This video was linked on The Miniatures Page the other day, and I can't stop laughing at it. It's amazing.

I started working on the partially finished Rat Ogre again. I painted some details and started repainting the bandages that cover most of his torso. The first time I painted them, they came out a little too brown and blended in with the rest of the model. Probably more realistic, but not very exciting visually. This time around I'm using the same method I used for the purity seals on the Space Marines. The bandages will probably end up looking a bit too clean, but they'll "pop" a little more on the tabletop and add some color and variety to the figure.

I also sprayed some primer on my unit of Orcs, as I am going to start working on them once this Rat Ogre is done. Once I finish all that up I'll only need 4 more figures to meet my Pledge goal. Given my variable painting speeds that could take a couple of weeks or half a year.

My wife and I had our first class back at college today. It was pretty much as I expected it to be. I think that the hours from 6 to 9 in the evening on Mondays are my new least favorite part of the week. The good news is that we only have to have twenty pages of short stories written by the end of the semester. My History class doesn't have any work this week, and the work for next week doesn't count toward a grade, so in theory thast gives me enough time to get ahead on my fiction writing. I suppose we'll see how it goes. I've got an idea that I'm working out in my mind, but I don't know if it'll write out on the paper as wonderfully as it flows in my imagination. I often seem to be lacking the words to get my ideas out in the open.

My wife unwittingly set me straight the other day. I got all excited about the WoW TCG (World of Warcraft Trading Card Game) and started looking up various championship decks online and then began to make lists and agonize over which set was the best value as far as power cards. When I went to discuss the pros and cons of the various sets with her, she said, "Well, can't we just play with whatever cards we buy?" I muttered something about competitive decks and equipment:ability:ally ratios while realizing that she was correct. You can just play with whatever cards you get from the packs. And I imagine that if everyone in our small group plays with having fun as the goal, power cards and combos don't matter all that much. I had fallen into the same attitude that I find so annoying in the Boise Warhammer group, that of the power-gamer. So I have resolved to literally play the hand I am dealt and be happy with whatever Hunter cards I get. Although I may have to buy a few Venomstrike cards, just because Scorpid pets are awesome and no Hunter should be without one.

With the announcement of D & D 4th Edition, books from 3.5 Edition are starting to pop up on auction sites at low rates. At some point I may start picking up some of the more interesting ones. From what I've heard 4th Edition sounds very interesting, but there are also rumors that the online components will be on some sort of subscription program with a monthly fee. I don't play D & D often enough to justify paying every month for the privilege of using the online tools, and it appears to me that much of the 4.0 content will be released through the various online utilities. I use the D & D books mostly for reading material, so I'll be fine with the older stuff that I can pick up on the cheap.

I meant to do some sort of painting today, but I didn't get to it. As I've only got 15 minutes before bedtime, I don't see any painting happening for the rest of the night, either. I think I'll paint up some more Skaven next, starting with a partially-done Rat Ogre. I'd like to paint up my unit of Orcs, but I haven't primed them and I haven't done much research on the painting of green skin. I planned out the Heavy Weapons for several of the Companies in my Space Marine Chapter. I'm trying to make sure I have a squad or two with each possible weapons configuration.

The rats went back to the pet store yesterday. My allergies have begun to calm down and I have regained a couple square feet of desk space where the cage used to be.

We had the TMP Fantasy Football League draft today. It went pretty well (for everyone else). I chose Peyton Manning in the first round and I think it might cause some trouble for me. Because I took him in the first round, my Running Backs aren't as good as they could be and my Wide Receivers aren't that great either. Choosing a Quarterback in the first round really messed up my drafting mojo. It could be a long season for my team. I am sitting in first place in the TMP Fantasy Baseball League standings, though, so it's not all bad. The playoffs start next week, so hopefully my regular-season success will transfer over. In last year's football league I went into the playoffs in first place and left the playoffs in sixth place, so I have a history of burning out when it really matters.

As promised, here are some photos of my Space Marine half-squad. I discussed my thoughts on the painting of these figures in my last post, so I won't say much more about that.

In other news, I had a several minute brain fart today during which I could not remember if it was August 23rd or September 23rd. Normally this wouldn't matter much, but as my wife's birthday is on September 20th I was concerned that maybe her birthday had come and gone without me noticing at all. This was a very grave thought indeed, and I was glad to discover that it is still August and I have not yet missed her birthday.

Our dog Buddy has a foot fetish. He loves feet, socks, shoes, and anything that smells or tastes like a foot. All of my socks have holes in them, as Buddy is a sneaky little beggar. He will steal socks and stash them, often for days, until he feels that we are not watching him. Then he'll go to his secret hiding place, retrieve his prize, and get on with the eating of it. My wife has lost several pairs of flip-flops to his obsession. He can sense when someone nearby has exposed their foot to the air and will rush into the room to lick their toes and sniff around inside their shoes. He also eats poop. Buddy is a disturbing creature.

I am once again excited about the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game. I know I am setting myself up for disappointment, but I cannot help feeling enthusiastic about the loot cards and the building of my Beast Mastery Hunter deck. There is even a card called Venomstrike that features my in-game Scorpid pet. I don't think anything could be more awesome than that, aside from being married of course (my wife reads my blog).

I pushed through the pain and finished off the Space Marines. Of course, when I grabbed the camera to take pictures the battery was dead. The spare battery, once located, was also dead. I've got a battery in the charger right now, so by the end of tonight there will be photos. The paint job on these figures is not extremely awesome, but it will do. For whatever reason I had a severe case of the shakes tonight and my paintbrush was not going exactly where I wanted it all the time. But if I really want to model a full Chapter of Space Marines I need to put off the showmanship and increase my output of boots on the ground. Quality is secondary. I need boots on the ground and checklists with checkmarks on them.

The rats are soon to be removed from the family, as my allergies have manifested themselves in a severe fashion. It is getting to the point that I can't sleep at night because of them, and no creature, especially those of the vermin type, is worth the pain and suffering. Hopefully the pet store will take them back.

I suppose I will go play some World of Warcraft while I wait on my camera battery.

I made very little progress on the Space Marines tonight, as I am easily distracted and my eyes and hands were going all wonky on me. Those Claritin commercials are a joke, unless being "Claritin clear" means having a numb face and a tendency to wander around aimlessly while trying to remember what you set out to do in the first place. My wife might say that sounds pretty normal for me, but I blame the drugs. At my current pace I should be able to finish this batch of Marines by late September. There's really not a lot left to do to them, but I'm having trouble getting into it enough to go to my painting happy place and make a lot of progress. Maybe it's time for a break from painting while I spend more time on some other hobby.

My tuition assistance came through, so I guess I have to go to school this semester. I'm not especially looking forward to it. I have a hard time with school. I am taking an English writing class this semester. I enjoy writing and I used to be moderately good at it, but sometimes English classes make me want to stab myself in the face with the leg of my chair. The students and the teacher try to squeeze every last drop of meaning out of every word in a piece of literature until it becomes a contest of one-upmanship and some meaningless line about a guy who picks up an interesting-looking rock while hiking becomes a metaphor for the eternal struggle of man to sort through the mountains of knowledge and find the true pebbles of enlightenment that line the path to nirvana. Sometimes people just pick up rocks because they like rocks. Maybe I just have a poor attitude.

There are also a lot of conspiracy nuts and paranoids in your average English program. I spent all of English 102 learning nothing about English and everything about how my English teacher didn't want to check her e-mail because the government looks at you through your computer screen to find out if you're having revolutionary thoughts. In fact, there is a satellite pointed directly at the University of Idaho and it is reading all of the thoughts that go on there. I guess now the government knows that the average male at the University of Idaho spends approximately 83% of his time thinking about females. What they are going to do with that knowledge is beyond me, but they're watching all of us and brainwashing us with their "laser beams" and their internets. I love it when these folks make their crazy faces and tell you that you can't trust the man but you can trust them because they know the truth about what's going on.

Anyway, school should be interesting. I hope my English class is not too stupid and I hope I pass my History class. I'm sure excited to learn all about how the fluctuating price of bread affected the common man in the early 1800s. I was just wondering about that the other day, so I'm glad that in week 6 I'll finally have my answer.

I meant to write about something worthwhile today, but I got distracted by my English teacher's anti-government rants.

I am hoping to finish my Space Marines tonight. It'll probably depend on my mood after work. My back has been acting up on me all morning, so hopefully I don't hurt it at work. I made a checklist of all 146 unpainted minis in my lead pile so I can track my progress on The Pledge. It can even be expanded to accomodate future purchases. Sometimes I think I like making lists about things even more than I like doing the things the lists are made for.

The Guard Dog

Yesterday I arrived home a little earlier than usual and didn't make a lot of noise coming into the house. When I got through the front door I was met by the sight of our Lab charging around the corner, baring her teeth and barking aggressively. She calmed down once she realized it was me, but I think that if I'd been an intruder she would have taken my leg off. It's the first time we've seen her do that, and I'm glad to see that her instinct to protect my wife has kicked in. She has been feeling much better now that we've hopefully found out what her allergy is. I have extremely bad allergies, so I know what a relief it is to be free of them even temporarily.

I have decided to do my own version of The Pledge. The Pledge is something the folks on The Miniatures Page do to help them shrink their piles of unpainted figures. While my lead pile barely makes it into the triple digits, there are folks out there with tens of thousands of unpainted figures. Anyway, for this protion of my Pledge, I plan to paint 20% of my figures before I buy anymore (unless of course a deal comes up which I cannot pass on, but that only happens every few months anyway). For me that is 29.2 figures, so I'll round it up to 30. I'll probably finish up these Space Marines and the Rat Ogre I started, then I'll move on to my unit of Orcs and a few other figures.

I went out to Wal-Mart last night looking for a couple packs of WoW cards, and for the first time since I can remember they didn't have any aside from Starter Decks. So I saved a few dollars due to Wal-Mart being sold out. I think the wife and I are going to buy some cards online this weekend and hopefully learn how to play the game passably well.

In the computer game, I only need to collect some 840 Obsidian Warbeads to get my shiny new dagger. That should probably take me up until the time the next expansion comes out and the dagger is obsolete.

No Real Desire to Play

I have this feeling off and on, and I wonder how common it is. Sometimes I think I'd really rather stay home and paint than go out and play a game. In theory I could make time once a week or so to find a Warhammer opponent and play. In fact, there is a campaign being set up in the area right now with two-week intervals between turns. But I have no real desire to go out and play a game. I've been considering my reasons for feeling that way and I've come up with a few so far.

The first reason is my general lack of social skills and really, my lack of need for companionship outside of my own little world. I am extremely self-contained as far as my ability to entertain myself as long as I've got my hobbies and internet connection.

Secondly, I don't really feel much camaraderie with the local crowd of gamers. There is a lot of emphasis on power-gaming and killer combos, which is fine if you're into that sort of thing. I'm not into that sort of thing. I ran into the same problem with the Heroclix crowd when I was buying Heroclix and playing in the weekly tournaments. I liked to put together themed teams (Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and his allies, X-Men, Animal-themed superheroes, etc.) and the other guys brought various versions of the latest power-combo team with no goal other than to win the Limited Edition figure. There wasn't much in the way of banter or commentary, just a strong focus on winning. Playing to win isn't a bad thing, but without any sort of social benefit I might as well be playing chess against a computer. So far I've experienced a similar feel to the Warhammer group.

There seems to be a very visible divide between the "old-timers" and the new guys, sort of an attitude of, "You noobs play each other and someday you can come play with the real men." No one seems to care about anything but Victory Points and building the strongest army list possible.

There is also an overabundance of Chaos armies. I can't stand Chaos armies. I don't understand the fixation on all of the intestines, mutations, and weird colors. That's just personal preference, but Chaos armies bother me on an aesthetic level.

I didn't think I would be bothered by playing against unpainted armies, but it's difficult for me to get excited about playing an unpainted (and often only partially assembled) force. I guess it goes back to focusing on the mechanics of the game rather than the aesthetics of the game. So far I have not seen a single fully painted army besides my own. Even worse is playing against units that are half bare-metal figures and half empty bases representing more figures in the unit. And these are the same guys who spend all their time on the message board bragging about how they've got four armies of 3000+ points each. Ten blocks of empty slotta-bases do not add up to many points at all in my book.

I am also concerned that if I post a challenge to the message board that the local Dwarf player will answer it. He matches much of the profiles above, but there are other reasons I am loathe to play him.

First, in every game I've ever heard of him playing, he sets up his army in the exact same way. He places all of his infantry as far back behind cover as he can and leaves them there for the duration of the game. He places all of his shooting stuff on a hill, preferably one with a cliff facing his opponent so infantry cannot get up to fight his ranged fighters. The opposing army has to move all the way across the table to the corner where his infantry is, all the while being shot at by the firing line. None of his figures ever moves. It is effective, but it is incredibly boring to play against.

Second, he is a fellow veteran in the Idaho National Guard. While we were overseas he served in the Engineer Battalion under my father in some capacity. When we played against each other, he recognized my name and couldn't wait to tell me all about the blog he wrote while he was overseas in which he personally badmouthed my dad and the other people in the Engineer Battalion's command group. I guess he was unhappy with the internet usage policy and some other policies that were in place. He then wanted to know if I'd had internet access overseas and if my dad knew about it. I told him that it was really irrelevant as we were in entirely different command chains with different policies. I don't know why he felt the need to share all of that with me. Maybe I'm socially backwards, but I don't usually start relationships by mentioning that I dislike someone's father and all of his friends.

I suppose I have been spoiled by tales on the internets of various gaming groups that get together and play games for the fun of the story and the spectacle of a table covered in fully-painted miniatures. Playing to win is important, but I don't think the win-loss column should be the main reason to get together and roll some dice. I hope that at some point I will have the opportunity to live in an area with a strong gaming group made up of like-minded individuals, whether they play Historical, Fantasy, Science Fiction, or some mix of all three with a little Pulp thrown in for good measure.

That was a bit of a rant. I probably came off a bit more harsh and judgemental than I really feel, but the power-gaming mentality really gets to me sometimes and I wanted to highlight the things that I think are important as opposed to what seems to be the emphasis locally. Aside from the dude who doesn't like my dad I tried to avoid mentioning names as I don't know these guys very well outside of their message board posts. Until I find it in my dark heart to look for a game I've got plenty of bare plastic and lead to paint, and many many armies to plan.

I haven't been playing World of Warcraft much at all the last couple of months. I log in every now and then to run my Ogre-killing route and gather items to trade in for a dagger I want, but that's about it. There have been a couple of interesting announcements recently in the WoW universe. First off, Blizzard has announced the next expansion, which will bump up the level cap another ten levels and introduce a new type of character class, as well as a bunch of other new additions to the game. I would be more excited about the expansion, but I am having a hard time wanting to play. I think it's because I don't really have the time or the skills to play all of the content and rise above a certain plateau. I don't even really have the time or resources to do many 5-man or 10-man dungeons, let alone raids and whatnot. Anyway, there is a new expansion coming out in the future (no release date has been announced yet) and for the first time I'm not sure if it's even worth getting.

The second announcement involves the WoW Trading Card Game. They've finally released a loot card that is useful in the game itself. Loot cards are basically a redemption card in the game packs that lets you enter a code online to receive a special item in the computer game itself. This particular card is an epic mount called the Spectral Tiger. Basically, it's a really fast ghostly Tiger that your character can ride. It must be pretty rare, though, because the card is fetching $500-800 on eBay at the moment. But it's cool that there is an actual useful loot card in the TCG now. The screenshot of the mount on the website is awesome. Probably the land-based equivalent to a Nether Drake. It's that awesome.

I intended to finish painting my Space Marines tonight as they just need a few details and some highlighting to be finished. But I haven't felt moved to pick up the brush yet.

I've been bothered recently by a tidbit I read on a website about the daily schedule of Space Marines. I forget what website it was, but it essentially went through every little detail of the Space Marine canon, with footnotes linking to specific GW documents and the whole shebang. Anyway, the first part I read was about all of the extra organs and implants a Space Marine gets as he's being raised up in the system. One of the organs filters out poisons and basically makes the Space Marine immune to drugs and venoms. A bunch of different implants basically give the Space Marine a super-healing factor, sort of like the Wolverine character in Marvel comic books. So that's one part of the canon. Next I read through the daily schedule, which is full of battle training, reflections on the greatness of the Emperor, weapons and armor cleaning, pretty much all the usual stuff you'd expect from the superhuman soldiers of an Inquisition-type regime. But in one portion of the schedule it mentions that they receive a little free time each day during which some Chapter Masters allow the use of alcohol. How do the Space Marines get the alcohol into their systems enough to make it worthwhile? In the comics it is pretty much impossible for Wolverine to get intoxicated as his mutant healing factor filters out and neutralizes the alcohol too quickly for it to affect him. The Space Marines have the same essential system set up in their bodies, so what exactly does the alcohol do for them? Probably nothing. I know it's an obscure little factoid in an entirely fictional universe, but it's been bothering me that Games Workshop's editors let that one get through. Now it's off my chest and I can sleep easier knowing that I've shared my concerns with the world.

I've begun putting my binder together with my artwork and checklists for each squad in the Chapter. I may have to get some index tabs so I can really get this thing organized. I know it's extremely nerdy, but I go crazy over office supplies. I can't have enough. I hate writing on legal pads, but I can't buy enough of them. I'm like a junkie every time Pentel comes out with a new pen design. I have to get my fix of the new stuff. If the pocket clip on a pen or pencil gets bent out or broken off I can't use it anymore. I have to actually remove it from my home and get a new one.

Last night I purchased a binder and some paper specifically to contain the paperwork for my Space Marines. I had plenty of sheet protectors at home already, as I stockpile them when the wife isn't looking. I printed out the pictures from the Space Marine Painter and put them in the binder. At some point I will write out the paint colors I use for each unit so I don't get two years down the line and forget what colors were used for the boots. I am having that specific problem with my Skaven Plague Monks right now. I need to add an extra rank to my existing unit, and I have no idea what colors I was using in February 2006.

I came across a pretty good deal on some Space Marines on the Surplus Wargaming Yahoo! Group. I'll be getting two squads for the price of one, so soon I will have a full 1/4 of 2nd Company sitting on my desk.

I've been slowly painting away on the five Space Marines I've currently got. I've determined that yellow-colored paints hate me. It doesn't matter what I do, they always come out looking cracked and globby.

I really want to get started on my WWII Skirmish project, but at the moment I lack the startup cost to do so. Individual packs of miniatures for the project only cost around $10, whuch would be fine if a local store carried historicals, but when you have to rely on mail-order the shipping costs eat you alive unless you buy in bulk. So at the moment I'm stuck on the planning stage. There is a local shop that carries Flames of War figures, but that would require me to bump the project from Micro Armour to 15mm scale, and I really don't have room for a table that large. If played in Micro Armour scale I could fit most of the scenarios on my desktop.