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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.