Rat Ogre Bonebreaker WIP ... painting

Conversion is done and I've started painting this guy.  He's pretty big.  Even with his poor posture he stands taller then classic Boneripper (not counting the Warlord, of course.)

The one thing I'm kind of torn about is using the Stormvermin champion as a Warlord.  On the one hand, this model makes a pretty good looking Lord.  On the other, everyone is going to be using it as such.  I suppose I shouldn't fret about it... everyone used the old Warlord model as a Warlord and I never once complained about the frequency of the model.  I suppose it's in the career track for Fangleader (Stormvermin champion) to become chieftain and then warlord anyway.

Bits-wise, the shield is a Night Runner shield with spiked from Skink spears (javelins?)  The pole is an old Skaven standard that came with plastic clanrats back in the day before the plastic command sprue came in that box.  It came with a standard, a drummer arm / drum, and a champion head / sword arm.

Update: Finished model here.

Warlords Are So Lazy

Just riding around on his war-litter, carried by his loyal minions.... man, how lazy can you get?  It seems like everyone and their brother are making a war-litter so I thought I'd give it a go.  My big gaming day was cancelled due to a sick 5-year old, so I took some time over the weekend to work on this.  The paint job is yet another "good from far..." gaming special.  It does the job, and the clanrats actually have tails (unlike most of my army.)

One of the things I'm going to miss about the old monkey rats is the convertibility options.  The new three piece models (one of which is a shield) just don't have the sort of posing options that the eight part model had (of which two were shield parts.)  I haven't looked at the new Stormvermin for conversion.  Maybe they are just right for the task.

Modeling wise, the litter itself is balsa.  The Warlord's sword and the one carried by the rat in the right rear are spear tips from the new clanrat box.  They make wicked looking swords!  The rails that the clanrats are holding are spear shafts from the old clanrat box set.  The axe blades are from a Black Orc (right) and Dwarf (front).  I wanted to imply that some Skaven clans had been defeated by this fellow as well, hence the blue Skaven shield and the triangle shield with the clan Eshin symbol on it.

Skaven Questions ... and Irresistible Force

Collected from various parts of the interwebs.  These are the questions that I think will generate the most heated debate between Skaven players and their opponents.

• The Dreaded 13th Spell: Can the spell be cast on infantry units that house larger models (such as Slann with guard or the clanrat unit pushing a Screaming Bell)?  If so, what happens to the differing model if there enough transformations to cover the entire unit?
• Banner of Verminous Scurrying: When does the triple paced movement conferred by the banner take place?
• Warlord War-Litter: What size base should the war-litter use?  Can the war-litter join units?  If so, does it count as two models wide for purposes of rank width?  What is its unit strength?
• Are Warpstone Tokens really not "one use only"?  If they are, why give characters multiple tokens to start?
• Can plague priests use warpstone tokens?
  
• Is the Storm Banner really not "one use only"?
• Are Master Moulders required to be in the front rank of a Rat Ogre unit, since they are in all respects a unit champion?  If so, how does the mix of 20mm and 40mm bases affect ranks?
• When adding packmasters to a unit of  giant rats / rat ogres, can an additional packmaster be added to a unit 5 rats / 2 rat ogres or does that unit have to be 10 rats / 4 rat ogres before a second packmaster can be added?
  

On another note, I learned something new as a result of the 13th spell.  To successfully cast a spell you need to roll either greater than or equal to the casting cost or cast with irresistible force.  As much as we've tried we cannot find a rule that states you need to throw enough dice to make the casting cost even feasible, so it would be perfectly legal to cast the dreaded 13th every turn with two or three dice, just on the chance that you'd get IF.

Marauder Minis: Separated at Birth

I've managed to collect a strange variety of Skaven over time by buying eBay lots.  One of the things that has given me a chuckle for a while is that the old Marauder Miniatures line has some pretty obvious re-sculpts.  The Poison Wind Globadier (third one over, primed black) is the most obvious example, since his slot at the bottom says "MUSICIAN."  He is clearly just the musician to his right with some change in detail.  Only recently did I realize that the old Skaven Warlock at far left was the same sculpt as one of the current Poison Wind Globadiers, although not as blatant as the musician one.

EDIT: Apparently not all of these are Marauder minis.  The Globadier/Musician were Citadel minis.  If I'm not mistaken, the sculptors went on to form Marauder.

Even Easier Image Formatting / Text Wrapping in Blogger

Blogger has improved their composition form quite a bit.  The esoteric method I posted previously of matching text with images can be done with a much easier process now.

First, the intent:  You have multiple photos you want to write about, and you want the text for each photo to show up next to the photo in question.  Here is an example of where I have done this.

Here's how to do it.  Start with a new post, and add an image.  Click the "left" link on the image control bar to move it to the left of the screen.  Now enter some text to go with that image.  Okay, here's the scary part... I know you can do it.  Be brave.  Click the "Edit HTML" tab above the compose window.  What you will see are two blocks of text, both surrounded by DIV tags.  One is the image and the other is the text you entered.  "Cut" the text you entered from within the second div (leave the <div> and </div> tags there) and paste the text just before the </div> tag surrounding the image.  That's it.  Go back to "Compose" and that text should be locked to the image now.  Repeat for as many photos as you would like.

One final note.  Don't be surprised when Blogger rewrites your HTML to its own purposes.  The intent of the formatting seems to stick even if the gubbins move around.

Rat Ogre Bonebreaker WIP 2

The Bonebreaker gains mass.  The gray fur is P3 epoxy putty and the green is, well, green stuff.  I need to put a smoothing later of putty over the rough spots and sculpt fur.

The final pose will be tilted a bit more forward so the head points at a man-sized model.  That should also bring the arms more to a position horizontal to the ground.

Dan Abnett to write "Ultramarines"

The news: Info

and... Dan Abnett

happyhappyhappyhappyhappy

2 Skaven casters and OSL

I'm really loving the fact that Skaven has new magic options in the form of lvl 1 and 2 casters. The Warlock Engineer as he was before was a strange bird... pretty much good for overpowered warp lightning or as a brass orb suicide launcher. The plague priest, on the other hand, was definitely a melee character who could be given the Liber Bubonicus to make him a lvl 1 wizard. I tried it a couple times and could never really get much use out of the spell it gave him.

In honor of our new casters I painted up a couple of models.  The first is a Plague Priest based on an old metal Plague Monk.  I was inspired by Big D's first OSL attempts over at The Hogs of War, so I tried a little myself.  Of course I pick a model with a ton of irregular surfaces in the lit area.  It really needs to be brighter on his face to match the sleeve.  I was really happy with the freehand work until I saw the photo.  Photography is so unforgiving.

I also painted up this old Skaven warlock. I had filed off his clan Skryre tags ages ago and was using him (primed white) as a Plague Priest.  It occurred to me that the skull would make a cool brass orb. Voila!  A warlock engineer that I could have played in the previous edition!  I like the effect on the sword, and I took ages to highlight and shade the robes but this model just seems to fall flat for me. Something doesn't 'pop' and I can't put my finger on it. Any thoughts?

Rats! Foiled Again!

It's been a productive weekend.  Even nursing my sore neck I still managed to assemble and base 20 plague monks, 20 clanrats, 2 rat ogres and glue 20 giant rats (old metal ones) to bases in such a way that they can rank up properly.

I love the new options for the Skaven warlord to have a mount, and at left you'll see the beginnings of my Rat Ogre Bonebreaker mount.  Like normal I'm using aluminum foil for the basic shape and I'll putty over that for detail.  He stands a little taller than a normal rat ogre right now and after putty he'll be much beefier, which fits the book description well.

So I've had a solid week with the Skaven book and I suppose I should make a few observations, as a Skaven player of 5 years or so.
Pro:

• Mainstay rule is gone, and good riddance.
• Plague Censer Bearers are now special, making Clan Pestilens themed armies a little more doable.
• Cool new Clan Pestilens toys (Plague Furnace, Plague Claw Catalpult)
  
• Having two lores of Skaven magic and a lvl 1 and lvl 2 wizard to choose from for each gives Skaven far more options than the last book (which limited you to Super Wizard or Super Cannon)
• The new weapon teams sound fun to convert and play.
• The ratling gun got a much needed nerfing, as it now rolls to hit (among other changes.)
• 0-1 limit on Stormvermin removed
• Giant Rats attack in two ranks now
• 8(!) special characters.  I don't know if I'll ever see them all in battle, but it's fun to see them all in the book.

Cons:

• new Packmaster rules are strange.  So even if there are 50 giant rats in the unit and one packmaster, an arrow that hits the unit has a 1/3 change of hitting that single packmaster?  
• Wording for "strength in numbers" is practically word for word the same as in the last edition.  This was one of the rules that generated the most questions.  When does a unit have a rank bonus?  If rank bonus is calculated at the beginning of the close combat phase does the Skaven unit use one rank bonus to determine if they won the combat and another to break test (assuming it lost enough models to lose a rank)?  Just a dozen or so more words would have done so much.
• Half points?  really?  I suppose I'm glad a unit of Clanrats with shield cost less now and I don't know how I would have done things differently, but it's just so awkward.
• Warp Lightning Cannon is a little more boring now.  I miss the unpredictable nature of the previous version with it's random range.  The new one is more survivable (I've had one survive a six turn battle... something no WLC of mine has ever done) but seems to fail a lot more.  About 30% of all shots fired will either misfire or fizzle.  Maybe some interesting anecdotes about the WLC will come up but in the games I've played it's been an uneventful item so far.
• Lots of inconsistent/omitted wording in the book.  Can all Night Runners be upgraded to Night Leaders?  Does a Master Moulder (as a unit champion) have to stay in the front rank?  Are Warp Tokens and the Storm Banner really not "one use only"?  Can a Warlord on War Litter join a unit?
  

By the way, the new Clanrat weapons are sharp little suckers.  I drew blood implaing myself while trying to scrape mold lines off those pointy things.  And oh is it nice to just have clanrats rank up so nicely.  Old monkey rats are so out of here.  But, of course, Night Runners are no longer skirmishers, so after we get rid of the nightmare of ranking one type of monkey rat, the other one is now ranked.  Any everyone will have assembled Night Runners with no regard to tail placement because they never had to think about ranks before.  Nice! (not really)

It may sound like I'm griping but I'm really happy with the new Skaven, and once a FAQ/Errata comes out clarifiying all the strange points I'll be all the happier.  So in the immortal words of General Vorg:  Squeeks!

Oops

I learned a new word today.  Subrogation.

It comes up when you back into somebody from your driveway and then your insurance company informs you that your policy was cancelled two days ago due to your payment being rejected by your bank.

In this context, it is definitely a word of which I wish I was still ignorant.

Q: What Constitutes a Friendly Game?

I played a 1500 pt WHFB game this weekend that raised some questions for me.  My Ogre Kingdoms opponent asked me, "Is this a friendly game?"  I answered that it was, and that it was my first game against Ogres.  He responded by telling me that I would definitely want to use my power dice to dispell his toothcracker (or some other unpleasant sounding) remains-in-play spell.  I did so.

As the game progressed someone on the sidelines did a bit of kibitzing, reminding me of rules or things I had forgotten to do, like re-roll for hatred, etc.  As things started to go south for the Ogres I could hear my opponent muttering "I thought this was supposed to be a friendly game" or similar under his breath multiple times.  Clearly he thought someone helping me remember things was beyond that scope, even though I am a very occasional player (1-2 times a year.)

So this raised the question:  What constitutes a friendly/casual game?

Thinking it over a little, I think these are the sorts of things I would do in a casual game:

• Allow my opponent to do something he had forgotten in a prior phase as long as it wouldn't rewrite history too much.  A good example is allowing him to rally a fleeing unit after charges are declared.
  
• Let any charges / range checks of my opponent that are so close as to be questionable go in favor of my opponent.
• I would not require explicitly visible actions (for people who roll so fast that you can't see anything and all they say is "okay, 4 wounds" during combat.)
• Be congenial over any rules that are  broken, but try and point out any obvious errors and give him the opportunity to correct them.
  
• Allow him to look up any rule that gets questioned without making disparaging comments about knowing the rules or the time rule lookups take.
  

Little things like this keep the narrative of the battle alive with a minimum of the sort arguing that takes the focus off the models and puts it on the cantankerous gamers.

So what are your thoughts?

Paint Queek Cwossing

Skaven day!  Yay!  Saturday was the first major Skaven release since I started this crazy hobby, so I was somewhat thrilled.  I bought pretty much one of everything new that came out (a spearhead box would have been nice for this, but I heard through the grapevine that the spearhead boxes never sold all that well.)

I participated in the painting competition as well, and won first place with the Queek you see here.  I got a print of the Skaven book cover as my prize.  I was under the impression that I was competing for a Screaming Bell, but I suppose I will find out on 11/21 when they come out.  Either way I have a pretty snazzy Queek to field.  My local store is "GW Paint Creek Crossing" so hopefully the title of this entry makes more sense now.

I met up on Saturday for some gaming and ran into fellow UnderEmpire member Kariko83, whose Moulder horde is something to behold.  I am inspired to hire a few units of Giant Rats for my army, or at least assemble the GR's and Rat Ogres I already own.  We set up a 6000 point game (3 Skaven players @ 2000 each plus a Vampire Counts, Ogre Kingdoms and Lizardmen army of 2000 points each.)  Unfortunately VC guy started to feel sick at the top of turn 2 and we called the game.  I played 1500 against the Ogre Kingdoms guy later and suprised him with Clan Pestilens fun (and I quote, "Nobody has even done that to me before!  Not even Blood Knights!  Those things are so broken!")  Hooray!  I finally got accused of cheese!  He ended up winning with table quarters and standards, and the game was great fun.  I play about once or twice a year normally, so to get almost 8 turns in was a rare treat.

Deathmaster Snikch was nowhere to be found on Skaven day.  Pfft.  Isn't that just like clan Eshin?

Pics from the aborted 6k game.

Random Find: Tina + Wolf

Just a quick heads-up for an artist I stumbled across quite randomly.  She works with vector art, and I find her work intriguing.

Check it out:
http://tinaandwolf.blogspot.com/

She's barely started posting, so this might be a fun one for you to follow.

From Jaunty to Karmic

I've upgraded my work desktop from Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) to 9.1 (Karmic Koala.)  Here are a few observations.

• The Nvidia bug that caused the pointer bitmap to fragment at certain screen locations has been fixed.
• Audio is back to both the headphones and speakers working simultaneously (true in Intrepid, mutually exclusive in Jaunty.)  I'm not sure if this is a design feature or a bug.
• Desktop panels jumped from primary (left) monitor to secondary (right) monitor.  I was able to move them back by deselecting "Expand" in the panel preferences, dragging the panel back to the left monitor and then re-selecting "Expand."
• I was having some issues with Sun Virtualbox (not OSE) where the app would grab the keyboard and not let go.  This let ctrl-alt-del work in the XP environment, but made everything else useless.  I did a full cold boot of Ubuntu and for no discernible reason it works fine now.

For anyone who does any development work for Unix servers, I am beyond praise for Ubuntu/Eclipse.  I have a better development system than I've ever had before with hardly a difference between my desktop and the production server in term of code workings.

Inquisitor Lord Grussom and Retinue

I decided to put a little work in on my Inquisitor Lord's retinue tonight.  I had pretty much abandoned the standard Witch Hunter Inquisitor model after reading Dan Abnett's amazing Eisenhorn trilogy.  He gives so much depth and character to the Inquisition that I wanted a more unique representation.

Inquisitor Lord Grussom is a zealot of the most confrontational variety.  Not one for intrigue, he rushes in to deliver the Emperor's justice with a fearlessness that his colleagues both admire and ridicule.  Since suffering a grievous injury at the hands of a chaos cultist to whom he was in the process of meting out judgement with a hammer, Grussom has donned the Sacred Armor of Hokiprus Goll for battle.  Goll's armor, an ancient suit of golden power armor, was recovered from a ruined shrine world by Grussom after a long search for protection befitting one bringing Terra's light.  No helmet was recovered for Goll's armor, and Grussom's battered visage is a direct result of his face bearing the brunt of his headlong assault against the followers of chaos.

While Grussom's rise through the ranks of the Inquisition has been less than meteoric, many count his chief confidant, Interrogator Atwa Rove, as the guiding hand behind the unswerving force of Grussom and his ascent.  Rove hails from a background where a well placed word and a bullet have equally weighty ends, and guiding the somewhat guile-less Grussom has been a challenge he has enjoyed to no end.  While surely steering Grussom, Rove would balk at the word manipulation.  They are long friends and only Rove's machinations have gotten Grussom the influence that has allowed him to prosecute his mandate with such fervor.

Crusaders Hyrem and Lorem are brothers from a world cut off for six millenia from the Astronomicon by a warp storm.  During that time the world fell on backwards times technologically and adopted heretical practices in their worship of the Emperor.  Upon emergence from the warp storm and repatriation into the Imperium, Hyrem and Lorem were part of a knightly order that assisted in rooting out and destroying the rogue priesthood so that the Emperor's true Ecclesiarchy could take its place again.  Grussom took them on as retinue bodyguards after they achieved a bit of notoriety for these actions, and parades them around endlessly explaining that their home world is an example of what happens when humanity is left to its own devices with no Ordo to guide it.  They wear the armor of their order and weapons retrofitted to be a bit more technologically advanced.

Bound Psyker 2280-12 was assigned to Grussom after Rove kept complaining that he could never get the stink of the warp off his jacket.  No one remembers the poor soul's name, and he keeps surviving encounters with the ruinous powers no matter how often or cavalierly Grussom and Rove throw him between themselves and rogue psykers.  It has become something of a game to see how long he'll live, and they do their best to protect him from the more mundane dangers of bullets and las-shots.

Improve Your Painting for $2

This may seem amazingly obvious, but as a beginning painter I didn't quite grasp it.

You can't paint what you can't see.

To paint with precision, you must be able to see what you are painting and be able to see your brushwork in enough detail to be able to figure out what you want to do and then do it.  I used overhead incandescent lighting for my first seventy five models or so (go Skaven!) but was never able to get them above basic tabletop quality.  "Good from afar, but far from good."

So how does $2 help?  You go to the dollar store and buy yourself a compact fluorescent bulb and a pair of +3.5 reading glasses.  A CF bulb in a goose neck lamp (or ever better, two CF bulbs in two goose neck lamps!) will  give enough light close to the mini to actually see the thing, and CF bulbs have a much better lighting spectrum then incandescent bulbs without getting nearly as hot.  Trying to use incandescent "daylight" bulbs in close quarters can get to be uncomfortably warm.  Use of specialized lights like an Ott light give good results, but the advent of the CF bulb has put them in the "diminishing returns for the price" category.  When painting small details or freehand try the +3.5 reading glasses.  You'll have to experiment with how far to hold the mini from your face, but the amount of magnification this provides is quite adequate for detail work.  Also, the fact that you are looking through two lenses maintain binocular vision, something that has prevented me from effectively using single magnifying glasses in the past.  I just couldn't judge where the brush was in relation to the mini.  All I was getting were up-close-and-personal mistakes!

I've been using bright lights for a while, and only recently got the reading glasses (which I wear right over my regular glasses when painting.)  I did some touch ups on Vayl's body armor using the glasses, and was surprised of the detail I had missed previously.  Not only was I able to see what I had missed along with the less than tidy areas, but I was able to see areas where the color consistency were sorely lacking.  Now I should probably go over all that fiddly armor and highlight the wolf grey with skull white.  That should improve the pop quite a bit.

So try it!  It's only $2 ya cheapskate!

A Productive Night

Jimmy came over last night for our weekly hobby session, and for some reason we were both quite productive.  I mostly finished Vayl, painted that little Cryx cutie in the middle from primer and put the starting basecoats on a mini that I'm painting for Monster Zero of the UnderEmpire.  One of the things I did with Vayl was paint up her little orb-weapon thingy in shades of blue to white, then put a few thin coats of Vallejo Model Color Metal Medium over it.  VMCMM is basically just metal flakes and acrylic medium, so it addes a pearlescent shimmer to things.  I last used it on the Howling Banshees power sword from the diorama I did for competition last year (and my first 8 on coolmini or not!)  also put a little on her headpiece, since I'm not even really sure what it's supposed to be, so why not be shiny too!  My digital camera also appears to have had a conniption over the colors in this picture, since it decided that everything should be a little more blue.

The photo above reminded me of mentioning the table refinishing too.  The pic below is from a couple years ago, and you can see the darker finish of the table.  For some reason the finish was getting more and more sensitive to temperature and moisture, leaving rings when anything came in contact with it that was hot, cold or wet.  Any papers left on the table with the slightest bit of moisture would stick to the point of needing to be peeled off and scraped.  Stef decided enough was enough so she dragged the table out onto the deck and started sanding the finish off, which basically carmelized the varnigh onto the sandpaper.  In the end it took a great deal of turpentine, but we stripped off the gummy old finish and put a few coats of clear, semi-gloss polyurethane.  The results were pleasing.

Vayl, WIP 2

She's gotten more color, and it's a fairly limited palette.  The only paints I used tonight were Wolf Grey and Night Blue (both Vallejo Game Colors.)  There are so many fiddly armor bits on the front that what started out as a careful detailing looked like a drybrush by the time I was done.  I'll have a lot of clean up work to do there.  The feathers got a base of Wolf Grey, then a wash of Asurman Blue, then a drybrush of Wolf Grey again.  I'll probably do a selective drybrush highlight with 50/50 skull white/wolf grey later.

Overall, an interesting model.  I'm not sure I'm doing it justice.  It still feels experimental at this point.

On a home note, my eldest daughter climbed into bed with me and Stef sometime in the night.  As I went to wake her up for school, she stretched luxuriously and knocked a glass of water I had next to the bed right down into my shoes.  Great.  I poured the shoes out and left them by the furnace duct to hopefully dry.

Radio Quote of the Day

From the Michigan Radio pledge drive this morning...

"Most of our funding comes from viewers like you.... 40%!"

eBay, We Need To Talk

...and you may want to sit down.

I'm really sick of eBay.  I'm sick of them charging me >10% of item price in fees.  I'm tired of them raising prices and then telling me that it's a fee decrease (what is commonly referred to as eBay Math) and I am tired of their heavy handed way of dealing with any issue I have as a seller.  I'm done with eBay.  Period.  I know others are too.

As a result, I have a pressing question for the wargaming community...

Do you look anywhere other than eBay for auctions?

I can search and find various other auction sites with various levels of wargaming product, but I really want to know where you folks actually shop.  I should mention that what I've been selling on eBay are minis painted to high quality, but I'm interested in any info you can provide whether is pertains to that or not.

Let me know.  Thanks!
...and, um, eBay?  Your stuff is out on the curb.

Vayl ... why blue skin again?

I started working on Hordes Warlock "Vayl, Disciple of Everblight" recently.  For no reason I can fathom I just started painting her skin blue.  I put a little work in on face and torso, but the hands are still atrocious.

I dunno.... does the blue work?  Will she look redonkulous next to a Carnivean?

Also, I have the framework done for a plain, blue box, and the aspect ratios look correct.  Maybe getting ready to paint a box blue carried over into other minis.

You Had Me At "Kill-Kill"

Oh, my wonderful rats.  Skaven is the first army I picked when I started this whole crazy thing back in aught-four.  And now (sniff) I can't say I've ever been happier.  Goodbye clanrats that look like monkeys.  Goodbye struggling to rank up models with huge tails.  Hello to a plastic Screaming Bell with a Rat Ogre ringer! 

What I really want to know is will there be a spearhead?  Other armies have gotten one lately, and I'd love to get all these new models (and the book) in one big box.  Even without a spearhead we really need a new battalion box, since the old one has the old clanrats in it. 

Games Workshop has been right on target lately.  Between the Space Wolves (which even I, an admitted Space Wolf scoffer, think are cool) to those amazing Space Hulk models, to a host of ForgeWorld type models done in plastic, it just seems that everything they are doing is not just good but, in the vernacular, real good. 

Five Days with Evony

So the five days of Evony have concluded for this week's Friday Challenge. All in all the game is somewhat fun, but those ads. Sheesh.  And in case you aren't familiar with the game, you get 7 days of protection from attack.  The alliances that declare war on you can't touch you until your eigth day.

Play Now, My Lord!

I know... I can't believe it either.  I'm playing Evony.  A bunch of my coworkers started playing it, and I'm in too now.  It's a "fire and forget" strategy game where things happen whether you are online to micromanage or not.  That makes a little tweaking every few hours enough to play.

You have probably seen the ads for Evony, with this example being the most tame of them.  I loved what Popcap did on this parody ad for Plants vs. Zombies (which is the best game I've played this year, easily.)

So here's the deal: come play Evony with us.  Join up on server 87, teleport to "Bohemia" (you'll start with a city teleporter) and join the alliance "UDIE".  It's fun and a bit addictive.

A Mystery No Longer!

Thanks to IbnIblis for identifying the mystery elf as Ral Partha mini "Elf Blade Maiden Mistress."

And now, I shall paint her!

Biscuity Endeavors

I have been on a quest to make decent biscuits for a while now. Not perfect ones, just decent ones. Until this weekend the best I could do was sort of Bisquicky dry lumpy things. I tried drop biscuits, rolled biscuits, multiple thin layers (hey it works for paint) and nothing ever came out the way I had envisioned.

Then along came Alton Brown.

On Thursday his show "Good Eats" was all about biscuits. By Saturday morning I was making biscuits that were decent. By Sunday night they were exactly what I had envisioned. The secret is all in the wheat. I kid you not.  If you don't have time to watch the video of the entire biscuit episode from the link above, just do this:

• 2 C winter wheat flour (or 1.5 C all purpose and .5 C cake flour)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 C shortening
• 1 C buttermilk

Mix dry ingredients.  Cut in shortening until about pea sized lumps remain.  Mix in buttermilk until you have a sticky dough ball.  Dump ball onto floured surface and press out with hands until it's about an inch thick.  Cut 2" biscuits and bake in a 475-500 degree oven for 10-12 minutes.

The Ultimate Showdown

Tonight's concerts in Southeast Michigan:

Jonathan Coulton in Ann Arbor
They Might Be Giants in Detroit

What's a nerd to do?

Oh, and I may have just found my favorite tshirt ever.

Don't Even Ask

Because, seriously, what more could possibly be said?

Nurgle Monstrosity - Completed!

Last night Jimmy came over and retrieved his completed Nurgle Dreadnought. The thing is almost as big as a Land Raider. I gave it a decent paint job, but as I was doing it just as a favor I didn't put more than about 20 hours into it. And there is a lot of model there to paint. Since this is a gaming piece there's plenty of gloss varnish on the sticky bits. I don't like the way gloss varnish photographs but I do like the look of it on the table.

For complete pictures, check out my project blog: The Nurgle Monstrosity

Space Hulk meets Nurgle

Okay, not exactly. We've been sick at my house, first my wife and then me. The kids seem unscathed so far, but the taint of Papa Nurgle has definitely been upon us. I don't know if it was H1N1 or not, but we had all the symptoms and were both down hard for days.

At the point where I was finally able to stay up past the kids' bedtime, my wife and I played our first game of Space Hulk. Despite my previous rage against limited edition games, I broke down and bought one rather than risk never being able to get one except at greatly inflated eBay cost. If GW releases this game in an unlimited edition format you can bet that they will never be able to pull the "limited edition" stunt again. That trick works exactly once.

Neither Stef nor I had ever played SH before, but the rules were fairly straightforward. We played mission 1, and Stef's genestealers uttlerly destroyed my marines. In retrospect I should have been more aggressive about moving toward the objective. I was playing a very defensive game based mainly on my experience with the Space Hulk computer game. Overwatch is essential to the computer version since everything is moving so fast. With the new command points system and only five marines to worry about I could have played the entire game without overwatch and done better. Most overwatch action points were wasted. I also need to remember how well the heavy flamer template blocks movement for future games. All in all the entire game took about 45 minutes, including a number of rule lookups. The next run should be quicker, and hopefully the larger missions won't require a lot of reference.

And in case you've been living under a rock, the minis for this game are chicken fried awesome.

Adeptus Comicus

This little bit of silliness came about after I build my first drop pod and wondered how a dreadnought would be loaded on one. The troop carrying guts of the thing seem too integrated into the structure to be easily converted.

Anyway, the idea of how dreads might actually use a drop pod gave me a tickle, so I'm sharing the initial pencil with you. I plan on cleaning it up and inking it now that it's digital.

In case you can't read my chicken scratching, here's the script.

Technician: Brother Awesomenus is scheduled for drop assault but our last drop pod has troop restraints installed.

Brother Awesomenus: Fear not, brothers. I shall go into battle in the manner of our ancient forefathers.

Yes, I realize I wrote "manor" instead of "manner." Deal. Also, I have no real concept of whether an ancient Space Marine Dreadnought would call an Adeptus Mechanicus tech "brother." Same response... deal. I liked the dread calming the fretting tech with his kind words of wisdom. So there ya have it.

Can you ID the Mystery Elf?

My wife bought this for me at a garage sale a few years ago. I have not been able to identify it yet. I thought she might be a witch elf or Drow, but all my searching has not turned up an answer.

Clues:

• She was mounted on a GW square base with a 1991 copyright
• Cut marks on the bottom of the feet are consistant with a GW "slotta" base.
• She does not appear to be made of lead

Any ideas?

EDIT: Solved!

A Day in the Life

This will be edited all day. Feel free to live vicariously.

7:22 AM: woke up. realized I had turned alarm off. freaked out getting kids up for school
8:13 AM: dropped kids off at school without breakfast. MEAP is today.
8:28 AM: call from Stef to see if I'm okay, since I was so freaked out getting the kids to school
8:37 AM: determined perl daemon process I started last night is still running. so far so good.
9:05 AM: dumped about 20 lbs of recycling off my trash-hole desk
9:22 AM: call from 800 number at desk phone. didn't answer
9:37 AM: off for my third cup of coffee. is it time to go home yet?
9:45 AM: minor panic attack thinking about the fact that the code we are just about to move to production works in Zimbra 5 but not Zimbra 6. Our hosting provider for Zimbra is planning on upgrading from 5 to 6 in about 4-6 weeks, giving us a narrow window to come up with something new. Current project took about 4 months to complete.
9:52 AM: taking a minute while Ann Marie gets her code moved to a test server to refine repackager process for EMU Today. Just prettying up the presentation a little.
9:57 AM: putting on my magnificent "bose triport" headphones to listen to Abbey Road again. This makes about 100 times in the past three weeks.
11:09 AM: Apparently Ann Marie and I have been working on a different schema assumption (mostly because I didn't change the table creates in the svn repository) so we're getting that ironed out. hooray for unit tests.
11:16 AM: Whoops. killed my daemon by dropping the primary event table. I need to change the query code to try and autorecover from a db connection error rather than just die.
12:05 PM: Walked up to the student center. The mural of pandas on the wall where "Panda Express" chinese take-out used to be is odd.
1:20 PM: Fifth cup of coffee. EMU Today harvester is done and on beta tab. Next stop, public beta opt-in.
3:50 PM: Our little cabal of technocracy has decided that our vendor is insane, and we've decided to do the work ourselves. It will be a metric crap-ton of extra work, but the OT won't be half bad and the result will be a system that we can use in a timely manner for a lot less money. Also, cup #6 of coffee is cold and nearly empty. I guess "cup" isn't really the correct term. It's a travel mug that holds about two mugs worth of coffee. Does that make this cup 12? Just finished listening to the Beatles rooftop concert on youtube.
4:22 PM: Back to trying to get what I was working on before the 2:30 meeting going.... can't seem to get the channel app to read the ldap attributes passed to it. There are other working channels here that do it, so I must have a configuration option wrong. Rule One of Life: if it doesn't work it's probably not someone else's fault.

My New Best Friends

It's been a long time since I've worked in any industrial settings. Back in those days I used to carry around things like safety glasses and earplugs all the time, since I regularly needed them.

This weekend, I came to love earplugs again.

I've been having trouble hearing people lately. It just seems like select people are mumbling most of the time. Asking them to speak louder doesn't help me, since loud doesn't seem to equate to clear. As we packed the family into the car Saturday morning to head to a nephew's birthday party I grabbed (on a whim) a pair of earplugs from my travel kit. I had a bit of a headache and the kids were pretty riled up so I was already expecting a loud ride. Add to that Stef's recent fondness of playing books-on-tape type stories for the kids in the car using her little speaker she bought and the earplugs seem more and more attractive.

What I didn't expect is that they would help me hear better. With the road noise and most of the incidental passenger sounds pushed down, I was actually able to hear and understand voices better. In Manchester, MI later that day I was able to understand the announcer with the bullhorn just fine with the earplugs in. Without them her voice was just an incomprehensible buzz/echo.

The only downside is that people think I'm avoiding listening to them when I wear the earplugs, an irony I'd say since wearing them results in me understanding more. I think wearing earplugs is less detached looking than wearing headphones, since headphones always give the impression that you are listening to something else, whereas earplugs mean you are just listening to less.

One in a Million Rolls

I have never seen this happen. Ever. Well, I have now and I don't suppose I will again. We're still not sure how it happened. Inspection of the table afterward showed nothing that would have obviously caused it.

Here's the same roll from another angle. After gawking at it for a while, manager Brett came over and bumped the table edge so it fell on its side. What was the end roll? A one. On a roll to wound. I asserted it should be a rending wound for being so unusual, but since I wasn't playing nobody cared what I had to say. ;-)

Saturday I actually played a game at the Paint Creek Crossing GW store. I had intended to participate in the Headhunters event, but instead of running at 1 PM and 4 PM apparently they only had one run at 2 PM. Oh, well. I still got a 2k pick-up game in with my Skaven. My opponent refused to play anything less than 2k and I found out why... he had a Vampire Lord on a dragon that constituted about 1/3 of his points. I shot the thing like crazy but couldn't seem to do any damage to it, not even with two characters blasting warp lightning and 8 jezzails. My opponent didn't really know the rules very well, so I was just sort of letting him call the shots; I hadn't played in over two years, and I was just looking to have fun. I wasn't really doing him any favors I know, but I didn't really feel like arguing. Another fellow who wasw willing to point out rules saddled up to the table and started pointing out errors, but soon after that my opponent ran out of time and had to leave. Having gotten a taste of playing again I think I will be back. My ten year old daughter came with me and enjoyed it, so I'm hoping this will be the start of her gaming experience.

Quote of the Day

On the fact that mnemonics are no longer allowed in certain schools...

Foil! First, inner, outer, last! It's always worked for me!

--Ann Marie

How To Win Customer Loyalty

I have to hand it to Brett at the Paint Creek Crossing Games Workshop store. He has always been a pleasant fellow with whom to interact, and I mean that with no sarcasm. He's a salesman without giving the hard-sell. The way he handles the painting competitions there is just one example of his professionalism.

When I found out there was a painting competition last weekend I finished a couple of models to enter, and my daughter, son and nephew (between the ages of 5 and 8) all did the same. My daughter really loves painting, so to enter her first competition was a big thing for her. She asked what sort of prizes you get for winning, and I told her at this level that it's just for fun and you'll get a certificate if you win (like in past competitions there.)

We all submitted our models, and my dreadnought won in large model. None of my kin won, but they didn't seem to mind. Brett then surprised me by handing me a prize... one of those bolter ammo box miniature cases! I don't even know if you can get those anymore! The winner of the contest got a battleforce of his choice!

So, between making my GW experience a pleasant one (again), giving my kids a category in which to compete (even if just for fun) and doling out unexpected prize support, Brett has certainly impressed me.

I Rage Against "Limited Edition"

I want Space Hulk. Ya hear, GW? I want to spend my money on your product. The problem is that I don't want to buy it now. I want to buy it, oh, more in the February time frame.

"Don't wait!" says GW. "Space Hulk is limited edition and will only be available for a short time!"

You know what? Hogwash. Plastic figures cost a ton to tool, and if GW has gone to all the trouble to make new dies for the Space Hulk figs, then they are planning to sell a lot of them. I'm guessing that means more than will fly off the shelves on 9/5/09. So either they are looking to spend a ton of money developing a new game that will be impossible to buy in a month or they plan on releasing an unlimited edition later. I can wait until then. If they don't plan on producing it after this limited release, then forget it. I don't want another unsupported game (cough*bloodbowlnecromundabattlefleetgothicmordheim*cough).

Seriously, guys. I pre-ordered Black Reach because it looked so great, and it wasn't limited in any way. Space Hulk looks great, but the idea that I might miss my chance to buy it because I don't feel like ponying up $100 right before my kids go to school really grinds me.

Ace of Squig Cakes

If anyone gets the food channel, the show Ace of Cakes shows the creation of the Squig Cake that was at Baltimore Games Day this year.

I watched it last night. It was very cool.

Stages of 40K

This is strictly from my own experience at 'ard boyz last year. Your mileage may vary.

EDIT: I changed the image a little... I had beginning of turn 5 wrong, and changed the verbiage a little.

Natalie Dee!

It is rare indeed that I stumble randomly upon an internet comic artist who is so refreshing. Natalie's work is the opposite of exposition, something I have become quite bored with lately. Her comics are simple and elegant, and while not the three panel gag that typically gets emailed around I find myself happier after reading them.

Awesome indeed, Ms. Dee.

TV Metagame

The other night my wife and I were watching a truly horrid "Guinness World's Animal Records" or some-such. No, I don't remember why. It was late, and we were tired.... anyway.....

A few minutes in, during a shot of the audience applauding, I saw a woman tilt her head in a strange fashion. A couple minutes later, another audience shot showed that same woman tilting her head again during applause. It looked eerily similar to the first shot. I decided to review that shot again to find someone else in the audience that had a distinctive action, then rewind TV and see if the editors had just spliced the same audience shot in multiple times. Sure enough, a fellow in the middle rear of the audience (whom we can only describe as "special") clapped with his hands over his head, half standing and shaking his head. His performance would be very easy to identify as identical. Rewinding the live-TV using the DVR I verified that the footage was exactly the same earlier in the show. I saw three different clips used three times each during that show.

The game: be the first person to identify a repeated shot in a TV show.

Sneak Peek of TableTopReady.com

I've been working on a new commerce site that I'm hoping to launch in September. The Black Templars Dreadnought seen here is for the store and is the sort of things I plan on selling, specifically assembled and/or converted miniatures primed and ready for gaming or painting. I will also feature some of my painted work on the site as well. The address is TableTopReady.com, which I think describes the mission well. Need a tactical squad with a drop pod for a game in 2 weeks? If I have it on the site it will be in hand and ready to ship.

If I can keep my wholesale supply chain intact I'm hoping to sell most items at around 100-120% of MSRP. So let me ask.... since there are so many discount wargaming retailers around, is it worth paying full retail to get the figures assembled (with mold lines scraped), based and primed? Maybe with a little nicety or two like the special weapon in a tactical squad magnetized so you can swap meltagun, plasma gun, flamer or bolter? One thing I've noticed on the FTW list is that you are all inspired hobbyists. Does this sound like a store that you could see buying from?