28 December 2006

Oh No! Somebody Set Us Up the Bomb!

I forgot to add that the spackle I picked up worked out well for plugging the gaps in the Skaven bases. I also tried it on a couple of pirates and molded it from their built-in bases down to the washers they're based on.
I tried to order my fur hat today, but shipping was too much and I'll just have to wait until the local Cabela's has it in stock.

All Your Base Are Belong To Us!

I finished up the bases to all the painted Skaven. It went pretty fast, and I even had time to prime the last few Skaven miniatures. I guess I don't have many excuses not to finish the army now. While I was working on the bases I tried to work out what I want to add to the army after the giant and another unit of slaves. I think it would be cool to add a Grey Seer, a Screaming Bell, and a bunch of Plague Monks to push the Screaming Bell. It seems like that would make a good centerpiece to the army. I'm not sure what the points cost on that would be, though.




27 December 2006

I picked up some spackle at Wal-Mart. We'll see how it works on these Skaven bases.

26 December 2006

Today I painted almost all of my Skaven bases. I need to get some putty before I can do the rest of the bases, as the ones I have left are slotta-bases and I need to fill in the slots before I paint them. Perhaps tomorrow I will find time to clearcoat them. Then I will have to find some time to add the flocking. Once all that is finished, I'll have to get up the motivation to get the primer out and finish the last few minis in the army. I'm not really sure what I have against painting the last Jezzail team and the Warp-Lightning Cannon, but I don't even want to look at them. I even got some new miniatures for Christmas, so it's not like I'll die if I paint the last few pieces for my Skaven. Either way, it'll be nice to have the army finished (at least at the 2000-point level). I'd really like to make the Giant my next big project, but we'll see where my whims take me when I'm done with whatever's on my desk at the moment.

I got a pretty good haul of miniatures for Christmas. I got an Orc Warboss, some Night Goblin Fanatics, a Snotling Pump Wagon, and a Goblin Doom Diver Catapult for my Orcs and Goblins Army. I also got the Reaper Townsfolk set for my Pirate Tavern, as well as a Grave Horror for my Warlord Necropolis army. In addition, my wife gave me The Games Workshop Complete Catalog 2006-2007, which I've been using to plan a couple of conversions for my Orcs and Goblins. I also got a Cabela's Gift Card which I will use to buy one of these bad boys. My parents got us a set of super electronic toothbrushes that do everything but tuck you in at night. They're pretty cool. Loot-wise, it was a very good Christmas.

24 December 2006

A Very Busy Christmas

We had Christmas a day early to accomodate family schedules, and after a full day of running around the farm and barking, Buddy crashed on his chairs and hasn't moved at all.

22 December 2006

I haven't really had much to post about the last few days. I've worked a little on the bases for my Skaven. I think I've got 90 bases done and still have 90-some to go, plus the last few minis that I haven't got around to priming yet.
I haven't done anything with my pirates yet, although El Grego posted a comment on my last post with some ideas about what to use for the bases. I'll probably decide what to do with them early next year.
I really need to finish this Skaven project so I can move on to something else. After a year of painting ratmen I need a change of pace. Hopefully I can get at least one game in with them before the next Skaven army book comes out and changes everything. I've been thinking that 3000 points of Orcs and Goblins sounds like a pretty big project. I hope I can get through it in a year or less. I did have a few months out of this year in which I didn't do any painting, so if I keep it up all year in 2007 I should be able to get quite a bit done.

19 December 2006

Basset Hounds Are Not Lap Dogs

I cleaned off my desk today in anticipation of our upcoming furniture shuffle. In theory, the bedroom will become the hobby/computer room, the storage/dog kennel/weight bench room will become the bedroom, the dogs will move to the living room, and the weight bench will go to the shed, which will in theory be cleared out enough that we can use it, although we're going to need some sort of heat out there if we plan on using the shed as a workout room. In theory all of the stuff in storage will either be sold off, donated to good causes, or thrown out. Or we could try to find a cheap storage unit. My main reason for posting all of this here is that the blog has been a good motivator for my miniatures projects, so maybe it can get me motivated to get rid of stuff and move everything around.

I got the new Skirmish Campaigns book from Scott Fisher in the mail today. It looks like it should be fun. I'm hoping to get my initial order of Micro Armour during the first week of April, which will get the ball rolling on me playing the scenarios from the Drive on Minsk book.
The pirate project is stalled at the moment because I need to go pick up some finer sand for the bases. I also need to find some sort of cheap putty or something to sculpt the bases a little. The bases currently have big gaps in them and I also want to do something more visually interesting than flat washers covered in sand.
Tomorrow I think I'll prime the last Skaven pieces. I may start working on the Warp-Lightning Cannon. I got out the Dremel and worked on the hole that the Cannon's gunner mounts to, so he fits a little better now. The slaves who turn the cannon are still a problem as the don't fit to it very well at all. I may end up building a base for the cannon out of sheet styrene and using some sort of putty to even things out. The whole model is a huge pain even to look at. I'm still kicking around the idea of adding two Rat Ogres to my army so I can avoid working on this cannon. I'm also held up on the last Jezzail team as I'm still short one cavalry base and don't want to pony up $5 for a bag of bases that I'll never use.
Oh, and Basset Hounds really are not good lap dogs, no matter how much they try to convince you otherwise. Long, heavy dogs just don't fit on laps. My Basset Hound makes do by putting his front legs on one side of you, his back legs on the other, and resting his belly on your lap. I can't imagine that it's comfortable for him, but he must get something out of it.

A Sample Base

This is the sample base I did last night as a test. I'll probably do something similar to this for my Orc and Goblin figures. I may also use the gravel (Woodland Scenics Medium Ballast #B1379) on some of the larger Skaven bases as well, like the Rat Ogres. I need to get some of the smaller stuff for my pirate bases, to simulate sand. This stuff is a bit big for sand.


Pirates and Skaven Bases

I took a picture of all my pirates together. They are quite the crew.
Today I painted and flocked the bases and movement tray for my Stormvermin. I decided to just do the simple base design on this army. Maybe on my Orc and Goblin army I'll do the bases up with gravel and whatnot mixed in. I've already done 60 Skaven in this simple scheme, and I don't really fancy scraping the flock off of them and redoing the bases. I'd like to have the army finished sometime this century. It doesn't look amazing, but from tabletop distance the bases blend into each other and sort of "disappear." And that's the effect I want. Now I just have to get motivated to do the rest of the army. I also need to come up with some kind of base for the Warp-Lightning Cannon and crew.

Not Much Progress

I didn't really do anything with my miniatures today. Monday always sucks because on Mondays I work from 1:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. instead of my usual daytime schedule. So I come home from work and sleep for most of the day. It usually throws off my sleep schedule until at least Wednesday or Thursday. Hopefully soon I'll get enough seniority to get aschedule that doesn't require me to do the Monday thing. On a good note, I had my second six-month review at this job and got a bit of a raise. That's always a good thing because it means I can get more miniatures.
In Fantasy Football I had a better week than I anticipated. My first-place team lost their playoff game, so they drop into the consolation bracket to play for 5th-8th place. My second-place team won by two points and will play in the Championship game for that league next week. And my 6th-place team barely won this week to place me in the 5th-place game for that league. If I win all of my games from here on out, I can potentially end up with teams finishing in 1st/10, 5th/14, 5th/10, and 9th/16 for the season. It's not great, but any year that I win at least one championship is a good year.
I played around a little with the Blood and Swash rules today, just as a sort of playtest. I generated up some statistics for some pirates and rolled through a couple of combats. It should be pretty easy for my players to learn. I toyed around with pregenerating the stats when I run my game, but I think I will print out some blank stat cards and let the players generate their own before the game. There are four different stats (Slug, Shoot, Sword, and Save), all based on rolling a D20, so I'll probably let them roll 5D20 and keep the four best scores. All of the stats are generated by comparing the rolls to a chart which is different for each level of figure. For example, if you're rolling to generate the Sword stat for your Pirate Captain and a basic Crewman, a roll of 15 will give the Pirate Captain a Sword skill of 16 while the basic crewman would only get a 10 for the same roll. It sounds a lot more complex than it is, but in the little playtest I did, the Pirate Captain was very much able to defeat several basic crewman, which is as it should be in a cinematic game.
I have also been thinking of a follow-up scenario to the Tavern Brawl. If someone is able to make off with the Governor's daughter during the Tavern Brawl scenario, I want to run a cooperative game in which the Governor and the Pirates meet up to exchange the prisoner for the ransom. Of course, neither side trusts the other, and a battle erupts. Victory conditions will likely hinge on who ends up with the ransom and the daughter. I'm sure there are more scenarios to play, but I haven't put much thought into anything else yet.
I've been dreading doing the bases on my Skaven and my Pirates, but I think I need to get started. Tonight I'm going to try to get a couple sample bases started so I can at least have an idea of what I'm doing. I've already based a couple units of Skaven, but I'm not entirely happy with the ones I've done. I may just leave them as is and finish that army in the same style (the easy choice), or I may try to clean off those bases and do something different for the army (the hard choice). For the pirates I will probably do some sort of sandy beach theme. I thought about doing some sort of wooden planking, but I think the sand will work out better for me. My glue was frozen out in the shed, so I've got it on the heater vent warming up right now. Hopefully it's still okay to base with.
I'm getting a little excited for Christmas. We got a lot of presents that I think will be well-received. I also have a feeling that some of my presents are things I've had my eye on lately. I just have to clear out some space in my house for the new stuff.

17 December 2006

Another One


One More Irate Pirate

I painted one more pirate today. I'm pretty happy with everything except the skin. This figure is one of Foundry's Chinese pirates, and I haven't quite got the skin tone down yet. This is my only Chinese pirate, so I'll have to buy more miniatures before I can continue practicing. The good news is that this is my 12th painted pirate, so I technically have enough for my tavern scenario.

16 December 2006

Production Is Up, Matey!!!

I painted another pirate today. Nothing too exciting about the paint job on this one, except that I lettered a couple of X's on the jug tied to his belt, suggesting the presence of a stronger-than-average beverage.



The weather is probably good enough to spray some primer on the last few Skaven, but I've been having fun painting pirates and will probably roll with that for a little while. It's best to paint things while you're interested in them, as it makes it seem less of a chore.

15 December 2006

Yarrrrrr!

I painted another pirate today, bringing my total number of painted pirates to ten. This was my first attempt at painting African skin, and I think it turned out pretty well. I used a method from an article on painting various skin tones from the November 2003 (#286) issue of White Dwarf. A lot of people rag on White Dwarf for being simply a catalog for Games Workshop miniatures. That is true, as the magazine is published by Games Workshop to support and promote Games Workshop games, but among the self-promotion there are a lot of tips and tricks that can be used for any miniatures. Maybe an "old pro" would not find the White Dwarf articles useful, but a noob like me sure does.



I Can't Sleep

I am suffering from a full-fledged attack of insomnia, complete with racing thoughts and magnified senses to the point where every sound in the house is increased a hundred-fold. It's pretty extreme stuff, so I've been planning out my Pirate Tavern project.

I'll need 12-16 pirates, depending on how many players I have in the game. I think I have enough purchased to at least have three teams of four pirates, and I currently have all but four of them painted.

I need to get Reaper's Townsfolk pack with the bartender and serving wenches, and I'm thinking about getting this little deal from Impact! Miniatures. The Beer Garden Beauty isn't really period accurate, but she does have a certain charm and the barrel pyramid and monk will be good scenery for the tavern.

I'll also need some suitable miniatures to represent a small group of noblemen/merchant types and their bodyguard. I could also use a contingent of the Governor's Guard and, of course, the Governor's daughter. Maybe I will add a couple of civilian-type figures to my collection as well.
As far as the tavern goes, I will probably build it using a 3600-count trading card box. They look something like this:

The tavern will have at least one main room with the bar, tables, benches, and other scenery. I'll probably divide off a portion of the box and build some back rooms with the barrel pyramid and maybe an office with a locked trunk in it or something. I'm still a bit fuzzy on what exactly I want the tavern to look like. I'll probably do some poking around on the internet to find some similar scenery and borrow from that. Theoretically I could have a game ready to go as soon as late spring. That would be pretty awesome, considering that I bought the pirates and Blood and Swash rules approximately ten years ago and will finally be able to use them. Anyway, that's the plan in a nutshell. Hopefully I can get to sleep now.

14 December 2006

Yo! Ho! Ho!

I've been waiting on the weather to cooperate with me so I can prime the last few Skaven miniatures for my army. So far it's been humid, so I decided to paint something I've already got primed, a pirate! This is a Foundry pirate with a sort of Andre the Giant build. I did a few experiments on this miniature. The first was his red hair and beard. I started with an actual red basecoat, but that looked a lot like Ronald McDonald, so I mostly covered it up with Vermin Brown, which has a bit of an orange color to it. Then I used Blazing Orange to highlight it and finish it off. It's hard to see in the picture, but it looks very nice in person.
The flesh on the severed head was another experiment. The guy kept looking a little too lively, so I mixed some Rotting Flesh paint in with my skin tones to give his face that dead, bled-out look.
I toyed with smearing blood and gore on the sword, but every time I see the blood effect on a miniature it ends up looking sort of hokey. I may try it out later if i can find a good tutorial that looks a bit realistic. I suspect realism may be achieved by using more browns than reds.
I like the Foundry Pirate sculpts a lot, especially after painting a million Games Workshop figures. The Foundry sculpts are very simple. This guy consists of only a few blocks of color, but he looks very convincing and was fun to paint. The Games Workshop figures can be fun, but the sheer amount of detail and skullz on the figures can get tedious to paint and to look at. Overall I really like this miniature and I'm hoping that once I get my WWII Micro Armour project under way I'll be able to spring the cash for one of the Foundry Pirate Hordes, with 60-some random pirate miniatures.


And here's something that made me laugh today. When I came home from work I noticed that the garbage men (sanitation engineers?, waste removal persons?, the noble men and/or women who remove unwanted items from the curb as a civic service?) had left the neighbor's garbage cans in the driveway, which is normal. The trailer park manager has probably requested that they do that so we'll actually bring our trash cans in on the afternoon of trash day.

Anyway, later on I went out to get the mail. As I got to my house I saw the neighbor coming down the road in his truck. After I went around the side of my house I heard an awful grinding metal-on-metal sound. The neighbor completely ran over his garbage cans. He jumped out of his truck and commenced to swear and kick the garbage cans all over his driveway. It was quite the display of rage.

Oh, and one more thing miniatures-related. A while back I ordered the Russian '41 - Drive on Minsk book from Skirmish Campaigns. The book ended up being short one page. I e-mailed one of the book's authors and he hooked me up with a file containing the missing page and offered to replace the book for me. I left the decision to replace the book up to him as I can easily get by with a printout of the file. Today I got a message from him that all of the books are missing that page and that he's sending me a copy of their newest book free of charge. So it's like a free Christmas present.

12 December 2006

All That's Left

This is all I have left for my Skaven army. One Jezzail team, three crew, and one Warp-Lightning Cannon.

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Jezzail Teams Finished

I finally finished the Jezzail teams. The tiny details all over made them a pain to work on, so I'm pretty happy to be done with them.





In other news, the coat my wife got me for my birthday didn't fit quite right, so we were going to send it back and get a refund. With the refund we were going to buy tickets to see George Strait in concert when he comes to Boise next month. As luck would have it the concert sold out the day before the refund processed and we don't have the cash to pony up for scalper prices. So we paid some bills, which is quite probably the practical thing to do with the money. Probably the second or third-biggest disappointment of the year for me. I guess I should be glad that missing a concert by one of the greats is one of my biggest concerns for the year. It means I have a job, a wife, a home, a car, two stupid dogs, and enough money to feed and clothe us. But I won't turn this blog into some emo navel-gazing whine-fest. I just needed a venue to air my frustration at missing the concert.

End of the Fantasy Football Regular Season

I had a relatively successful week this week in Fantasy Football, going 3-1 to give me a 33-23 record for the year. In the 'Rama Football League, I beat the top-seeded team, but still missed the playoffs by one spot, going 7-7 and finishing 9th out of 16 teams.
In the TMP League I lost my game, but remained in first place out of 14 teams with an 11-3 record. I have a pretty good spot in the playoffs and I hope to do well there.
In won boh games this week in my public leagues. One team finished at 6-8 and goes into the consolation playoffs ranked 6th out of ten. Hopefully with a couple of wins I can take 5th place. My other public league team finished 2nd out of ten teams and goes into the playoffs with a 9-5 record.
Overall it's been a pretty good season, especially since I have three of my four teams playing into the postseason with a chance at some championships.
I haven't done any painting yet today, but hopefully I'll find some time this afternoon or evening to get those Jezzail teams done.

10 December 2006

I've been slowly working on painting some of my Jezzail teams, but it is going slowly as I can't seem to keep working for long periods of time. I may need to paint a pirate or some Warlord figures to recharge a little from painting ratmen. I am done with almost everything on them except for the metallic parts. I am not really a fan of most of the metal Skaven miniatures so far, as they have endless amounts of tiny little fiddly details that take forever to paint. I finally had to stop painting today because I couldn't squint at the little bands on the gun barrels anymore. Hopefully I can finish them up after work tomorrow and then I'll just have one more Jezzail team and the Warp-Lightning Cannon to paint. Then I'll have to do the bases for the army and be done with Skaven for a little while.

I've also been trying to find some enjoyment in World of Warcraft, as it seems I am the only person in my immediate group of friends (all five of the people I know, who all happen to be related to me) who is not excited about the game. I played for a little while yesterday "helping" my little brother level up his Orc warlock. I had to start a new character to help him out, though, as his Warlock is on a different server than my characters. He was at level 6, so I'm not sure how much my level 1 Warrior really helped him out. I think that once my wife starts her World of Warcraft account back up I'll be able to enjoy the game a little more, as we can go quest together in some of the high-level areas and work toward goals other than the end-game sets and dungeons. The expansion is supposed to come out in mid-January, so then we'll have another continent to quest and grind in. And I still need to grind out about 100 more gold that my sister and brother-in-law lent me to buy a Core Marksman Rifle. I would also like to get my full tier 0 set, but that would require going into a few dungeons and instances that are somewhat time-consuming. And who knows what they'll come out with for the expansion? The tier 0 and 0.5 sets will probably be obsolete in a few months.

The neighbor has been trying to start his truck for about two hours now. I don't think it's going to start. He just had the starter going for about 35 seconds. I don't know much about cars, but I don't think keeping the starter going for that long is good for the vehicle. I'm sure he's not thinking about that at the moment, though. It sounds like he's hit the overwhelming frustration and anger stage of car repair. I hope he doesn't keep it up for too long, as I've got to wake up in about four hours for work.

09 December 2006

Blizzard Dupes Me Again for (Hopefully) the Last Time

I'd been hearing good things about the new World of Warcraft patch, especially the new honor system that allows players to save up PvP honor to buy the high-end PvP gear. It sounded pretty exciting, because one of the major reasons I quit the game before was the fact that unless you were invited into a big raid guild or played PvP for hours each day, you were pretty much out of luck when it came to end-game items. With this new system, you can theoretically play whenever you have time and eventually earn enough honor to get the high-end items. With the new patch they also refunded everyone's talent points and came out with new talent trees. Unfortunately, the new Hunter tree isn't very exciting and doesn't really offer a lot of talents worth taking.
I restarted my account last night and repicked my talents, going with essentially the same build I'd had before. Then I went to the trainer and found out that I'd need like 50 Gold to buy back all of the ranks I'd lost with the new patch. That was disappointing.
Then I went to the Arathi Valley Battlemaster to do some PvP and check out the new honor system. As soon as I logged in, people on chat started yelling, "Don't try to win, just kill the LTs. You get 400 bonus honor for killing the LTs!" So now instead of fighting any opposing faction players or capturing towers, AV consists merely of following the pack to each high-level NPC and killing as many as possible to farm honor. Since I don't have a fast epic mount, I usually arrive at each NPC just in time to dismount, collect my honor, and mount up to go to the next one. So if I wanted to farm honor to get items, I'd have to spend hours doing nothing but riding my mount around with all the other players. No one is trying to win the game, no one is having any discernable fun, just honor farming en masse. I quit after two battles last night. Today I made it through part of one, hoping that since I started at a different time things would be different. I guess they really don't have any endgame content for solo players.
I cancelled my account today. They already have my 15 dollars for this month, so I guess my complaints don't matter to them. I hope they don't find some shiny new way to dupe me out of more money. I'd rather use up my hours painting more miniatures.

The Hoff

06 December 2006

A Little Progress Today

Today's post is going to be one huge paragraph of brain dumping before bed. Feel free not to read it if you are one of my three regular readers. If you haven't been here in a while, scroll down a couple posts and there are some pictures and entertainment for you there. I started painting the fur on my Jezzail Teams today, but once I got the initial color on I lost my motivation and set them aside. So I clear-coated the Clanrats I just finished instead. I almost went outside to put primer on the last few minitures in the army, but it is cold out there and I didn't really feel like it. Also, we're out of the rubber gloves I usually use to reposition the figures while I'm priming. I only have a few more miniatures to get through before the army is finished. I think I'll probably get through all of the painting by the end of the year, but the bases and movement trays may take me into next year a little. At least I'm moving a lot faster now than I was the first 8 or 9 months of the year. At this rate I may be able to finish a few projects next year rather than just one army. But I won't get too far ahead of myself just now. I still have to tackle that stupid Warp-Lightning Cannon. The painting itself shouldn't be too bad, but all of the assembly is a beast. I finally got the chassis and barrel all put together. The model seems to be sculpted or cast poorly, so the parts weren't even close to matching. I had to use some green stuff to cover the huge gaps. It's still not pretty, but at least it's together. The paint should hide most of the issues anyway. I'd really like to paint the giant next, but that is a lot of work. He's not doing me any good unpainted in a box, though. Neither is the Witch Hunters Immolator. Or the Warlord miniatures I've accumulated. Or the pirates I've got primed but haven't looked at in months. Or the Micro Armour that Red Rick sent me for winning his contest. I also found some Quality Castings miniatures I got for my birthday when I was about 15. It's a bunch of WWII American and German stuff; an infantry pack, two tanks, and two anti-tank guns per side. Not sure if I'll do anything with them for now, as they aren't in my chosen scale for the period. Maybe I can find someone to offload them on and use the cash to buy some Micro Armour for my Eastern Front skirmish project. Right now it's time for bed, as I was dragging all day and almost got to work late this morning. I'd rather not be late again, especially with my six-month review coming up in the next week or so. It's hard to get a good raise if you sleep in all the time.

05 December 2006

Just For the Record...

The Skaven Warp-Lightning Cannon must be the world's fiddliest miniature. If there is anything out there more frustrating and hard to hold together, I hope I never encounter it. I'm looking for a good excuse to play two more Rat Ogres in place of this dadgum thing.

My Fantasy Football Season Goes Down the Toilet

I had another bad week this week, going 1-3 to bring me to 30-22 on the year. Next week is the last of the regular Fantasy Season, and I don't think I will be able to reach my goal of getting every team into the playoffs, even if I loosen my restrictions a little and count the consolation playoffs as real playoffs.
My team in the TMP League is doing quite well with an 11-2 (1st/14) record and a guaranteed playoff spot. Hopefully I can go on to win it, although I may want to tone it back a little since I want all the players to come back next year. Just kidding, if they can't handle it I'll just find more people to play against.
My team in my other bragging-rights league, The 'Rama Football League, is doing quite poorly at 6-7 (11th/16) and has to win this week against the first-place team to make the bottom spot in the playoffs. I don't think it will happen. The good thing is that I won the 'Rama Baseball League this year, so I at least took one championship from them. This will probably be my last season with the 'Rama folks as I don't visit the Newsarama message boards anymore.
I have a Public League team that is at 8-5 (4th/10) and has to win this week to stay in the playoffs. A loss will drop that team into the consolation rounds to compete for 5th-8th place.
My other Public League team is at 5-8 (9th/10) and needs to win this week to get into 8th place and be in the consolation playoffs. After a hot start I've been losing more than winning lately, so I hope I can pull off a miracle and get some wins this week.
Fantasy Basketball season is getting into full swing now. I have some mixed results there. My 'Rama Basketball League team is in first place out of ten teams at 33-10-2. My TMP Basketball League team is in seventh place out of 14 teams at 22-21-2. I'm in two public rotisserie leagues, each with twelve teams. In one league I'm in second place with 74 points and in the other I'm in seventh place with 60.5 points. I've been moving up in all my leagues, though, as I've made a few roster changes recently.

Howard Dean Made Me Laugh Today

Clanrats Finished

I finally finished the last unit of Clanrats for my army. It was a painful process, but they turned out pretty nicely. My main gripe was trying to get them to line up after I attached their shields, especially with the spikes sticking out so far. Some rats didn't get shields at all and some ended up with flat shield emblems. Most of the stuff for the unit standard came from the Plague Monks sprue, and the unit hero got his arms from the Night Runners sprue. I think the only real interesting things of note as far as the paint goes are the rust effects on the shield emblems and the corrosion on the battle standard's copper disc.


04 December 2006

Colonel Marbles' Miniatures Reviews

I added a link in my sidebar to Colonel Marbles' blog in which he posts video reviews of miniatures.

Johnny Cash Video

John the OFM on The Miniatures Page posted a link to a Johnny Cash video that I think just about anyone could enjoy, unless they are some sort of PETA activist. Watch it here.

03 December 2006

3,000 Point Orcs and Goblins List

Characters
Savage Orc Warboss - Boar, Martog's Best Basha, Armour of Gork, Bigged's Kickin' Boots, The Collar of Zorga
249 pts.
Night Goblin Warboss - Great Cave Squig, Porko's Pigstikka, Light Armour, Spiteful Shield, Collar of Zorga
178 pts.
Goblin Big Boss - Battle Standard Bearer, Spider Banner
110 pts.
Savage Orc Shaman - Level 2 Upgrade, Staff of Baduumm
145 pts.
Night Goblin Shaman - Level 2 Upgrade, Staff of Sneaky Stealin'
135 pts.
Core
20 Savage Orc Boyz - Additional Choppa, Full Command
230 pts.
20 Savage Orc Boyz - Additional Choppa, Full Command
230 pts.
20 Savage Orc Boyz - Additional Choppa, Full Command
230 pts.
29 Goblins - Short Bows, Full Command
136 pts.
40 Night Goblins - Nets, Full Command, 3 Fanatics
250 pts.
10 Forest Goblin Spider Riders - Full Command
160 pts.
Special
5 Savage Orc Boar Boyz - Shields, Full Command, Big 'Uns
193 pts.
Orc Boar Chariot
80 pts.
2 Goblin Spear Chukkas
70 pts.
9 Night Goblin Squig Hoppers
135 pts.
10 Black Orcs - Full Command
168 pts.
Rare
Goblin Doom Diver Catapult
80 pts.
Snotling Pump Wagon
40 pts.
3 Stone Trolls
180 pts.

02 December 2006

I was going to paint today, but my dogs broke the gate and got out, so I had to fix that. Of course I ended up slicing a couple chunks out of my fingers and my painting hand is somewhat incapacitated at the moment. I have discovered that I am not Bob Vila, but at least the dogs shouldn't be able to get out now.
My Guard unit had our Christmas dinner today, along with a excruciatingly long awards ceremony. I got a few ribbons, as did everyone else. I even won something at the raffle. I'm not sure what to do with it. Maybe someone can offer a suggestion?
I may try to post my Orcs and Goblins list tonight. Hopefully it works out this time.

01 December 2006

Another Trailer Park Story

This past Wednesday I came home from work at the usual time and when I opened my car door to get out, I heard a man sobbing loudly and repeatedly saying, "I'm not leaving until you listen to me."
I thought, "This sounds pretty interesting," and I cast my eyes about to find the source of the noises. It turned out to be across the street, where crying guy was blocking the porch, and his (apparently) ex-girlfriend was standing at the bottom of the steps talking to someone on her cell phone, making a big show of ignoring what he had to say. I fiddled with my car and tried to appear very involved in the fact that I have no stereo in my car's stereo mount.
He repeated his, "I'm not leaving until you listen to me," mantra a few times and then he got to the real point of his visit. He announced, "I promised myself and I promised God that I wouldn't give up on you."
She cut him off with, "That's nice," and continued her phone conversation.
But he wasn't done. After softening her up with that smooth "promise line," he got down to the nitty gritty. "I want to live with you!" he said. He didn't say he loved her, he didn't say he was sorry, he just wanted to live with her. I don't blame her for being unimpressed with this final remark. After this he went back to his, "I'm not leaving until you listen to me," line and I went into my house. When my wife got home he was still out there, but he had given up on speaking to his ex and was just hovering around looking pitiful. I suspect that when he took off on her he had some sort of plan for living off of someone else and when those plans fell through he was faced with the threat of pending employment, so he had to run back to his sugar-momma.