Ohh…. Shiney!!! … strikes again…

As I have mentioned before, I have an extreme case of ‘Shiney’ syndrome and as of yet there is no cure but the effects can be subsided for a time by purchasing the object that you are drawn too. On Thursday, I was at the game store for our monthly club meeting and I picked up the new Skaven Army book. It was at that point that all hope was lost and I picked up a box of the new Clanrats before I left that night. Then last night on my way home form work, I picked up the new Skaven battalion box. Hopefully this will curb the ‘Shiney’ tendencies for a while and it provides a nice Core to the new army. I’ve been trying to get more involved with the local gaming community and we now have several Warhammer Fantasy players at the store so I thought it a good time to startup a WHFB army.

A couple of years ago, I purchased the Orcs & Goblins book and was looking forward to running the Grimgore Ironhide’s army list that allowed the player the use Black Orcs as Core units; basically, like running a Deathwing army in WH40k. So I purchased sixty of the new plastic Black Orc models and commissioned a friend to paint them for me. He did a fantastic job on the models but I was informed that that list was nullified and that I couldn’t use it anymore. So here I was having invested a large chunk of money on an army that I couldn’t use unless I spent more money on purchasing/painting up regular Orc boys. I made the decision to not get anything else for that army because I lost my enthusiasm for playing them.

Now a couple of years later, the Skaven are released and I feel the desire to start a Fantasy army again. The Skaven have always fascinated me, my buddy down in Austin runs them and he always seems to have fun while playing them. So with his guidance, I have begun painting the first box of Clanrats and so far they are going pretty well. My two test models turned out well and I was able to refine my painting style enough to where I think I can paint the basic troops quicker that before. The technique relies heavily on drybrushing and layering ad so far seems to be going well. I’ve got three more in progress to give me the first five models and then I’ll try a bigger batch over the holiday weekend.

I’m still playing in the local WH40k campaign and now that I’m off-call for the next two weeks, I’m hoping to get in some games this weekend. I’ll keep you posted on my progress and hopefully I’ll win some games this week.

On a different note, I think I have a solution to my light-tent issue. I located a vendor that has a light-tent combo kit available and it includes everything I’ll need to get started with. The EZ Cube site even has a package geared towards miniature and model photography which includes two table top lamps and some acrylic risers for setting your models on. Here is the link to their site and the specific combo that I mentioned: http://store.tabletopstudio-store.com/miphkit.html

Well, I hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving holiday and doesn’t get too stuffed over the weekend.