The Raz File

I got my Terminators put together today. I'd say it took me 35 minutes to an hour to get each of them put together. Some people complain about it taking a long time to put together plastic figures, but selecting parts from the sprue and putting them together is one of my favorite parts of the hobby.

These are the two with Lightning Claws. There aren't a lot of different ways to pose Lightning Claw arms, but I was able to use a good mix of components from my Space Marine bin.


The Sergeant here isn't wearing his big wolf cloak yet, as it will be impossible to paint him with it glued on. With his Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield held out so far to the sides and his cloak extending to the rear he is going to be a very large and intimidating model out on the table. It was a real chore to find components that would work together with the cloak, and it was even more of a chore to get everything test-fitted and make sure he would go together right. I needed about three more hands to hold everything in place for test-fitting. I don't have any poster putty or Blu-Tac to help with test-fitting models. His cloak will need some green stuff work done to fit properly, but it will fit around all the other stuff he's wearing.


And these are my Thunder Hammer/Storm Shield guys. I like the idea of dudes with huge crackling hammers banging on tanks and rattling the crews inside. I spent several years as a driver on an M1A1 Abrams, and the driver's seat is pretty comfortable by Army standards. During certain parts of training the driver's only real job is to watch the battery meter and keep the heater running. Inevitably the driver falls asleep and when it comes time to wake him up the other members of the crew will hit the front slope of the tank with a hammer or a helmet. It's a pretty startling noise to wake up to, sort of like having someone wake you up from your bed by banging a couple of pots together near your head.

I finished painting the Space Marine Scouts last night. I am actually not quite finished with the missile launcher guy yet. When I built him I accidentally used a Sniper Rifle Scout's legs, so he's got a power pack with two wires that don't go anywhere. I'm going to rig up some extra wire or sprue or something and give him a servo-skull to act as a spotter.

I finally finished my Assault Marines. The pictures are not that great, but they get the idea across. I'm not sure what to paint next. I should probably paint my Scouts or the Razorback next, but that's a lot of green and brown to paint. I've got a group of about ten half-finished Easterlings that would probably paint up pretty quick, so I might change gears a bit and get them done. Then maybe I'll put some more models together to get away from painting for a couple of days. I am moderately pleased with the Assault Marines. They look decent enough from tabletop distance.

In my excitement over Star Fleet Battles and Federation Commander, I began looking for a hex mat to play with miniatures on. Both games feature cardboard counters with paper/cardboard maps to play on, but those are boring. I'd heard quite a bit about Hotz Mats, but I was reluctant to order from them as they've had some timeliness and communication issues in the past, even as recently as a few weeks ago. These are well-documented on The Miniatures Page, but it always appeared that people who ordered from Hotz Mats got their product eventually even if it took a few months. So I decided to order one and see what happened. I placed the order on 06 APR and on 07 APR I got an e-mail confirming the order and explaining that the mats are custom-made to order and some designs (like the space mats) could take a while due to the extra steps (airbrushing the nebulas and whatnot). The e-mail told me to expect a five-week wait, and the threads on The Miniatures Page warned me to expect a several-month wait. The mat arrived today, for a turnaround time of 18 days from order to delivery.

I am quite pleased with the product. I ordered a 72" x 45" Deep Space Mat with 1" hexes. I've taken a few photos of it below. The package felt pretty light at first, but upon opening it I found that the mat feels quite sturdy and should hold up to wear pretty well. In real life the hexes aren't nearly as intrusive as they look in the photo; I think the flash made them several times brighter than they are in person.

I am rather pleased with it. I think the last thing left is to get my Klingon ship painted up and try the game out.

I've taken a couple pictures of the Federation Cruiser, and here they are. Up close you can see the flaws and unsteady lines painted on the ship, but looking at the ship on my desk from standing height it looks pretty good. The Future Acrylic Floor Finish seems to be what I'm looking for, the big test will be to see whether it does well as an initial coat on the Klingon ship. I attached the Klingon ship to it's flight base again today, so hopefully it stays. The peg for the flight stand broke off when I had to strip the paint from the ship after the first painting, so I had to drill a new hole and rework the nub so that it would fit. I'm hoping I did well enough to keep it fairly stable. The decals may or may not be in the proper spots, so don't flip out if you are a hardcore Trekkie. I am also probably missing details.

I printed the decal guide from the Star Fleet Universe page for the D-6/D-7 ships. It seems fairly straightforward and matches up pretty well with the decal sheet I have in hand. The reason I had so much trouble with the Heavy Cruiser is that there is not a decal guide up on the site for that ship and I had to cobble it together from various images around the web. It appears that some of the decals are not necessary, as a major portion of them are intended to represent details that are sculpted on the model and can be painted, specifically weapon ports. But the windows and pinstripes and insignia/lettering is all very useful to have in decal form.

I am very likely not to get any hobby stuff done this week as it's fairly stuffed with homework and I get to play army all of next weekend. It will be nice when the wife and kid get back from their vacation to Georgia, as I may not survive much longer on fast food and microwave burritos. My Easter feast this year left something to be desired.

I had several things I wanted to post about, but they have all totally slipped my mind. I suppose that if I get around to remembering them I will type something up.

I am mostly finished with my Space Marine Lieutenant. After taking the pictures I realized that I still need to drill out the barrels and paint the sling on his Storm Bolter. Other than that he is finished. Next up is probably a squad of Assault Marines.

Not much time for a post if I want to be able to get up for work in the morning, but here are a couple of WIP photos of the Space Marine Lieutenant. He's not going to win any awards, but he should look okay on the tabletop and paint up fairly quickly.

I was really hoping the Cardinals would pull off the win in the Super Bowl, but they couldn't quite hang on and keep the lead. It sounds like Kurt Warner is planning on retiring and I think they're going to be one-shot wonders as far as getting anywhere in the postseason in the future. This was pretty much the perfect situation for them to come away with a ring and they blew it. I just don't see them rolling through the NFC again next year.

I started blocking in some colors on the Lieutenant and got his cloak to a point that it looks okay from arm's length. Hopefully he'll paint up pretty quickly as I don't plan on making him too spectacular compared to the other Space Marines in the army. He's got a few extra details, but nothing too complex outside of that cloak. I will be drilling out the barrels on the Storm Bolter at some point.

I made a very small bit of progress on my Terminators today, mostly just figuring out what colors I'm going to paint some things. I'm going to keep the Company colors and probably the force organization as they're organized in the army book, so Terminators get to be members of the 1st Company and get white and silver as Company colors. So far it looks all right.

The Denver Broncos lost this week, which probably signals the start of their traditional pattern of losing control of the division and then frittering away a playoff spot. Their next 7 or 8 games look very winnable, but my prediction is that it'll come down to the last game of the season against the Chargers, and given their past I don't think the Broncos will be able to get it done.

I was at the hobby shop today and noticed that many of their Lord of the Rings boxed sets were marked at 50% off, including the War Mumak of Harad, also known as an Oliphaunt. A discount coupon I had brought the price to 60% off, and I got the largest Lord of the Rings model there is. The box contains one Mumak and 13 infantry models.

I finally got to look through the new Space Marines Codex and build an army list out to 1500 points. I have nearly everything I need for the army already, save for a squad of Space Marines and their transport. Of course at some point I'll be wanting to add some Assault Marines, some Scouts, a few Terminators with non-standard kit, a better Captain model, a Forge World Dreadnought or two.... But the main core of the army is essentially complete. I need a few more models to fill out my Ork list, as the Ork models tend to cost fewer points than Space Marines.

I made a purchase from Hobbytown's Flames of War display. I picked up a Tank Destroyer Platoon box set, which doesn't at all fit into the Eastern Front games I plan on building forces for. I just can't resist the allure of American WWII vehicles. Some people can't get enough German kit but I'm a sucker for U.S. gear. So I'll probably wind up trying to build opposing forces for Germany and America; I'm trying to decide whether they'll be mechanized infantry or footsloggers. I can pick up various attachments (such as an M10 Tank-Destroyer Platoon) for them to keep things interesting. One thing I like about Battlefront's packaging scheme is the ready-made units. You can buy one box or blister and have all the vehicles, soldiers, and guns you need to fill out the unit. You can also buy individual vehicles and infantry groups. One thing that attracted me to the set I chose was that I got three AFVs, a couple of jeeps, and a couple fire teams worth of infantry as well as crew for each of the vehicles.

The vehicle sculpts seem a little fuzzy and there are some big globs that I'll have to carve off, mostly on the bottom where the tracks and wheels glue on. There is plenty of stowage sculpted on, as well as a sprue of accessories like sandbag armor for the front slopes of the M10s. One gripe I have is the way the metal accessories are attached to their sprues with huge tags running the length. On the jeep windshields, for example, the sprue attaches to one full side of the windshield, meaning I'll have to clip it carefully and file the whole thing down. The same goes for the machine guns and stowage. The M20 armored car has a ring mount for the machine gun that is going to be bear to mount as it doesn't match up with the attachment points. I imagine my fingers and that part will spend a little time glued together before it's all done with. I don't see any problems with the crew and infantry figures although the jeep crew figures are attached to a sprue with the same large tags as the machine guns and windshields.


I like the variety of the sculpts. The jeeps are both a little bit different. The stowage in the back is slightly different and one of them has the windshield folded down with some gear tied across it. Looking closely at this jeep just now I noticed that a section of the windshield broke off at some point and wound up stuck to the hood. I don't know what Battlefront's policy on replacing miscast figures is; I guess this is a chance to find out. The extra stowage sprue for the Tank Destroyers is nice. Aside from the ring mount on the armored car the parts appear to fit well.

Overall I'm satisfied with the product. Hopefully I can get the jeep replaced or fix it myself. It should be fun to put the kits together with their stowage and accessories. I like the full-unit-in-a-box packaging, especially when you can get a unit with a nice mix of vehicles and infantry. I haven't worked with resin figures before, so I'm not sure what to use for glue. I'm sure I can search on TMP and figure it out rather quickly. The resin seems to give them a little more heft than plastic, but not as much as metal. I also don't have any paint for the figures, a situation I'll have to remedy at some point.

I finished up my Orc Warboss tonight. I think he turned out pretty well. I will be adding a shield to him at some point, but I haven't got that painted yet. Now I just have to find an agreeable way to prime my figures so I can paint the rest of my 1000-point army.

I've made some more progress on my Warboss, but I think it's about time to close up shop and head to bed. I still have some detail work to do, as well as making the metallics a little more interesting. I'm not sure what color to do the details in. I'm leaning toward red, as I've already got blue, white, and green prominently featured on the mini. I don't think that will make the figure too busy to look at, as the red will just cover the wrappings on the weapon and boots, as well as a wristband. I don't think the boots were meant to have fur on them but I was able to paint the bunched up cloth to convincingly mirror the wolf-head cloak. I guess that's about all for tonight.

I've been working very slowly on my Orc Warboss. His cloak is done, so I'll probably be moving on to various parts of his weapons and armor. In the background you can see some of my Savage Orcs. The darker ones were stained black in my gesso experiment. On the Warboss I decided to go with white fur on the cloak to bring out a good contrast with the skin. I want the Warboss to stand out from the rest of his unit.

The other day I went to the Cycle Gear shop to look at helmets and jackets. I didn't really find anything I liked, but there is a Yamaha dealership next door and I figured I'd go and look at bikes since I still had a few minutes before work. I hadn't really ever stopped at that place before, as Yamaha doesn't really make starter bikes and their sportbikes are way out of my price range. But, as I was perusing the used bike selection I saw a 2004 Yamaha FZ1 with only 2800 miles on the odometer priced right around what a new Buell Blast would cost. I wasn't planning on buying a bike until next month as I don't even have my license and technically can't ride it yet, but I went home and looked at insurance rates and bike reviews and decided at least go in and see if a deal could be made. Long story short, I bought the bike and they threw in a free helmet and some gloves. The picture isn't very good, but here it is:

It's a pretty crazy bike. It's so big and powerful (140 Horsepower!) that I am actually kind of nervous to ride it, so I'll probably wait until I've finished my STAR safety course, which is an entire month away.

I haven't got a lot more done on my Orcs and Goblins. I generally work on figures while watching a movie, and I haven't watched any movies in the last couple of days.

Today was a pretty interesting day. Earlier this week I heard some ads on the radio for the 2008 Bodybuilding.com Boise Fitness Expo with special guests Jay Cutler (the current Mr. Olympia) and Bill Romanowski (a former Denver Broncos football player). Although I am a scrawny guy with almost no motivation for working out, I do have a small fascination with the world of bodybuilding and I was curious to see how big Jay Cutler is in real life. I also thought it would be pretty neat to get Bill Romanowski's autograph, as I am a fairly die-hard Broncos fan. The event was held in a local concert house, which was extremely cramped and poorly lit. It took almost an hour to get in the doors and then another hour or so just to find out where Jay Cutler was so I could get a picture with him and an autograph. He's not very tall, but the muscles certainly live up to the hype. His biceps and shoulders look like volleyballs. As the place was not lit well and my wife was taking the photo with my cell phone the photo is not very good, but here it is:

We fought the crowd for a little while longer trying to find Romanowski's table, but we couldn't see it and eventually gave up. At least the admission was free. I hope that if they do the event again next year they spring for a larger venue with better organization. If the cost of renting the place is an issue for them I wouldn't mind paying a reasonable admission fee if it meant avoiding the hassles of this year's event. I posted my review on the Bodybuilding.com forum and immediately got flamed by some dude from Texas, so we'll see if my suggestions are received well by the actual event organizers.

In more traditional nerdy news, I went to the local Wal-Mart today to buy some dog food and noticed that they had packs of the new WoW TCG set on display. In the hopes of pulling a loot card for an in-game item I bought a couple packs of them. I was feeling buyer's remorse even before I paid for them, but for once it was unfounded. In the second pack I found a Personal Weather Maker Loot Card, which is redeemable for an in-game item that creates a little randomized storm cloud/sun/snowstorm animation over your character's head. So that's pretty cool. It doesn't really affect your character's stats at all, but it's a cool status item to have.

Well, I'll just start out by saying that I haven't accomplished a single thing on the hobby front. Painting toy soldiers just hasn't been high on my list of things to do lately. I've been paying a lot of attention to the start of the baseball season and trying to finish out the Fantasy Basketball season on a high note. Other than that, I've been trying to do more work around the house. So far that is going well. The wife is happy about it, and when she's happy she starts baking pies for me and who can really argue with the housework = pie equation? I suspect that she'd bake me a pie even if I didn't lift a finger, but at least I feel good about myself for pulling my weight a little more than usual.

Yesterday we went in and had the second ultrasound of the kid. It's gone from 11mm to 26 mm in length, so that's pretty cool. It still looks like my wife's side of the family, though, with it's large head and reptilian tail. I realize that it looks like a blob of static encased in another blob of static, but I'm still going to post the photo, with illegible labels as is my custom.


Since I haven't been in the mood to paint miniatures, I restarted my World of Warcraft account. I've been spending a lot of time in the PvP battlegrounds trying to gain Honor Points so I can buy a full matching set of armor. I got my bracers today, and am about 1/3 of the way to getting my boots. Only 94,858 Honor Points to go. In other WoW news, my wife and I have possibly found a guild to join. I was browsing around the internet and found a group of other LDS gamers who play the various MMORPGs on the market. They've got a forum and apparently have a real-life get-together every year. We'll see how that pans out. Most of them play Horde, but in response to recent demand they are starting up an Alliance branch to cater to players of both sides. Hopefully we'll have a little more in common with them than we have with past guilds we've joined.

And that's really all the news I've got. It just hasn't been a very exciting couple of weeks aside from the baby pictures.

We went and saw the baby today, or at least we saw something that the nurse said was a baby. To me it looked a lot like an x-ray of a chicken nugget. Since I couldn't make out any of the details I have labeled the photo below as it was explained to me. The good news is that everything seems to be going well.

Edit: On second read, it appears that the red label doesn't appear very well on the photo. The red label says: BABY. So the blob in the red square is the actual baby. The umbilical cord is not actually visible in this picture, but it's in the general area indicated by the blue line. The yolk sack is apparently a food source for the nugget baby until the umbilical cord and the p-word that rhymes with magenta complete the formation process. And that, my friends, is how babby is formed.