.

I finished up my Night Runners today. It was pretty exciting. And I bought a hat, so I don't have to be the only guy at work without a hat. It took forever to find one from one of my teams that looked all right on me. I finally found a Houston Astros hat. I have decided that Fantasy Baseball is difficult. I had no problem running three Fantasy Basketball and Fantasy Football teams, but I can barely keep one Fantasy Baseball team going. I've pretty much dropped two of my teams so I can concentrate on the most important one. And this is officially my lamest post ever. Maybe.

Not Much Today

I only got 5 Night Runners assembled today. I stayed up too late last night, so I was tired all day and now I'm ready for bed. The Night Runners look pretty good, though. Only two more to go and I'll have all the Night Runners I need for my army. How many times can I say, "Night Runners" in one post?

Picture-Mania!!!!

I finally brought the charger for my camera in from the car, so I took a picture of all of the miniatures I have at least assembled so far. It comes out to about 1,500 points of Skaven, plus the Giant, which is interchangeable with the Stormvermin unit. I've still got a bunch of Clanrats and Clanrat Slaves to put together, plus a few other odds and ends. I've got a long way to go on the Battle Sisters. On with the pictures...

Here's the whole Skaven army:

This is all the Night Runners I have put together. I think I still have 7 to assemble:

My Stormvermin unit:

My two Poisoned Wind Globadiers:

The headquarters section, from left to right: Standard Bearer, Warlord, Warlock Engineer:

A Warpfire Thrower team and a Ratling Gun team. Also a couple of Rat Ogres:

The Giant:

A bunch of Plague Monks:

Some Clanrats:

More Clanrats:

All of my Battle Sisters (minus the Sisters Repentia that are all crusted with primer):

Immolator close-up:

Battle Sisters close-up:

I would write more, but it's 45 minutes past my bedtime and I still have to take out the trash. I hope everyone's satisfied with just looking at pictures. I wish that messing with the left-align/right-align/justify button didn't ruin the spacing of all of my pictures and captions. I hate computers.

I Almost Forgot

I almost forgot that I hate primer and anything to do with miniatures that comes from a spray can. I got a unit of Sisters Repentia all ready to go for my Witch Hunters army and went out to the shed to prime them with my brand new can of primer. When I sprayed them, the primer went onto my test area fine, but it went onto the miniatures and dried all crusty and cracked, sort of like mud looks when it dries. Now I have to strip them all down and do it over. I am so sick of spray cans ruining my miniatures.

My Weekend

Tuesday is my day off, so it's sort of like my weekend. I had a pretty productive day as far as miniatures go. I want to get all of my Skaven assembled so I can see what the army looks like and to act as a gauge while I'm painting to see how much I still have left to go brfore completion. I put together 7 Night Runners, 20 Stormvermin, a Warlock Engineer, 2 Poisoned Wind Globadiers, and a Warpfire Thrower team. I didn't really do anything else today except mess around with the dogs, sit around in my underwear, and play Virtua Fighter 4 a whole bunch. It was a good day. Now I'd better get to bed so my wife doesn't yell and say, "Honey, I thought you said you were coming to bed in just a minute!"

I Can Be Bought Off

Apparently my price is $15,000. That's how much my reenlistment bonus is for the National Guard. After six years of raving about how I'll never stay in, the lure of the money finally got to me. And for those of you who aren't in yet, the bonus for new recruits is $20,000 at the moment. There's a lot you can do with a $20,000 lump sum.

More Hijinks

A few other motorcycle racers heard about my motorcycle wreck and decided to do a whole series of wrecks based on my wreck. Luckily, they also brought their friends along to record their tributes to me:

Not Quite Evel Knievel

I wrecked a motorycle today. I have been considering buying a motorcycle for commuting, so my brother-in-law offered to let me practice riding on his, as I've never ridden one before. Aside from killing it several times trying to get going, I did okay riding it around the trailer park, but then it was time to park it. The idea was to drive up the curb (one of the rounded ones, not a real curb), across the grass, and onto their driveway. I made it into the grass, then the bike started going down and I bailed. I did a little combat roll across the driveway and escaped with some bruises and a bit of road rash. I think I banged up my knee a bit as well. But I'll recover from all that. The bad news is that I totally thrashed his turn signal. He's an easygoing guy, so he isn't mad at me, but I will feel eternal shame and disgrace every time I think of it. I'm going to replace it as soon as I can get a part for it. But nothing can erase the disgrace I have brought upon all real men as I didn't immediately have awesome motorcycling skills. My pride is certainly bruised. Some famous racing guy heard about my wreck and decided to reenact it:

As far as hobby-related stuff, I put everything in a box for a couple of days. I was getting a little burned out and frustrated because the Immolator (I finally realized that I've been misspelling it all this time) is going very slowly. I still am not sure how I'm going to paint everything on it, but I guess I'll just follow my heart like Napoleon does and it'll turn out all right.

Today I got a cabinet thing with a bunch of little drawers in it, the kind everyone has in their garage or shop to hold bolts and screws and whatnot. I'm going to put miniatures in it. I haven't come up with an organizational system yet, but I will eventually.

If I get home from drill early tomorrow, I plan on inviting my brother-in-law over to try out the Macragge scenarios. None of the parts are painted completely yet, but I figure we'll get around to it. I just want to get some sort of game in to perhaps motivate us in our endeavors.

I haven't made any recent progress on my Skaven army, unless you count assembling the giant. The Battle Sisters project is stagnant as well, since the Immolator is taking a while and I don't really have any Battle Sisters to paint. I did get a Priest and a Battle Sister with Heavy Flamer in the mail, so I could paint the Priest anytime, and I just need a Battle Sisters squad box to go with the Heavy Flamer and I could complete another squad.

But mostly I need to go to bed and get some rest so I can go to drill tomorrow and survive until Tuesday, which is my next day off.