I have finally completed the Giant, and only about four days behind schedule. For the base, I just painted the rocks and wagon wheel that were pre-sculpted, painted up three little rats to help tie him in to the Skaven theme, and glued flock on. I may go back later with some static grass and put a few clumps of that on the base, but for now it looks good. I don't want to clutter the base up too much. I actually had about six rats picked out to go on the base, but decided to cut back a little to avoid crowding them all together. I was able to do some multi-tasking while I finished up the Giant. I had some other miniatures that needed clear-coating and basing, so I worked on the Giant, the little rats, and the Poisoned Wind Globadiers in stages, so I didn't have to waste a bunch of time waiting for paint to dry.

I also used my wife's new Hot Glue Gun on this project. I didn't want to attach the small rats to the Giant's base until they were painted, as I didn't want to be reaching my brush around the Giant's legs to get good painting angles. I used little dabs of hot glue to attach the rats to regular slotta-bases for painting. When I was done, I just pulled them away from the glue and stuck them on the Giant's base. It worked out pretty well.

I'm not sure what my next project will be. I probably should assemble and paint up my unit of Clanrat Slaves to finish out the 2250-point Skaven list, but I've been thinking about working on my Warlord armies, even though I don't have all of the miniatures for any of them. I'll probably end up working on my Skaven, as I really want to get the army finished out to 3000 points. I have several boxes of Orcs and Goblins that I want to get started on, but I don't want to work on Orcs and Goblins until the Skaven are done. Anyway, there are a lot of projects vying for attention.

My wife and I went to the mall in Nampa today because there is a new hobby store there that I wanted to check out. The store is pretty small, and carries pretty much the same things as the Boise Hobbytown, but with smaller selections. They do have a calendar of events, though, with some sort of gaming going on every day. While we were there, the gaming tables were covered with RC cars, with various people working on their cars and looking at other people's cars. The reason I really wanted to go check out the store was because they were listed on the Reaper Miniatures website as participating in some of the Reaper programs. They do apparently participate in Reaper's mini of the month painting contests and Paint-and-Take programs. I was too late for this month's Dwarf painting contest, but hopefully they'll run another one for next month.

We also visited the pet store, which had some reptiles for me to look at. They had a Russian Tortoise, some boas, and a couple of other snakes. I also had a major brain-fart when we were looking at the puppies. The puppy cages were situated in a room behind a glass window. I leaned in to get a better look at one of the dogs and completely forgot about the glass between me and the cage. I ran my face right into the glass. My wife had a pretty good laugh about that one.

We also stopped at the fabric store to get some stuff for my wife's craft projects and for a felt-board for the kid's class we teach at church. I went off looking for gaming supplies and found some foam that would've been perfect for making a transport box for my miniatures. Unfortunately, it was $20 for a 24" x 36" x 2" block of it. A little rich for my blood, although I may have to break down and buy some of it at some point. It's the only time I've seen that sort of foam anywhere, and I've been looking for a long time.

Aside from a couple of scenic elements and some flocking on the base, the Giant is completed. I'll probably finish him in entirety a little later tonight. Here are some photos from the front, back, and sides. I'm pretty happy with the way he turned out.

I am nearly finished with painting the Giant. I actually would have been finished twenty or thirty minutes ago, but I got curious as to how my fantasy basketball teams finished this week and spent some time setting my rosters for the upcoming week. Once I got that finished, I hopped on over to The Miniatures Page to see if there were any new threads to read. After that I started thinking about how it would be nice to have a little change of pace from painting Warhammer stuff, so I pulled out my Reaper Warlord army lists to see which army I'm closest to having all of the miniatures for. Unfortunately, I'm not all that close on any of them. I may just do a small project in between the Giant and the Clanrat Slaves, perhaps I'll paint up the bartender and serving wenches for my Pirate Tavern. So I put off finishing the Giant to do all that. And really, I've been ignoring the project altogether for the last couple of days. I've been caught up in vision of a car project that I'd like to do someday. Of course, without money, tools, or a garage to work in I'm not likely to be starting it for another few years. By that time I'll be 30 and probably won't have any time for a project. But it's nice to daydream about sometimes.

For a little painting motivation I pulled all of my painted miniatures today to look at them and feel a sense of accomplishment and pride in the work I've already done. I pulled the Imperial Priest that I painted for my 40K Sisters of Battle army out and put him back on the painting desk as I am still very unhappy with his power sword. I'm going to have another go at painting it using some techniques from the current White Dwarf issue.

We have some new neigbors moving in next door. The people with the awful little Miniature Pinschers moved out and apparently sold the trailer to someone else. Last night the husband decided to do some home improvement from 3 AM to 7 AM, complete with power tools and lots of hammering. I guess he thought, "Hey, I'm in my trailer, so no one can hear me." Unforunately, he hasn't realized that living in a trailer park is sort of like living in an apartment. The walls are paper thin, and people can hear everything you do. I am reluctant to do any complaining about noise, though, as our Basset Hound is a loud individual in his own right. It wouldn't really be a problem, but no one in the trailer park is supposed to have dogs over 30 pounds. Our Lab is something like 85 pounds and our Basset Hound is probably 55 pounds now. The park manager is a crochety old biznatch who hates young couples, and she has threatened that if anyone complains about our dogs we're out of the park.

You Haven't Lived Until You've Painted a Giant's Nether Regions

I am nearly finished with painting the Giant's pants. And I am nearly about to miss my goal of going to be earlier than has been my norm this week, so this is going to be a very short post.

I'm almost done with the giant's right leg, and hopefully I won't have to work overtime tonight and have some time to finish him up completely. Well, at least as far as painting goes. I'll still have to work on his base and maybe a couple of accessory parts.

I did some work on the Giant's pants tonight, but I didn't complete any sections. I didn't have enough focus in me to do shading and highlights, so I just blocked in various base colors.

I've just been thinking about zombies. Fast zombies scare me. Slow zombies I can handle, but there's something creepy about the runners.

Giant Left Arm

I finished up the Giant's left arm and face today during an abbreviated painting session. I worked a bunch of overtime last night and slept later than usual, so I'm glad that I was even able to work up motivation to paint at all. The only things left to do on this project are his pants, any accessories I want to attache to him, and the base. Hopefully I'll be able to make some more progress on him after work tonight.

More Giant WIP Pics - Right Arm

I have just put the finishing touches on the Giant's right arm, and I have to say I am quite proud of him so far. Unfortunately my camera skills are poor enough that these photos don't quite capture the successive highlights from grey to white on his club. I included a picture of his face, but I am not quite finished with that part of him yet. The eyes are sculpted so small and set back into his head that I'm having a tough time getting in there to paint them. I am not sure as of yet how to approach them, so I will probably start in on the left arm next. Key points on the left arm are two shields which mount to the forearm and a human figure clutched in the Giant's hand. I don't think I'll quite hit my target of February 23rd completion, but I should be fairly close.

I tested my Fantasy Baseball rankings in an Autopick draft today, and my team looks to be pretty good, but maybe not good enough to win the league. I am a little overstocked on RPs and a little under where I wanted to be at 1B and 2B. I traded away some position players to the waiver wire to boost my SP rotation, and I think I may have enough pitching to carry most of the pitching categories. My batting may be enough to keep me in contention, but I'm a little light on runs and steals. Of course this will all go out the window as soon as the season starts, but it's fun to go over the numbers and make predictions. I just hope my live drafts go a little better. I got the short end of the stick on this draft by having the last pick in the first round. I tend to have bad luck with draft positions, but you can't let that be an excuse to lose.

Today my sister said it's strange that I am so obsessed with Fantasy sports, since I never played any sports in school or showed much of an interest in sports at all. I did have a pretty big obsession with basketball and basketball cards through some of my teenage years, but I rarely watched any sports growing up. I watch a lot of football now, but I've probably watched 10-12 basketball games and 1-2 baseball games in my entire life. I've never wathced golf at all, but I have a streak of Fantasy Golf teams that rank in the 95th percentile. My Fantasy NASCAR teams do pretty well, too, although I have only watched one or two NASCAR races in my lifetime. I think my obsession with fantasy sports has more to do with the number-crunching and list-making that goes on. I have no idea who any of the golfers are, but I have a little method for reading the statistics that helps me to pick winners and place high. I have always loved to make lists, play with numbers, and sort the statistics, so I think that has a lot to do with it. I also like the competition and finding ways to move myself up in the rankings. I play just as hard at moving from 11th to 10th place as I do trying to position myself at the top of the standings. Anyway, enough about that.

Actually, a little more about that. I think some of the same things that draw me to Fantasy Sports are the same things that draw me to miniature wargaming. One of my favorite parts of the wargaming hobby is making up army lists. I am not very good at interpreting the rules to give myself an advantage (aka powergaming), but I do like to play with the numbers and write out army lists, then take those lists and make more lists of miniatures I'll need to buy, schedules for completing the projects, and further lists for armies to fight against the lists I've already made.

I've also been thinking about what sort of job would qualify as my "dream job." I'm getting set to go back to school in the fall and I've been thinking about what I want to do with my life. Unfortunately, I have no idea what I want to do with my life, and I figure I'll probably just bounce along with FedEx and the National Guard until I find out. But I think my dream job would have to be running the reptile house at a major zoo. I can't think of anything more fun than spending my days with tortoises, snakes, and lizards. I'm assuming they'd throw in amphibians as well, and that would be okay. But reptiles are #1 for me.

Warm weather has been showing up off and on here, so people have been tooling around on motorcycles and making me jealous. I looked at the latest crotch rockets online today and felt the pangs of lust for them. Of course my last experience on a motorcycle was not that glamorous or thrilling, but all of the parts before I dumped it over were a lot of fun.

I've been working a little on the Giant, but haven't accomplished much except for some deep thinking about whether or not giant-sized humanoids would be possible in the real world. Most of my thoughts are centered around whether human body structures could support themselves when blown up 5 or 6 times. Could the skeleton support its own weight? Could hollow bones like a bird's or dinosaur's bones support the giant? That would cut a lot of weight out of the giant's total weight. Would joint problems be an issue? Would the various membranes be able to hold the organs in? How would blood circulation be with so much area to cover? Would the giant be able to find enough food and drink to stay alive?

I've also been considering the various roadblocks to the evolution of giant-sized humans. Usually it seems that organisms evolve to meet a certain environmental need, such as the moth species that moved from predominantly light specimens to mostly dark-colored individuals after the Industrial Revolution covered everything with soot and made the dark moths less visible to predators or the bird species that developed different beaks based on what food sources were available on their islands. I can't really think of an environmental need that would make humans grow to large sizes. The only advantage to being giant-sized would be that you would be bigger and stronger than potential predators, but humans seem to have gone with technology solutions rather than brute force solutions.

I haven't come to any real conclusions, but it seems that giant-sized humanoids would be inefficient and suffer from arthritis unless they developed slow metabolisms and lightened skeletal structures. There seems to be no reason for humans to become much larger than they are now.

Giant: Work in Progress Pics

I've started work on the Giant, and the really hard part (in my opinion) is over. I'm done with his skin, but I still have a lot of details left to paint. With the detail work I'm working on one appendage at a time, so at the moment I'm working on his right arm. I've painted the leather belt on his upper arm and the handle to his club, but I haven't finished the dragon skull. I'll probably finish his face and beard next, followed by his left arm, his legs, and the base.

I'm pretty happy with the way his skin turned out. The basecoat and shading was done in accordance with the tutorial in the White Dwarf magazine, but when I got to the highlights their mix turned out wrong, so I just used progressively lighter versions of the basecoat. It's pretty basic skin tones, just on a much larger scale than I'm used to. Hopefully I'll be able to meet or beat my timeline and get him finished on time, although doing a good job is more of a priority for me than time constraints.

And this is our stupid dog with my huge pile of junk behind him. When we got him from the evil pet store he was sick and malnourished, but as you can see, he's filled out quite well since then.

A Roadblock to my World Domination

I was going to slap some clearcoat and flocking on my Globadiers today, but when I opened my bottles of clearcoat they had mysteriously become empty. So I'll have to wait until I get some spending money again to continue work on them. However, I did take the Giant out to the shed and got him all primed up. So I'm pretty much ready to undertake the Giant project. Since I've never painted up a big figure like this, I'll be working off of the tutorial in White Dwarf #316, at least the parts that deal with painting the Giant's skin. Hopefully the skin will only take 2-3 days. Then I'll shoot for having the rest of the figure done in about that same time frame. So, barring any sort of life event that takes me outside of my house, I should be able to finish him up within a week. I'll give myself 10 days, so hopefully I'll be posting pics of the completed Giant by the 23rd of February, 2007.

I stayed up late last night reading the Wrath of Astranaar guild forums, watching PvP videos, and downloading various User Interface addons. Now I'm too tired to go to work. I think my problem in PvP is that I'm too used to PvE, where I don't move around at all. My pet tanks and I stand there and do DPS. I need to learn to run around while playing. I watched a movie with a Gnome Mage that actually sheeped other players and then went around a corner to drink and get his mana up before coming back around the corner to start the fight back up. I could probably do stuff like that with my Hunter's traps. My sister and her husband never stand still in fights. It makes my wife and I crazy because they run all over and we lose track of the mobs because we're stationary fighters.

Finished!

Today I finished painting up the last three Poisoned Wind Globadiers for my Skaven army. All I have left to do to them is clearcoat them and flock the bases. And I'm finally done with my 2000-point Skaven army, after more than a year of work.

I've got the Giant and his accessories all picked out and ready to be primed. I think he will be my next project, followed by the unit of Clanrat Slaves that will fill the army out to 2250 points. I only have 43 miniatures to paint until I have a full 3000 points of Skaven. I'm setting a tentative finish goal on the army for the last day of March. Depending on how long the Giant takes, I may have to push that date back. Everything else in those 43 minis is pretty easy to work with, although I know I'll have some green stuff work to do on the 3 Rat Ogres I have left to do.

Our new World of Warcraft guild is working out pretty well for us. I think my wife's Druid is up to level 17 or 18, and I hit 20 with my Hunter today. Hopefully it won't be too long before we're levelled up and ready to go on raids with them. I think I will just have to learn to deal with the world PvP. Yesterday I had a couple of Honor Kills against a Mage who tried to kill me while I was fighting a mob. I was able to kill him the first time he attacked me, and again when he rezzed. After that, he rezzed at the Spirit Healer, so I didn't have a chance to kill him again. I also almost won a fight against a Warrior who was two levels above me. I had him a couple of hits away from dying, and would have killed him if he hadn't hit me when I wasn't at full health. When I got back and rezzed I looked around for him to see if he wanted a fair fight, but he had taken off. I made enough gold to buy my Savory Deviate Delight recipe on the Auction House, and then I made enough gold selling Savory Deviate Delight to recoup the cost of the recipe. Now I'm trying to find another place to quest and grind out some more levels. The guild keeps offering to run us through instances and stuff, but I don't really care about gear at the moment because I'll be replacing it every few levels anyway. What I really want is to get to the 60-70 range really quickly so I can start raiding and get my end-game gear. That's the stuff I'll be wearing for a while.

I've also been thinking about my Orcs and Goblins army a lot. I'm excited to be so close to finishing my Skaven and get to work on the greenskins. I'd also really like to get my Pirate Tavern under way, but I'm not sure when I'll get around to it. I need to fill out my Warlord armies one by one as well, although I can't foresee ever actually using them in a game of Warlord. That sort of bumps them to the low end of the project list.

I'm getting excited for Fantasy Baseball season. Yahoo! opens up registration for Fantasy Baseball on February 15th, so I'll probably be setting up a League for The Miniatures Page, as well as joining a few other leagues. My Fantasy Basketball teams are all doing well this year. All four of my teams are in either 2nd or 3rd place in their respective leagues, so hopefully I'll finish out the year with several trophies added to my profile.

WoW, WWE, and Minis

Well, we had our "interview" for the Wrath of Astranaar guild that we wanted to join and they decided to let us in. I'm already having second thoughts, though, as I've been reminded of the reasons I stopped playing on PvP servers in the first place. I'm not really a PvP kind of guy. I like to be able to travel where I want and do what I want in-game without a lot of hassle. PvP just wastes my time. Other than that, the guild seems all right.

We went to the WWE event in Boise last night. It was okay, but not as good as the last two shows. I think part of it was because they held the event in a larger venue, even though they'd never sold out the smaller arena. So the crowd noise and presence wasn't as good.

It didn't help that the wrestlers avoided interacting with the crowd. The crowd interaction is the main part of the event, in my opinion. Otherwise it really is just watching people pretend to hit each other. In the previous shows, lots of wrestlers grabbed the mic and made sure that the crowd knew they were the bad guy or the good guy. Then they played up those roles in the match. It's kind of like in old movies. When the villain shows up, they play the evil music and the guy has a thin moustache, oily hair, and is dressed in black. That cues the crowd to boo and hiss. When the hero shows up, they play the heroic music and the hero is a clean-cut guy dressed in white. Yesterday I think the wrestlers were just going through the motions to get the paycheck. The only wrestler who really seemed to get into it was John Cena, the current champion. And even then, he spent his time talking about Boise State University's football team, which makes me sick to think about.

Probably the most entertaining part of the show was Superfan, a guy sitting a few rows in front of us. Wrestling is obviously his entire life, and he was stoked to be there. Every time anything happened he would leap from his chair and yell and wave his arms and sing along to the entrance songs. He must have got there early and bought every T-Shirt they offered, because during intermissions he would pull out his bag and go through each shirt, patting it, looking at the graphics, and showing it to his friends. When the wrestling started back up he'd put all of the shirts in the bag, set it down next to him, and jump up to cheer again.

I started working on my remaining Poisoned Wind Globadiers. I'm hoping to have them finished up sometime in the near future, but there are no real guarantees with that. I've been puttering around my hobby desk, but not being very productive. I did plan out my Orc General and Battle Standard Bearer. I even clipped my unused bits off the sprue and put them in a drawer. I'm going to need a bigger drawer for my Clanrats bits.

Before work today I put some primer on my last three Poisoned Wind Globadiers. I also clipped Clanrat Slave parts off of sprues in preparation for the next addition to my army. I was going to work on painting the Globadiers tonight after work, but I ended up goofing off on World of Warcraft instead, finishing some quests, leveling up my Fishing skill, and trying to find the materials so I can have a Tailor craft me a Lavender Mageweave Shirt.

I went through my miniatures bin today with the intention of stripping all of my leftover parts off of their sprues and sorting them into my bits cabinet. After finding approximately 9 million sprues in my painting corner I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and I retreated back to the couch where it was relatively safe.

I think my wife and I are going to join that guild from the magazine, but with my work schedule I haven't been online at the right times to talk to the guild leaders. I have been posting a lot on their forums, though. It turns out there are a few people in the guild with Warhammer armies in various stages of completion.

World of Warcraft

I've been using a lot of time trying to improve my World of Warcraft character. I bought an MMORPG magazine (Beckett Massive Online Gamer) the other day that had an article featuring a guild on another server that is casual enough for you to have a life outside the game, but hardcore enough to have regular raids on the big instances. That's something my wife, my sister, my brother-in-law, and I have been looking for for a while. The main problem with this is that none of us have any characters on that other server. Normally we could just do a character transfer, but that guild is on a PvP server, and my wife and I have our characters on a PvE server. Blizzard doesn't allow transfers from one to the other. So we're faced with a dilemma. Do we start over on the other server just to join a good guild? Or do we stick with soloing on our current server so we don't lose all the time we have invested in our characters (about 650 hours in the case of my Hunter)?

The magazine also had an article on how to make lots of gold with your character. It went over the various sources of income that a character has, as well as the different things you have to spend money on. The main point of the article was that you have approximately 4 sources of income, with 1.5 of those being taken away by normal costs (armor repairs, potions, flight costs, bandages). That leaves you with 2.5 revenue streams left (half of your cloth drops and two profession slots). If you do the normal thing take a crafting and a gathering profession they pretty much cancel out, and leave you with 0.5 revenue streams. But, if you take two gathering professions you can sell everything you gather and have 2.5 full earning streams, which is five times more than the norm. After thinking about it for a while, I dropped leatherworking and picked up mining. I've been running around trying to level my mining up to the point where I can go back to Outlands and keep leveling up. Of course, if we decide to move to the other server, I'll just forget about this character for a while and work on another Hunter.

BLOWOUT!

I had an exciting time on my way home from drill this weekend. A couple of miles down the interstate I pulled into the left lane to pass a truck. As I came around the bend I saw some debris in the road. I didn't have anywhere to go, so I went over it. It was just some little junk, so I didn't think much of it until I heard my tire start spitting chunks off of itself and blow up. I got to the side of the road and put on the spare. But my spare is the sort that needs to be pumped up before you can drive on it, so I had to wait for the tow truck guy to get there. Several of the guys from my National Guard unit either stopped or called me as they went past to see if I needed any help. There were a lot of people who drove by and either honked or yelled. I'm not sure if it was because I was in uniform or just because it's funny to harass stranded motorists. Also, drivers from Oregon seem to be morons. For one, they're not allowed to pump their own gas. Secondly, it seemed like everywhere I went this weekend, some car with Oregon plates was cutting me off, driving erratically, weaving back and forth between lanes without using their turn signals, being driven by someone talking on a cell phone, or some combination of the above.

Anyway, I ended up buying new tires for my car today. I need to do the brakes on my car soon, too. And probably replace the shocks. I guess it could be worse. I could be riding a moped.

Today I got the last miniatures I need for my new 2000-point Skaven list, and the unit of Slaves I need for the 2250-point list. So to get my army to 2250 points, I just have to paint 3 Poisoned Wind Globadiers, 1 Giant, and 20 Slaves.

I've been thinking about getting a part-time job somewhere until school starts in the fall, just to bring in some extra money. There's a gas station right by my full-time workplace that's hiring for odd shifts, so maybe I'll apply there. It won't be a lot of money, but it might be enough for a car payment or something.

Sometimes I wonder if visitors are creeped out by the fact that the only artwork in our trailer is a poster of David Hasselhoff.

Howard Dean Almost Made Me Late for Work Today

And a little sidenote, Howard Dean was nearly the cause for me being tardy to work. I was downloading various remixes of his famous Yeaaaghh! Speech and lost track of time. For those who want to join me as fellow Deaniacs, you can find a few of the remixes here.

Finished with a Project (Sort Of)

Well, the Skaven army as I originally envisioned and purchased it is entirely done, and only about a month behind schedule. All 196 (approximate number, as that is the number I've come up with most often when counting them) miniatures in the army are painted, clearcoated, based, and when appropriate, mounted in movement trays. Technically the army won't be finished until I purchase and paint a couple more Poisoned Wind Globadiers, but the original project is done.

I think I'll hand out a couple of awards in celebration. First, The Most Frustrating Miniature Ever: the Warp-Lightning Cannon. From clean-up to assembly (especially assembly) to painting and basing, the whole thing was a nightmare. I never want to touch another one of these castings again. There are no runners up for this award, as nothing else even came close.

My second award is for Most Fun to Work On. I have to go with the Rat Ogres on this one. I got to do a little of everything on them, including sculpting with green stuff, painting rust, pustules, veins, bones, warpstone, and all manner of mutations. I had fun putting them together, and I had fun painting them. The runner up for this award is the two units of Night Runners. Their urban camo paint scheme was a lot of fun to come up with and paint.

The award for Most Likely to Star in an Action Film goes to my Ratling Gunner. He's wearing a muscle shirt and carrying a huge multi-barreled gun. I've named him Rat-Bo.

And finally, the award for Most Severed Body Parts on a Banner goes to my Battle Standard Bearer. He's got a severed head, a severed hand, a skull from some form of cattle, and a streamer of humanoid skulls. Runner-up honors go to my Warlord, as the surpised look on the face of his banner's severed head still makes me laugh. Below you can see a slightly blurry picture of the finished Warp-Lightning Cannon and a photo of the entire army.

I Found a USB Cable

I found a USB Cable, so I took a couple pictures of the Cannon and crew. The photos look a little fuzzy, I'm not sure if it's poor camera skills or residual effects of the camera being chewed and left in the back yard by my rotten dog. The base is far from finished, but you can probably get a good general idea of what it's going to look like in the end.

True to my predictions, the slaves came loose from the Warp-Lightning Cannon last night while I slept. I think my superglue lost it's adhesive properties again, which happens from time to time with superglue (usually in the middle of a project). Today I broke down and got some two-part epoxy. If that doesn't hold the blasted thing together I really will throw the whole thing at the wall and paint up two extra Rat Ogres. A unit of seven Rat Ogres may seem like a bit much, bit you have to do what you have to do.

There are about four other guys at work who are in the National Guard, and from an informal poll I conducted I have determined that everyone in the Guard hates drill weekend. Except maybe the General. From what I hear, his drill weekend consists of sending an aide to the bank to cash his paycheck into one-dollar bills, and then having a group of enlisted soldiers dump the money into a kiddie pool. Once they have used hair dryers to evenly heat the bills to a proper temperature, he climbs in, lounges about for a few hours and then goes home, having successfully completed his duties. At least that's what I hear he does.

The Officer Candidate School rep came to our last drill weekend and told all three of the people who went to his briefing about the perks of being an officer, with a strong emphasis on the monetary benefits and the automatic promotions to Captain level. I've put off deciding to be an officer for a while because I've maintained that I'm getting out of the Guard as soon as possible. Well, the truth is that I'm probably in for my 20 years, so I should probably go back to school in the fall and sign up for OCS when I have enough credits to do so. That will probably happen sometime in 2013.

I finally finished the painting and assembly of the Warp-Lightning Cannon. The custom base I made for it is drying at the moment. It should be ready for painting and flocking tomorrow.

If I hadn't been highly motivated to see the project through tonight I think I would've thrown the model at the wall and painted up two Rat Ogres to make up the points. The Warp-Lightning Cannon is not very well sculpted. Once I finally figured out how the gunner was supposed be attached it took about 57 tries to line up his seat in the exact spot where his lever arm could be fitted to the firing mechanism. Of course the pieces still didn't line up at all, so I had to use little bits of green stuff to fill the gaps. That was a nightmare in itself. The slaves broke free from their attachment points several times before I finally got them securely glued in place. I'm half expecting to wake up in the morning to find that the entire model has disassembled itself on my desk overnight.

For the base I used a piece of sheet styrene cut out to the size of a credit card. To avoid just sticking the cannon to a bit of plastic and also conceal the slotta tabs on the slaves, I covered the entire base with a layer of spackle, which I spread out and flattened using my hands (I was wearing latex gloves and had dipped my hands in water, otherwise the spackle was more attracted to my fingers than the base and would peel off and go everywhere. Once that was done, I set the cannon down on the spackle to mark where the wheels sit. I used a craft stick to make ruts from the positions of the wheels back to the edge of the base, to show that the Cannon had been pushed there by the slaves, as opposed to just falling from the sky.

Tomorrow I'll permanently mount the Cannon onto the base and hopefully get all of the painting and basing out of the way. After a quick shot of clearcoat the Cannon should be finished. Then I can get to work on my last couple of Globadiers and hopefully get motivated to get the Giant and a unit of Slaves done up for my 2250-point list.