I still haven't found the Dwarf book, but I found a lot of other stuff while looking for it. I was able to put together a list based on the figures I have and the Army Builder software. The list is pretty basic, but at 1000 points it seems like it will stand up pretty well against Skaven and Orc & Goblins. And I was able to fit a small unit of Slayers in there, which is always good. Nothing like a bunch of half-naked berserkers with orange hair and an oath to die in battle to make up for past misdeeds.

While I was at it I wrote up a new list for Skaven at 1000 points. I could have written it out using models I've already got painted, but instead I wrote in the Plague Furnace and a unit of Plague Monks to push it. The rest of the list is from models I've already painted. I don't know if this Skaven list will be able to match up against the Dwarfs. It basically relies on Skaven Slaves to absorb fire for a turn or two while the Plague Furnace advances and then the war machine and magic will hopefully kill the Dwarfs enough to win the day. It's not a very reliable plan, but at least I'll add a neat model to my collection. I'm looking forward to it.

I forgot to mention yesterday that the boy has begun to walk. He still prefers crawling for most applications, but he'll walk from point-to-point if he feels like he can make it, and his range is steadily improving.

The wife sent me out to the garage to find the Christmas decorations earlier this evening. While I was out there I couldn't help myself and I started up my motorcycle and gave the throttle a few twists. Then I got dizzy from the exhaust and had to go get some fresh air on the back deck. But the bike fired right up and sounded good.

Some of the treasures I found while looking for the Dwarf book included the $150 gift certificate I got when I bought my bike, a $30 check from the credit union, all of my Flames of War stuff, and several boxes of miniatures I'd forgotten I had. I can't seem to find one of my Screaming Bells, though. I have the latest model, I have the first sculpt, but I can't find the middle one. I'm almost certain I own one, though.

Now it's time to set some goals for 2009. Most of my aims for 2009 are not hobby-related, so I'm going to try keeping the gaming stuff to something manageable. I'm going to focus on small playable forces for a couple of game systems. This is primarily intended to be a hobby blog, so I'll stay away from the non-hobby goals.

1. Get 750 points of Space Marines painted up to oppose my friend's Tau army. I'd like to get this done as soon as early February so we can get some games in and learn the 5th Edition rules.
2. Follow up with 750 points of Orks, so we can have a little variety in our games. Ideally this would happen within a month or two of getting the Space Marines to 750 points.
3. Continue to expand these armies at approximately the same pace as my friend's army, so we aren't waiting on each other to get a bigger game in. Eventually this should lead to us having enough points to challenge other people at Tuesday game nights.
4. Paint my Flames of War U.S. force. It's rather small, so it hopefully will not take long. I must admit to being rather intimidated by the 15mm figures. I suppose it is just because they are different from the heroic-scale Warhammer stuff I'm used to. I don't have the list in front of me, but I think it's 80 or 90 infantry and 8 or 10 vehicles. It's basically an understrength infantry company with some armor and anti-tank support. I've got the start of a similar German force, but don't quite have all the components. Since there is no real presence for the game in this area it's not as high-priority as the 40k stuff.
5. Assuming I get through most of what's lined out above I'd like to work on some other projects as my whims move me. These projects would include 1000 points of Warhammer Fantasy Orcs & Goblins, a handful of Foundry Pirates that I picked up from somewhere, some odds & ends for my Skaven army, and maybe even a couple boxes of Lord of the Rings figures.
6. I've got plenty of figures, but no terrain for them to fight over aside from a flat grass mat. I want to focus a bit on adding some terrain to my collection. Hobbytown has quite a selection of terrain for various genres, including quite a few pieces on clearance. It wouldn't take much to attain a fair collection of stuff over the course of several months. I also should look into terrain that I can build myself.

That's probably plenty to take me through to next year and then some. My priorities for this year revolve mostly around school, work, and family. I'll have to try keeping a balance so the hobby stuff doesnt take priority over the more important things. It's going to be a pretty stressful year, but hopefully I'll be better off at the end of 2009 than I was at the end of 2008. I think I regressed a bit last year and I'm certainly very far behind where I wanted to be at this stage in my life.

I didn't get any work done on my Orcs and Goblins tonight, possibly because I didn't feel like watching a movie. I think I'll probably go to bed (relatively) early rather than work on any figures. I've been having trouble getting my Savage Orc Shaman to fit into the Savage Orc unit. It's a common problem I have with character models in my armies. My Skaven Warlord only fits in his unit of Stormvermin facing to the rear, and I had to trim the Army Standard Bearer's tail so he could rank up with the other Skaven. The character models in Warhammer just seem to take up a lot of space outside the confines of their bases. I'm thinking about removing the Skaven characters from their current bases and placing them on elevated terrain bases so they can be easily located and rank up properly. I may wind up doing the same with my Orc and Goblin characters.

I went to the DMV today expecting a long wait since I had several tasks to complete while there. Luckily I got there just before the noontime rush and only had to be there for about thirty minutes. By the time I left the place was standing-room only, so I was pretty lucky. After I got my license plate I had to wait to take the test for my Motorcycle Instruction Permit, and the guy next to me asked me what kind of bike I have. I was very happy to show him a picture of it on my phone. He told me about his Honda Shadow, which he apparently just got running after a year or two. It's interesting how your hobbies can spark conversations with people you'd never approach in day-to-day life. It's always interesting to see who approaches me when I wear my World of Warcraft t-shirt or carry a White Dwarf magazine around. I think tomorrow I may actually ride my bike around the trailer park a few times, depending on the weather. I picked up a motorcycle cover tonight, as the wind has been picking up and there are rumors of rainstorms. I wouldn't want my baby to get dirty and wet. The consensus seems to be that my wife is either very cool or very misled to let me buy a crotch rocket. I don't think I misled her all that much, so she must be a cool gal. Either that or the pregnancy hormones have altered her judgment. She did think that once I bought a bike I would shut up about motorcycles for a while, but my commentary has just become a little more focused while possibly increasing in quantity.

Here's another bike they had at the shop that is absolutely mean-looking. Try not to get goosebumps while watching the movie. There's another video on the BMW motorcycles site

I didn't wind up going to bed early, so I decided to add this video that one of the guys in my Guard unit showed us.

Painted Rat Ogre

I finished painting the Rat Ogre. He looks decent. He'd probably look a lot better if I had some real camera skills. But another box is checked, and that's what really matters here.

I assembled a couple ranks of Orcs today, but I will need another box of them to finish off the unit. I was going to work on the Rat Ogre I've been painting, but I ended up only fixing a few spots I'd missed with the initial ink wash.

I tried to do some painting on the Rat Ogre tonight, but I didn't get very far before I lost my motivation for painting. I put some clearcoat on the bartender and the barmaid. After that I fiddled around with planning for my WWII Eastern Front skirmish project. I'm still trying to decide whether I should go with Micro Armour scale or 15mm scale. So far I've been able to find all of the miniatures I need for my scenarios in Micro Armour scale, but I don't know the 15mm manufacturers well enough to find all the figures in 15mm.

Then I made up some stat cards for all of my pirate miniatures. I personalized them a little bit by cropping a headshot for each pirate and gluing it onto an index card. Then I used the tables in the Blood & Swash rule booklet to roll up the various stats for the figures. I may have my little brother over for a day or two this weekend, and hopefully we'll be able to play a game. I don't have a tavern built yet, but we can probably rig up some sort of scenario on the table using felt for terrain. If we end up playing I'll try to take pictures so I can post them here.

Herbert has been enjoying her new cage immensely. Every so often she'll come flying out of her cardboard house and jump up all of the ramps to the top of the cage, and then she'll jump back down to the bottom.

My wife bought me some Hogan Energy drinks today, and while the concept and packaging are awesome, the product itself leaves a lot to be desired. All energy drinks are extremely bad for you, but some of them taste good. Hogan Energy is not one of the good-tasting ones. I think they may have actually included some actual Hulk Hogan fluids in every can.

I've started work on the tavern crew, and it's reminded me how much I hate painting humans. The skin tones and faces are just terrible to paint. With rats I just have to slap on two base colors and a brown ink wash. With humans I have to work through endless layers of Tanned Flesh, Dwarf Flesh, Elf Flesh, and various mixes of all the above just to get them looking somewhat decent, and half the time the paint ends up all chunky and chalky anyway. It's enough to drive me into a life of crime so I can sell the stolen goods and hire Fernando to do the painting for me.

I am having mixed feelings about the approaching weekend. One the one hand, it's the weekend and I won't have to go to work for two days. On the other, I will have to pick up where I left off as far as organizing the house so we can get the final couple of rooms all cleaned up and organized. I think that once we get the house all cleared out I'll feel much better about the work I had to do to get it done. On the topic of housecleaning, my wife's new vacuum arrived today, and she was pretty excited about that. I have no idea how someone could get excited about a vacuum, but there are many things I do not understand.

I have to go back to school this Fall, and I think that is causing some stress in my subconscious mind. I don't usually remember my dreams at all, but the last couple days I've had some ridiculous nightmares. I'm only taking two classes, as my attempts to go to school full-time since I got home from Iraq haven't turned out so well. My attention span and information retention is not what it used to be, and that makes it difficult to study. From conversations with my fellow soldiers it would seem that this is not really an uncommon problem. I don't know if it's a result of training or stress or anthrax shots or some combination of the whole wartime experience, but sometimes I can barely remember my name. Reading used to be a favorite activity for me, but I can hardly make it through a magazine article anymore. I actually have to take breaks while reading battle reports in White Dwarf, and it's not just because of the glaring grammatical errors. I've got a couple of books that I'm going to start reading in an effort to get my mind back together for school. Hopefully I survive this semester and can take a couple more classes in the Spring.

I really want to get started on my Orcs and Goblins army, but I have too many projects going on right now to fit them in. Besides that, I need another box of Orcs before I can build my first unit. I don't want to paint some of them now and some later, as I'll run into the same problem I'm having with my expanded Plague Monk unit. I painted them so long ago that I can't remember how to replicate the paint job on the extra figures.

This has been a long and winding post. It would've been even worse but I cut out several parts that didn't even make sense to me.

Immediately after I finished my last post, I found the motivation to finish painting that last Night Runner. That means my 2250-point Skaven army is done. Tonight I'm going to start working on the Bartender and Serving Wenches for my Pirate tavern brawl scenario. I also need to find a miniature to represent the Governor's daughter, as kidnapping her during the ruckus will be worth some victory points and more than likely lead into the next scenario I run. Once the tavern crew are finished I will have to build the tavern itself.

A Productive Weekend

The wife and I got a lot accomplished this weekend, which has been good for morale. We were able to go through most of the stuff in the house and throw out a ton of junk, find places for "keeper" items, take unneeded but servicable items to the thrift store, and move all of the furniture around to match our plan. I am still in awe of the sheer volume of what we were able to push through. The public areas of the house (living room, kitchen) are practically free of clutter, and it will probably take another day or so of work to get the computer/hobby room and the bedroom up to snuff. It's nice to finally have all of our space be usable. Once the house is all done up the way we need it, we'll able to go through the last three or four boxes in the storage shed and set that up as some sort of useful area as well.

Our dogs were pretty stressed out by all the changes, especially since we moved their kennels from the back room to the living room. Annie (the Labrador) has been even more on edge than usual, running around frenetically and being extra clingy around my wife. Buddy (the Basset Hound) peed on the floor, which is how he deals with stress. At least he did it on the floor this time, as last time he got stressed out he did his business on our bed, with most of the damage being done to my wife's pillow.

I think Herbert the rat is ill with some sort of wheezy, sneezing disease. That doesn't really bode well for her life expetancy, as sick animals don't make very good pets. Other than the wheezing, she seems to be quite full of energy and doesn't really make a nuisance of herself, so maybe she'll start feeling better after she settles into her new environment a bit more. A big plus is that she hasn't tried to bite me yet.

I want to get started on my WWII miniatures project, but it seems like the initial jump into a game or period is the most expensive part. I figure that to play the first three scenarios in my Skirmish Campaigns book I'll need an investment of about $200 for miniatures, terrain, and paints. I'll end up with a bit more infantry than I need for the scenarios, but the infantry isn't really all that expensive. That price tag will go up if I use actual plastic/resin/metal buildings instead of ordering one of the cardstock kits or paper kit downloads that are available. I think WWII may have to wait until I finish buying my Skaven army and perhaps a fair portion of my Orcs and Goblins.

I've made a few changes to my Skaven army lists, as I discovered during my games that some of the equipment on my Hero models was redundant or inneffective. There really isn't much change in the number of models I need, but the list should play a little better now. I also worked out a unit of Plague Monks as a potential substitute for the Giant in my 2250- and 3000-point lists. That way if I run into an opponent who objects to Dogs of War, I can pull out a huge unit of Frenzied Monks which are probably worse to fight than the Giant anyway.

It's not a great picture, but the Clanrat Slaves are all finished now. Along with the Giant, my 2250-point army list is nearly filled out. All I really need now to finsih it up is one or two Night Runners. I thought I would just need one more Night Runner, but I've made a few changes to my list this week and opened up a few more points that I can use.

I made a list of several things to do tonight, but the only thing I really made any progress on was painting the unit of Clanrat Slaves that has been sitting on my desk for a couple of months. Actually getting out and playing with my miniatures has led to a new motivation for getting the paints out again. I got a lot of compliments on my fully-painted army during my two games this week, so that was a nice little thumbs-up for my ego.

I've determined that Clanrat Slaves are awesome. Each unit of 20 only costs forty points, so they make very effective meat shields and can tie up many times their point cost for a turn or two. In the game I played on Wednesday, I think the Slaves really helped me keep the points close. If the Slaves had been switched out for regular Clanrats, my opponent would have ended up with an extra two hundred points or more. As it was, he spent a couple of turns killing two units of Slaves that were only worth 80 points to him. Then there wasn't enough time to finish the job on my more expensive units.

I've also decided that Plague Monks are insanely studly, especially when equipped with extra hand weapons. I'm pretty excited for my 3000-point list, because my Monks are going to get a big boost in numbers and power. That unit will be a hard-hitting beast.

I ordered my new computer today, so that's pretty exciting. Due to my military status, I got around a 25% discount. My wife also got a nice vacuum cleaner that she's had her eye on. The deal was that I could get a new computer once the house was set up they way we've been planning. We jumped the gun a little on ordering it and I won't be able to set it up for a while due to space restrictions, but it's good motivation for finishing up the reorganization of the house.

The Old West miniatures in the case at the game store have got me thinking about new projects. The store also has some very nicely-painted Old West buildings and terrain. I'm assuming that that stuff is well out of my budget, but I know there are some decent cardstock building sets out there that I could print off and build. The minis at the store are from Artizan Designs, and there are also a lot of figures from Foundry that are very nice. Someday it would be nice to buy a couple of the Foundry Horde deals, but it's hard to justify the expenditure as Foundry models aren't the cheapest around.

I should probably head to bed now, as I have to wake up and clear my remaining junk out of the living room. Then it's off to the bedroom to find spots for all of my clothes and White Dwarf magazines that are piled up all around the floor. Once that's done we should be able to start shuffling things to make way for my big desk and computer. We'll be moving the computers and hobby stuff to the current bedroom, the bedroom will be moved to the bigger room, and the dogs and junk in that room will be moved to the living room and shed, in that order. I made the suggestion that the dogs would be fine in the storage shed, but my wife used her veto power and sent it back to Congress.

Last week when my wife fed our python, Lucy didn't eat her second rat. That's never occured before, so we now have a rat living in one of our spare aquariums. I made the unfortunate mistake of naming him today, so I'm wondering if we'll be able to feed Herbert to Lucy when her next feeding time comes around. I've just gone over and had a look at Herbert. Herbert appears to be a female. What an unfortunate name.

Which reminds me, I need to work another condition into the cleaning of the house. Perhaps if we can clear out enough space, I will be allowed to have a tortoise.

4th of July

Today was the 4th of July, so my wife and I did some pretty patriotic things. I played a game of Warhammer, she took the dogs to the dog park, and we cleaned up the living room a little. With the two of us basically living the nerdy bachelor lifestyle, stuff piles up very quickly on any flat surface in our home. We're trying to get it to the point where people can come over and visit, but it's slow going.

I played my second-ever game of Warhammer today. I had posted on the forum that I was going to be at the store with my army today, to either watch the game that was going on or play any challenger that came along. A guy from the group showed up with a Hordes of Chaos Tzeentch army and some free time, so we cleared off a table and got our armies out. I do not have any familiarity with Chaos armies, so everything was new to me. He had a lot of magic, so it was quite a change from playing against Dwarves.

I don't remember things very well in chronological order, so I'll just hit main points of the battle as I think of them. Two of his level 2 spellcasters miscast their spells and each ended up losing a caster level and a spell from their list. For an army that relies so much on magic, that was a big blow.

He had one spell that would make one of my units fight amongst themselves. Luckily, I rolled well during those combats and my rats didn't kill very many of themselves.

His army general had a flying mount with a long movement range, so a couple of my units spent key turns of the game chasing him. Then he would fly off in another direction, leaving my unit in the middle of nowhere facing away from the battle.

My Warp-Lightning Cannon was strong again, accounting for several of his soldiers and only one of my rats. If I'd been a little more courageous about shooting my own guys, I probably could have killed some more of his army.

My Rat Ogres were worthless again, getting killed as soon as they got into combat. Once again, I think my units of Slaves outlasted the big brutes. I guess it's true that the units you spend the most time painting are the ones that spend the least time on the table.

At the end of Turn 6, my opponent was in line for a pretty solid victory, but two of my units passed their rally tests and he was denied those points, so we ended in a draw. I also had several units on the table that were one or two models over half of their starting strength, so that was another couple hundred points he could have had.

Apart from the two miscasts, he outplayed me the whole way, but I had some lucky dice today and I was able to pull a draw out of my hat. I had a pretty good time because I was able to get most of my units into combat and maneuver a bit more than in the game against the Dwarves on Monday. Hopefully with some practice I'll be able to start winning some games.

Venturing Out Into the World...

I played my first game of Warhammer today. It was quite the learning experience. I was able to set up a game through the Boise Warhammer Yahoo! group and I took my Skaven army to one of the local stores to meet my opponent.

We got through five turns before his Dwarves had all but dismantled my army and I conceded the game. There were a lot of flaws in my game plan, and I still don't completely have a grasp on the turn sequence and the specific rules of my army. Hopefully with time and a few more games under my belt I'll be able to get better and move faster when it's my turn.

I finally got my World of Warcraft character to level 70, so maybe I will be able to do something else in my free time. I've been stuck on the last two or three steps of painting those Clanrat Slaves for a while now, but haven't had the willpower to get away from the computer. In theory I will put the last bits of paint on the unit tomorrow after work and be done with basing and clearcoat by the end of the week. We'll see if I get around to actually doing it.

In other news, my little sister graduated from high school this past weekend. I think they could cut the graduation ceremonies by about two hours and no one would miss the omitted parts.

I got my Clanrat Slave unit painted up to about 70% complete, but I didn't have the stamina to finish them off. Hopefully sometime during the week I'll be able to finish them up. I just have to paint their weapons, do some detailing, and paint and flock their bases. Once I get that done, I'll have my 2250-point army finished and be just 22 figures away from my 3000-point army.

I've become addicted to watching PBS shows while painting. I suspect that my painting speed and quality suffers, but I've learned all sorts of things about technology, nature, and weird fitness shows with Willie Nelson soundtracks.

The Reaper website has many of the Warlord grunt sculpts available in the Boneyard section of the online store now, but there are several figures still only available in the army packs. Unfortunately, the figures that are unavailable as individual sculpts are figures that I only need two or three of for my army lists. I think I will scrap my Warlord plans for the moment and work on other armies until Reaper sorts out their Warlord miniature line.

A Case of the Crud

Today I spent most of the day drugged up in bed, as I've caught some sort of energy-sapping runny nose/sore throat bug. I'm hoping that I feel better in the morning because I can't afford to be missing work.

A couple of hours ago I managed to drag myself out of bed long enough to clean up and assemble the rest of the Skaven in my possession. Maybe tomorrow I will prime them and at some point actually put some paint on the figures.

Tonight I assembled most of a Clanrat Slaves unit for my Skaven. I'll probably have time tomorrow to assemble the last rank of the unit and spray them all down with some primer. I've only got eight more figures to purchase for my 3000-point Skaven army, and 42 more figures to assemble and/or paint. This Slave unit comprises the bulk of that number.

The Boise Warhammer group has a beginner's tournament tentatively set up for the middle of August. I'm hoping that I can have my Orcs and Goblins are finished out to 2000 points by then, but if not I can come up with a Skaven list for the tournament. It'd be nice to have two armies by then, though.

Last night I cleaned up and assembled a bunch of figures. Today I primed them, and at some point I will actually start in on painting them. I had to do some conversion work on a Rat Ogre with some green stuff. It doesn't look that good, but hopefully I'll be able to work with it and get it looking better. I was going to do some cleaning up work on the rest of my Warlord figures and assemble my next unit of Clanrat Slaves tonight, but I got caught up in other stuff and didn't get around to it.

I did make up a list of all the figures I need to buy for my Warlord armies, so I can check the little boxes as I add to my collection. I was going to make some sort of list that involved several check-boxes for each unit so I could track a few categories like Purchased, Primed, Painted, and Based, but if I let myself go too far on lists, I end up spending more time on lists than on miniatures. It's a slippery slope, and once I'm on it I can produce an entire notebook based on 25 miniatures. I am planning on making a painting notebook, though. I will be painting the Warlord units in stages as I buy more figures, so I'll have to remember my color choices.

It always amazes me how much priming my figures cuts down the intimidation factor of painting them. I was looking at my Warlord figures last night and wondering how I would paint all those little indistinct details. But once the primer hits the figures they become so much more defined and I am able to see what and where everything is supposed to be. I'm hopeless when it comes to bare metal, but on primed figures I can see what I need to do. It's similar in concept to what they say about writing projects. The blank page can be intimidating, but once you get some ink down ideas will start flowing.

I dragged my wife to Hobbytown today and picked up a couple of Reaper blisters. We have worked out a little arrangement. There's a Jo-Ann Fabric store across the street from Hobbytown, so I drop her off there and then go on to Hobbytown. She buys yarn and beads and craft stuff, and then she walks over to Hobbytown. It's good for me because she gets excited about the craft store and spends some money, so I get to make more trips and not get a guilt trip about buying a couple of figures or some paints. I also picked up some foam at the fabric store so I can make a transport case for my Skaven army. If this foam works out, I will have a fairly cheap way to keep my armies safe when I move them.

I am taking my little brother to the Monster Truck show this Saturday. I think he will like it. I remember going to see the Monster Trucks with my dad when I was a kid, and it was a pretty good time.

At drill this weekend I was somewhat surprised to hear them call out my name as one of the people to be promoted to Sergeant. I'd expected that it would be at least one more year before I got up on the promotions list, but apparently enough people above me failed their PT tests and I got bumped above the promotion line. Depending on how well my unit can wheel and deal, I may have to transfer to another Troop to keep the rank, but I'm hoping that I can work something out to get the promotion and stay in my current Troop. Either way, it's a little more money coming in every month, and that means more fun for me.

I've started a bad habit. I've been letting my Basset Hound get up on the couch with me at night. He's getting a little older, so he spends more time sleeping and isn't as much of a nuisance when he's in the house. We have to help him get up on the couch because his stubby little back legs can't quite make the step. Earlier today he solved the problem by hopping up at an angle and then rolling onto the couch, but he's already forgotten that method. Our Lab is jealous, but she's too huge and energetic to sit on the couch.