I can't breathe through my nose, so I can't get to sleep. I've checked my Fantasy Sports lineups about 352 times already, so maybe I'll post something up here. In about 3 1/4 hours I have to get up and go to work. The AM shift undermans their Saturday shift, so the PM guys have to come in early to help them finish up their work and then go to the other side of the dock to move our freight. It makes for a long day, considering we do our PM shift from 3:30 to midnight on Friday and then have to be back to work on Saturday at 8 AM.

Sometimes I wonder how some of the new kids at work survive from day to day. Moving freight isn't exactly rocket science. You pull the freight out of the trailer, check to make sure it's not damaged, fix it if it is damaged, get your paperwork, scan the paperwork in the computer, take the freight to the destination trailer that the computer designates, put the freight into the trailer, scan your paperwork, and if it needs it, tie the freight to the wall. With Hazardous Material shipments you have to do some extra paperwork, put pallets or plywood around the shipment so no one can inadvertantly puncture the freight, and maybe put some placards on the trailer. I have just described almost the entirety of the dockworker job. It's not that difficult. But some folks just can't figure it out.

I am thinking of one person in particular as he was in my way all day today, and things on the dock would move so much faster when he's not there. I imagine that watching him work feels similar to having a killer amoeba feeding on your brain.

On a slightly less ranty note, I've been thinking a lot about the Games Workshop Lord of the Rings miniatures. Hobbytown has got a Wardens of the Westgate boxed set that I've been looking at for several months now. I am reluctant to purchase it, however, as buying that box of miniatures will mushroom into the purchase of at least two or three books, an army of Gondor miniatures, a boxed set from the Isengard or Mordor range, and extra miniatures to fill any holes that the boxed sets miss. I think I will end up buying the Dwarf boxed set and starting the snowball down the hill, but I need time to prepare my mind for the real cost of the project.

And no post would be complete without a little bit of YouTube. This one goes out to all the righteous homeboys:

My premonition was correct, and I am indeed quite ill now. So far I haven't noticed the DayQuil having any effect, and I wonder if I built up an immunity to it in my troubled youth. Since I am feeling so sick, there is sure to be overtime at work today and tomorrow, as there is never any work when I'm feeling good and always plenty of work when I'm sick and just want to go home.

I planned to post about a lot of stuff tonight, but I can feel an illness coming on and didn't feel like doing much of anything. It's a good thing we bought some NyQuil and DayQuil the other day for my wife, because I'm probably going to need it this week. I tried out a glaze on a couple of Orcs tonight and I didn't really like it. For the greenskins I almost like a very pronounced contrast between the layers of color, something akin to the "Foundry Style" of painting. And that's really all I've got for now.

Taking a cue from El Grego, I've decided to post a picture of my World of Warcraft character, Chonk, and his pet scorpid, Hasselhoff. Chonk is a level 70 Dwarf Hunter on the Turalyon server. Hasselhoff is a level 70 killing machine, and he's dead sexy to boot. At the moment I'm not playing much, but if I were playing I'd be in Nagrand trying to get enough Ogre Beads for this and this.

Mr. T puts the "T" in I.T.

Even better than the mere existence of these next few videos is the fact that there seems to be some sort of storyline connecting them. When it's all said and done, even you will want to buy a Hitachi Midrange Storage System!

Get Some Nuts!

I think I've finally turned the corner and overcome whatever it was that was blocking me from painting my Orcs. It will still be slower than painting Skaven, but I should be able to power through this first unit of Orcs so I can move on to the other unpainted stuff that's cluttering up my painting area. I've finished the skin tones on two of my Orcs, and tonight after work I'm going to try finishing the skin on eight more. From there it'll just be a matter of painting standard details, and I can do those pretty quickly. The only things I'm anticipating trouble with are the wolfskin cloak that my Orc Warboss is wearing and the huge flag my Battle Standard Bearer is carrying.

The Fido-Shock Pet Deterrent Kit came via UPS today, so I'll probably set that up sometime in the near future, after I get some more wire. The fenceposts that came with the kit are a bit shoddy so I may have to get some better posts as well. Either way, we are only a few steps away from being able to let the dogs spend more time unsupervised in the yard.

I did a little bit of painting on some Orcs tonight. I am incredibly frustrated at how slowly Orcs paint up compared to Skaven. For the ratmen I just slap on a medium brown basecoat for the fur; a light brown for tails, hands and feet; and hit the whole thing with a brown ink wash. After that the figure is mostly done and all that's left is armor, weapons, and a few little details. For Orcs I have to paint on a basecoat, then I have to paint the midtones, and finally I have to paint the highlights. It goes slowly because I can't just slap the paint on all over. I have to "stay in the lines" and only hit certain areas with each progressive coat. And that's just the skin. Perhaps once I've got a few units put together and painted I'll have a method developed and they'll go a lot faster. For now I think I'll just work on 5 or 10 figures at a time so as not to be completely burned out by the end of each step.

I've been hiding the primer-encrusted Space Marines in my drawer, not wanting to think about trying to fix the damage. I don't think I can paint the parts on the sprue. In theory it makes sense, but in practice I need to have the figure mostly complete in front of me before I can work on it. Painting random parts on a sprue just isn't inspiring enough for me to actually sit down and do it.

I nearly forgot to talk about the week in fantasy sports. I went 3-1 for the week in Fantasy Football, which takes me to 10-2 on the season. In the TMP Fantasy Football League I am in fifth place with a 2-1 record. I highly doubt that I can pull off a win in that league for week four, so I should fall a little further down the standings next week.

In my Public Leagues I am doing pretty well, and the forecast looks good for next week. All of the Public Leagues are ten-team leagues. Hoff's Hamburgers are sitting in 1st place at 3-0, the only undefeated team in that league. Pete's Peg Legs are 2-1, sitting in 2nd place in their league. And the Zombie Monkeys are at 3-0, holding down 3rd place in their league.

In Fantasy Baseball I am still looking at bringing home two 2nd-place finishes and one 3rd-place finish in my Public Leagues. In the TMP Fantasy Baseball League I am still losing horribly to the Monday Knights. I have been fighting a difficult battle to bump my numbers up using the waiver wire, but I don't know if I can make up enough ground to win the league. It would take a miracle, as I'm down 2-7-1 at the moment, and some of the categories he is winning are not even close. Even assuming a very good week from my players I could probably end the week in a tie, but he has the advantage in the tiebreaker category. It looks like I'll be taking home two silver and two bronze trophies in Fantasy Baseball this year. What makes it really painful is that many of the players in the TMP League sent in some minis as a sort of prize to the winner of the league, and I want that little pile of lead.

Last night I wrote up most of a Mutants and Masterminds character sheet for my bodybuilder superhero. I find that, for me, character creation in most RPG systems is a little too complex. Of course, the only systems I have any familiarity with at all are GURPS 3rd Edition and D & D 3.0/3.5. I suppose those games are not the most simple systems out there; with feats, skills, character classes, advantages, disadvantages, and who knows what all else scattered across 75 different books. With my information retention issues, it all gets confusing very quickly. That seems to be my curse. When I played Heroclix, the other guys seemed to have every figure's dial and powers memorized, while I had to consistently check the cheat sheet to see what my figures could do. I had similar issues in my first Warhammer games, I had to constantly check the charts for the various rolls while my opponent could spout off the numbers needed from memory, then turn to the Warmachine players at the next table and tell them the rules from that game. The information just doesn't stay in my brain like it should. But enough about my personal problems.

I think the Mutants and Mastrminds character creation system is fairly streamlined, at least in this core rulebook. I still haven't read all the way through the Combat section and some of the powers seem a bit complex to use, but I think I may be able to wrap my mind around this system and have some fun with it. At the very least, superhero minis have got my painting jones going again, and anything that gets me to pull out the paintbrushes is a good thing.

Mini Pics!

It's been a while since I posted some real miniature-related content, so I'm pretty excited to post some pictures of my just-completed superhero miniature. He really isn't painted extremely well, but I think he turned out decent. The skin looked a lot worse a couple of steps ago, with way too much contrast between the darkest parts and the highlights. So I went out on a limb and tried a glaze using my mid-tone orange. A glaze is basically an extremely thinned-out layer of paint. I think I had a 2:7 ratio of paint to water before I got the right consistency. It was originally 1:7, but it was too thin so I added another drop of paint. The purple shorts are part homage to the Incredible Hulk, part tinkering around with the color wheel, and part looking at bodybuilding magazines and realizing that bodybuilders tend to wear speedos in the worst colors imaginable. I think from here I'm going to write up a character sheet for this dude using the Mutants and Masterminds rules. He could also be used in the Supersystem miniatures game.

It's the Close Ones that Really Hurt

There are still two football games left in the week, but I appear to have big wins in three of my fantasy leagues and an almost certain loss in the TMP Fantasy Football League. And that's the one that really gets to me. At the start of the day it looked like I was headed for a decent win. From there things got close and my opponent eventually overtook me. The points stayed pretty much neck-and-neck for a while, then he started pulling away and now I'm pretty sure he's got this one in the bag as he's up on me by 12 points. Somehow I doubt that my kicker is going to outscore both Drew Brees and Deuce McAllister by 12 points. Unless Chicago manages to score 45 points entirely on 15 Robbie Gould field goals. That loss and the fact that Denver is not very good this year are keeping me from enjoying my three wins this week that will put me in first place for all my non-TMP Leagues.

To top it all off, I am getting my scrawny butt kicked all over the diamond in the TMP Fantasy Baseball League championship round. I won handily all through the regular season, and now I'm getting a little taste of humble pie. My pitchers are getting destroyed after holding down awesome stats all year, and my batters must be going up to the plate blindfolded at the rate they're striking out.

In good news, I should still get trophies in all four fantasy baseball leagues, my football teams are doing well in spite of my weak receiving corps, and I was able to get six teams for the TMP Fantasy Hockey League. Now I just have to get some people interested in the TMP Fantasy Basketball League.

I think I'll paint some miniatures (or rather, a miniature). My wife is hanging out with my sister and my niece at their house. I think she's using her sewing machine to fashion a pirate-themed quilt. Our system for purchasing birthday presents seems to be working out pretty well. Back when I had to try surprising her on holidays I had a run of gifts that fell pretty flat. So now we get to pick out our large exciting gift and anything smaller can be a surprise. For her surprise this year I got her a cd by Mika, the same dude who did the "Big Girls You Are Beautiful" video I linked a few posts ago.

Even More Tax Dollars at Work for You...

I did a little bit more painting on my superhero miniature, but in a rare bout of good sense I decided to do some History homework rather than continue with my painting. I firmly believe that the authors of my history textbooks hate me personally in a very deep and malicious way. Somehow they knew beforehand that I would be reading their books for my classes and with this knowledge they formulated every passage to be as boring as possible to my ADD-addled mind. It is pretty bad when writing out the bill calendar garners more of my enthusiasm than reading a history book. I'm thinking of taking a couple of days off work so I can forge ahead and do three or four weeks of reading and tests all at once. Then I could finish the class early and be done with it forever.

I got my Mutants and Masterminds book today. I haven't had a chance to really look at it, though. I did occupy my mind at work this evening with thoughts of various villains and scenarios I could run for my little brother and possibly my wife as well.

I have been trying to drum up support for the TMP Fantasy Hockey League and the TMP Fantasy Basketball League. It's true that these sports don't share the widespread popularity of football and baseball, but you'd think that there would be eight or ten Miniatures Page members who were fans of each sport and would enjoy the competition of a casual fantasy league. I think part of my struggle is that there are four teams in the hockey league at the moment, and as the semi-official commissioner of TMP Fantasy Sports I feel obligated to give those other three team managers their (imaginary) money's worth. We have had a great time with the Football Leagues so far, and the Baseball League has been been fun as well. I suppose we'll do our best with what we've got.

Someone's tax dollars paid for this video:

Our dog's goal in life is to do everything that he isn't supposed to do. This includes poop eating, sock chewing, barking, and getting out of the yard. He especially likes getting out of the yard. First he went under the porch and chewed off all the latticework. When we blocked that off he pushed in the skirting on the side of the trailer and started chewing on the various things he found under the house. From there he pushed a path between the siding and the porch so he could get out that way. Once we got that pretty well blocked off we thought we had him contained. But last week I went out to bring him in before work and he wasn't there. So I followed the barking to the other side of the trailer park and brought him home. Then he got out again. I discovered that he had dug a tiny crack underneath the hot tub and was wiggling through it so he could go play in the neighborhood. This week we ordered an electric fence. It should be here next week sometime, and I think that it will keep him in the yard. His experiences with the electric fences at my parent's farm haven't been too pleasant for him, so I hope he'll learn to respect the boundaries of the yard after he gets zapped a few times.

One of my younger sisters left for Air Force basic training today. That makes four of my immediate family members who are in the military or have served in the military previously. My dad is in the Army National Guard, I'm in the Army National Guard, my oldest sister just got out of the Air National Guard, and my youngest sister (technically she's just a few minutes older than her twin, but who's counting minutes, anyway) just left for her introduction to the Air Guard. I guess we're all suckers for free school money or something. Good luck, Antje.

In honor of my sister's big step, my dad took us all out to dinner last weekend. The only adult sibling who doesn't live in our trailer park was visiting from Pocatello, so almost everyone was there.

I'm still working on the basecoat for my Cheeto-colored superhero. I hate painting the yellow/orange/red spectrum of colors. It just seems like I can't get decent coverage without caking the paint on the figure. I must just have bad techniques or something. At least I'm painting again.

I've been thinking about a way to scratch my Micro Armour itch. I'm pretty sure it's been done before, but I was considering playing Squad Leader using miniatures. I could use hexagonal terrain tiles to recreate the geomorphic Squad Leader boards, and Micro Armour miniatures to represent the troop and vehicle counters. I'm still not sure if it's something I want to actually do, but it's fun to think about.

It is officially my wife's birthday now, so I guess I should mention that. I think she's 24 now. That makes me nearly 26. We're getting pretty old. I'll probably need to start cruising eBay for a nice cane or walker. Or maybe I could just order a pamphlet from Hoveround next time I see their infomercial. Nine out of ten people got their hoveround Power Chairs for little or no cost, you know.

I ordered the rulebook for Mutants and Masterminds the other day, so I've started thinking about superheroes. And with my Warhammer armies sitting at a standstill, I started a new miniature that will hopefully kickstart my painting drive. I'm painting this miniature from Reaper as a superhero with orange skin, and I've been working a little bit on a backstory for him.

He started out as a mediocre bodybuilder with aspirations of being the next Mr. Olympia. Before one of the Olympia qualifying events, he used an experimental spray-on tanning solution and experienced an intense reaction. While his strength and physique ballooned up to superhuman proportions, his skin became permanently tinted in a hideous orange color. It was such a horrible fake tan that he became the laughingstock of the bodybuilding community and lost his protein shake and dietary supplement endorsements. With money running low, he turned to a life of crime. Unfortunately it was pretty easy for witnesses of his crimes to pick the huge orange guy out of the lineup, and he was sent to jail for five years. Once out of prison, he was contacted by a superhero team made up of reformed criminals and accepted a trial membership to see how he liked living on the right side of the law. By day he runs a small gym and at night he roams the streets with his teammates, acting as the muscle for the group.

Painting orange skin seems difficult, but I think I can get it to look okay. Then I'll have to fill out the rest of the superteam and give them some villains to fight.

Since I Don't Have Any Real Content to Post

To make up for my lack of progress in the world of miniatures, I am forced to post links to YouTube videos. Here's a different version of an old favorite.

There is no real way to describe this video in words. It is just amazing. I defy you to watch the entire thing. I recommend wearing sunglasses and earplugs if you make the attempt not because the video is bad, but because the pure sensory overload that this song creates can actually melt your eyes and ears if experienced in full measure.

It's a pretty weird week in the Fantasy Football season when LaMont Jordan outscores LaDainian Tomlinson and Stephen Jackson. I am glad that Tomlinson had a bad week, though, as one of my Fantasy games came down to a few points. I had the San Diego defense and a two-point lead while my opponent had Tomlinson. The San Diego defense only scored a few points, but Tomlinson only had five points and I came away with the win. Unless things go really crazy in Monday's game, I should be 4-0 this week.

I am a big Denver fan but that time-out just before Oakland kicked the field goal in overtime seemed like a cheap shot, especially since Oakland missed it on the retry. I'm glad that Denver got the win, but what a way to do it. I'm pretty sure that somewhere in the distant past Mike Shanahan sold his soul for a book of secret coaching tricks like the Invisible Time-out and the Running Back Revolving Door. Denver's been lucky the last couple of games, but I imagine the wheels will come off soon unless they start playing better.

In Fantasy Baseball, I won the week in the TMP Baseball League, so I'll be moving on to the Championship week, which actually goes from the 17th to the 30th of September. We really need to get some sort of TMP League Champion t-shirts for our Fantasy Sports Leagues. That would be quite the article of clothing to wear to a convention. I lost in my other Head-to-Head league, so I'll be in the third-place game next week. I made a huge run from 8th to 5th place just before the playoffs, and now I can't finish any worse than 4th place, so I feel pretty good about that. In both of my Rotisserie leagues I'm still holding down 2nd place, so hopefully I can stay in 2nd with both teams through the end of the season.

My wife and sisters have been singing this song for quite a while now, but credit goes to Jamie over at The Bates Family Blog for the Youtube video link. I think this is a video everyone should like. If you don't like it, you are probably a square. Literally, a square. Like with corners and right angles and four equal sides.

The title of my last post wasn't entirely accurate. I looked up the definition of "rickrolled" on Urbandictionary.com and apparently it didn't exactly mean what I thought it meant. You can find the real definition here.

The first week of Fantasy Football is over. I went 3-1 for the week, which is pretty good. I could've won the other game, but Alex Smith and Steven Jackson didn't do anything and Brandon Jacobs got injured. I should be able to rebound, though, as I picked up as many Running Backs as possible in all of my drafts.

The second round of the Fantasy Baseball playoffs is going right now, and both of my Head-to-Head teams advanced from the first round. Both of my Rotisserie teams are sitting in second place in their respective leagues, so I should have a few more digital trophies to show off in a couple of weeks.

Not much else is going on, as I spent the weekend with the National Guard and the start of the week has been filled with schoolwork, class, and my job.

You've Been Rickrolled!

I am posting this here so I can always have access to these sweet dance moves. As usual, credit for me discovering this video goes to the folks at The Miniatures Page.

I had every intention of doing amazing things last night, but I was so tired after work that I just sat around until it was bedtime. Today it looks like more of the same.

More than meets the eye...

Look, it's a normal-looking semi truck!

Not so fast! That normal-looking truck just turned into a giant killer robot! Run for your lives!

Today I managed to do some more homework and put some more paint on the Orcs. My wife and I also got our box of World of Warcraft cards in the mail and true to form we failed to get even one loot card, not even a tabard or fishing chair. But no worries, as we got plenty of other cards with which we may eventually play a game.

I shaved off my beard in preparation for drill weekend. For a few sweet moments I left a mustache and sideburns combo that brought tears of joy to my eyes. My wife cried a different sort of tears when she saw it and used very persuasive arguments to convince me to shave them off. Tomorrow I will get a proper military haircut and once again look like somewhat of a soldier, rather than my usual "homeless man who has befriended a woodchuck and let it take up residence on his head" look.

I really need to finish painting these Orcs, as they are driving me crazy. The first unit of an army seems to be the most difficult to paint. Once you've got a unit or two painted, the rest just fall into whatever pattern you've set forth and it all goes together. But that first unit is just a killer.

I haven't been helped by my lack of focus, either. I've got some of my painted minis on my desk and I can't help looking at them and thinking that I wish I had a few more Foundry Pirates or a Skaven Doomwheel or some more miniatures from Reaper's Warlord line.

And the WWII project is always fun to rework. Today I decided to just focus on the Russia '41 - Drive on Minsk Skirmish Campaigns book, as the other book I have features a lot of extra vehicles that I don't think I can buy at the moment. I'll concentrate on the scenarios in this book and as I go along I can build up my forces for the other book. It should take me plenty of time just to get through these ten scenarios anyway. I wonder if all wargamers are as wishy-washy as me? It seems likely, as the message boards and blogs that I read are full of people dropping projects and picking up new ones. Then they get the spark back for the first project as well as a different army in the same period. It's really a wonder that anyone gets a game in edgewise.

The Fantasy Baseball playoffs are upon us, and my TMP Fantasy Baseball team has earned a bye for the first week. That has been my players' cue to go on a tear, using up all of their good stats during the one week I don't really need them to. Next week I imagine they'll be so tired from hitting home runs and stealing bases that they won't be able to play very well and I'll get eliminated from championship contention. At least I'll be able to soothe myself with the new Fantasy Football season and my aspirations there. I didn't get to draft many of my beloved Denver Broncos, but I am pretty happy with all of my teams. The only one I really have questions about is my team in the TMP Fantasy Football League. My Wide Receivers are just not that great, and I find myself depending on LaMont Jordan to carry half of the Running Back load. Hopefully Clinton Portis gets injured and my Ladell Betts grab will be made worthwhile.

Two more of my sisters are moving into our trailer park. My parents helped them put money down on a trailer down the street and they should be moving in fairly soon. We'll have to have a party or something. Or more likely we'll be antisocial and never see each other at all.

I'm going to try painting the six Crust Marines anyway, after I chip off some of the worst parts of the primer. I think if I mix them up into different squads they'll survive. I've found that when you have a unit of figures it's very difficult to focus in on the imperfections of one individual. You generally see the distinguishing colors and equipment of the unit in general and sort of skim over the rest. This is true especially at gaming distance.

I completed my listing and pricing of my WWII project in 15mm as opposed to 6mm. With the big 40% off club membership discount, it would almost be criminal not to go with the larger figures. I'll still have to find ways to build the terrain and buildings, but I think the miniatures form the bulk of the cost, especially as I can add terrain piecemeal throughout the duration of the buildup. If all else fails, pieces of felt are not that expensive at Wal-Mart, and you can represent anything with a properly-colored piece of felt.

Surprisingly enough, I was able to finish some of my homework today, and I'll probably get a good run of homework finished tomorrow as well. I greatly dislike schoolwork, which I imagine places me in a group with approximately 97% of the college-going population. I find myself wishing that Boise State offered an Entomology degree, as I really enjoyed the Entomology classes I took at the University of Idaho. I'm not sure if there are any jobs for insect scientists, but bugs are a lot of fun. I am sorry that I was never able to fit the University of Idaho's beekeeping course into my schedule. They always offered it when I couldn't attend due to my National Guard commitments.

I no longer have 21 Space Marines. After priming them last night I now have about 15 salvageable Space Marines and 6 Crust Marines. It will take effort just to get the 15 good Space Marines out of the deal, as I will have to pick and choose the non-crusty parts from the sprues and do a lot of cleaning up, especially around the boots. The 6 Crust Marines appear to be a lost cause, as I have no idea how I will pry them out of the nasty primer gunk. I am getting pretty sick of using spraycan products on my miniatures. I already switched to a brush-on varnish, so I guess I may as well switch to a brush-on primer too. It's more work, but at least I'm not taking a chance on losing miniatures or putting a bunch of effort into fixing miniatures every time I use my primer. Very frustrating. I guess I'd better go skim The Miniatures Page for some brush-on primer tips.

My wife and I went to Wal-Mart the other night, and they had restocked their Transformers section, so I finally got my Optimus Prime figure. So I've been playing with that a bit. Large robots are awesome, especially large fighting robots.

I cleaned up my Space Marine sprues today and hosed them down with primer. I planned on priming them and working on my Orcs for a while, but it got late a little faster than I expected. The Orcs will have to wait, as tomorrow I'll probably be spending some time doing my homework. With drill weekend coming up I won't have time to do the last-minute schoolwork thing, so I had better get started on it tomorrow.

I've been doing some more debating on the WWII skirmish gaming. I went through my two Skirmish Campaigns books and made a list of all the vehicles and infantry I'll need for all the scenarios. I also wrote down how many buildings of various types I would need. Then I went through the GHQ site and priced it all out in 6mm scale. It's pretty pricey, but not as pricey as 15mm.

After reading several reviews on the Wargames Nordalia site I decided to go with the Quality Castings/Battle Honors line of figures. So I went to the Old Glory 15s site and started pricing it out. I got frustrated as it was going to be a lot of money, probably the equivalent of buying a 3000-point Warhammer army all at once. Then I noticed a link to their Buyer's Club, which you pay $50 to join and then get a series of discounts based on how much you spend over the course of the year. For the money I would be shelling out, there is a 40% discount. That takes the price for all the 15mm stuff fairly close to the price for the 6mm stuff. So that complicates things a little. I still have the problem of finding a place to game in 15mm, but to have all of that stuff in a larger scale at that price would be pretty cool. I guess I've got a couple months to think about it.

In the meantime, I need to start doing some research on how to paint all that stuff. So far all I've painted is Fantasy and Sci-Fi, so I haven't had to deal with historical accuracy at all. I guess you could call my Pirates historical, but as they are Pirates, they really don't have much of a set uniform. All the research is one of the things that intimidates me about historical gaming. I'm not even sure where to start looking for uniform and vehicle colors. Perhaps there is an Osprey book or three that could be of use? I'll probably start a thread on The Miniatures Page asking for sources. I'm not opposed to doing the research myself, but it would be nice to have a starting point. I need to start looking at terrain options as well.