Frequent visitors might well have noticed my update rate has dropped off a bit in the past week or two, and I figured I may as well explain myself because there are two reasons, one trivial and one very good.

First, the trivial reason: I formatted my computer. It took me a day or two to back up everything I wanted backed up, and another few days to actually get all of the essentials back onto the machine. Without something like photoshop, scaling pictures down to a reasonable size and working on the site becomes substantially harder, so I focused on getting my machine to 100%.

Second is the much better reason! Whenever I pursue a project that requires any degree of casting, a few people inevitably approach me with the idea of selling copies of my work. My typical answer is always something along the lines of "I'd love to, but I simply don't have the time" due to both family and my legal education. However, this is all about to change.

I've started working with a company located in Forth Worth, Texas, named D6 Hobbies. The company has some great people, quality casting equipment, and excellent materials at its disposal. Accordingly, I've negotiated a deal for them to produce and sell the resin casts of original parts that I send them. Therefore, I'm pleased to announce the creation of...

Warforged Miniatures is the new brand of the resin-cast products I will be offering through D6 Hobbies, with it's own section in the webstore. The first product I'm happy to offer, by popular demand, are my Heavy Automatic Cannons, available for purchase individually or in sets of four. Nozeminer joins me in this endeavor with his own, unique brand of miniature bitz, offered under the moniker of "Nozeminer Studios". Those of you who browse The Warforge regularly know that I sometimes outsource sculpting projects to Nozeminer, and to say that his sculpting talents are amazing is an understatement. He's put up a selection of useful bitz for all sorts of 28mm miniatures: Peaked Officer Caps, Savage Voodoo Masks, and Abhuman Gas Masks. We're going to have fully-painted pictures of our products in the next few days, and D6 Hobbies is restocking constantly.

The greater the support D6 Hobbies receives as it starts up these casting endeavors, the easier it will be for them to bring additional product up for sale, so please consider supporting their business. In the mean time, I'm brainstorming a couple different projects that will be decent products for both hobbyists and collectors alike.

A lot of the time, when I get e-mails or comments from people, they chuck in a request asking me to show them my whole ork army together. I've thusfar refrained from doing so, largely because I think people would be pretty dissapointed. As it stands right now, I don't even have 1k of painted, playable stuff! I tend to go overboard on building the big or exotic models, and I've completely neglected essential things like troops. I usually get around this by borrowing the store ork army to supplement my lists, or by playing Apocalypse, where I can put a lot of my still-unpainted big stuff on a table and easily reach over 4k+.

Anyway, I figured a video would be easier to show the stuff with than photos, although you have to stomach my incredibly ugly mug a bit!

So I wanted to just throw a few quick things up here.

First and foremost is a big thank-you to the ominously named 'Mr X' over at The-Waaagh.com's forums. This fine fellow caught wind of the fact that I am basically swimming in Assault on Black Reach Orks to paint, and offered to lend a hand from halfway across the country by painting a batch of orks for me in return for unpainted ones to replace them. I might have been a little skeptical at first, as the offer seemed far too good to be true, but lo and behold, Mr X came through with an incredible squad of Orks!

They're busy striking a pose with my Big Boss. The orks are fantastic, and there's even a Nob hidden among them there with an all-too-helpful Power Klaw. Thanks, X!

On an unrelated note, some of you may have noticed that I sort've threw my 'make infantry' plan to the wind. After enough people talked to me about it, I figured starting more projects was probably the wrong approach, because that invariably leads to me just piling more onto my half-finished backlog. Instead, I've started trying to tie up some loose ends. First and foremost is the Stormboyz project, as a lot of you have expressed interest in seeing at least the first ten done and finished. I've also gone ahead and primed my 'Ard boyz using an old Games Workshop Boltgun Metal spray that I dug out of my basement, so I expect them to be the next project that gets painted and finished after the Stormz. I have no idea what comes after that, though if I had to guess it'd probably be my loota mobs so I can get them reassembled and on the table.

I recently got some Ork Pirate Heads and Big Post-Apocalyptic Guns from Maxmini.eu. I've got to say, the quality of the heads is fantastic. There's no mold lines or flaws that need any sort of attention. The Big Guns that I got are a bit wonky - some flash in some weird places, and a bit of cleanup will be required on them. All told, though, I'm pretty thrilled with the quality of product they're putting out, as it makes my life about a thousand times easier. Once I've caught up some on my backlog, I'd really like to take the guns and heads and some nob bodies and make myself some proper pirate-themed Flash Gitz.

I've finally finished organizing my terrible disaster in my basement. I'll take some photos a bit later once I have everything cleaned up and presentable!

Hello! I am alive. It's been a while!

Judging from the e-mails I've been getting, a lot of you were wondering what the hell happened. The Warforge was temporarily 'closed' for a few months as a corollary to the increasing difficulty of the material I was getting put up against in law school. Accordingly, the site's been unupdated for at least two months, and for that I sincerely apologize.

Additionally, our previous web provider, Powweb.com, threw a monkey wrench in the whole site when they decided to delete the entire web site on the grounds that we were in 'violation' of their Terms of Service. As you can imagine, I was in contact with them pretty much immediately, and over the course of the next week I discovered a few things. Powweb outsources their support to india. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, what it means is that nobody you talk to on their '24/7 support' team has any idea how to fix anything, or why anything has happened, ever. They could not give me a straight answer as to what files on my account were in violation of their Terms of Service, other than the amorphous 'anything unrelated to your web site', which apparently was everything.Good call, Powweb. That's one way of eliminating a customer who has been with you for three years.

Eventually, I got a full refund from Powweb, but they refused to furnish all of the files they deleted. I've been piecing The Warforge back together little by little, and I think I've got everything back the way it should be. If you spot any broken or missing images or posts, please let me know immediately!

With school finished, and the Powweb crisis averted, I'm just about ready to settle in and get back to updating the site. However, I got bit by the spring cleaning bug yesterday, and promptly dumped every single piece of miniature-related paraphenalia out on a single table so that I could get to the herculean task of organizing everything properly. It's going to take a while, because...

... this is about half of the stuff I have to organize.

I expect this to take the better part of a week, as I'm also going to be building myself a workbench so I don't end up inadvertently wrecking furniture while dremelling/drilling/maiming things.

With all that said, I arrive at one last point.

I have a ton of stuff that's unfinished in my projects, obviously. Anyone who has been here before can tell at a glance that I am very ADD about seeing projects through to completion. Because of that, I have a giant pile of unfinished, unpainted stuff. I also have hardly any infantry in my ork army, as I usually don't have the patience to put together a billion rank-and-file boyz. I've resolved on an approach to the hobby for this summer that will hopefully make a fair bit of sense and solve both problems.

First, I'm going to avoid starting anything new, unless I get seriously inspired on a large project like one of the new Stompa kits. Since I am not currently inclined to dredge up a cheap source of Stompa parts, I doubt that'll be a problem.

Second, I'm going to be pretending that everything I have thusfar does not exist, and starting 'fresh', as it were. This means I'm going to make two troops choices (read: piles of boyz) and go from there, in order to develop a proper, playable army list, as opposed to my current 'here's 20 boyz and nine armored targets' lists. As I build this 'new' ork army, I will invariably need things I have already built, such as a Warboss or Stormboyz. As I do this, if I need something that is already finished, it will simply be added to the army. If I need something that is not already finished, but is part of an existing, unfinished project (such as my stormboyz, zagstruk, bikers, and so on), I will finish said projects. This will hopefully allow me to develop a proper ork army and clear out my backlog over the summer months.

Hopefully, this will work as well as I have pictured in my head. What this means most importantly is that once I am done sorting through my monstrous piles of crap/bitz/parts, I'm going to settle down and work on something along the lines of 40 boyz.

Wish me luck!

On Jan 31st of this year, I placed an order with Forgeworld for one of their small squiggoths (as opposed to the Gargantuan ones, which I already have two of ). It took almost four weeks, but it finally arrived today, and I'm excited!

A few things struck me about the kit right off the bat. First, the squiggoth is much smaller than I was expecting. My initial reason for ordering it was to use it as a 'Counts-As' battlewagon - I figured with a bit of work to the howdah, you could easily pass the thing off as a battlewagon with various upgrades, and it would be a fun and entertaining thing to see on the field. However, I'm a bit surprised to find that the squiggoth is hardly larger than one of the new ork trukks! I think I might have misjudged scale a tiny bit based on how ridiculously huge the Gargantuan model Forgeworld makes is. Knowing its actual size, I probably would have waited and bought one of the new Warhammer Fantasy Lizardmen Stegadons instead. That said, however, it looks to be an exceptionally nice kit.

This is actually the first Forgeworld kit I've seen that provides any sort of options as to how you want the model to look, which I found quite surprising. The iron gob for the head seems completely optional, and extra tusks are even included if you decide you want to leave it off. Likewise, there seem to be two options for the 'tail' weapon, both of which are represented by choppy flail bits. Although the legs are separate, it does not look as though the kit is intended to be easily reposed due to the armored plating and chain details.

There is a notable absence of included weapon with this kit, which Forgeworld makes clear up-front on their web site. However, I think the addition of at least a kannon or other big gun would have been very welcome, given the model's price tag and relative size.

Here's the squiggoth's main torso alongside one of my trukks for comparison:

Given this relative scale, it's pretty clear my initial goal of creating a "squig-wagon" is not going to be doable, as the squiggoth is just too weedy to measure up to the required size. A bit of creative howdah construction could probably provide something to carry 20 boyz, but it's a stretch. I've been scratching my head as to what I could possibly use the model for at this point, and come up with a few ideas. Most obviously, I could make it a counts-as Trukk, as it's just about the size required. However, a few problems crop up when you try and count it as an AV 10 vehicle that can move 18". The squiggoth is arguably more armored than the trukk kit itself, and given it's size I don't think it fits the rules very well.

Instead, I've been giving some thought to tooling it out as a 'looted wagon', which I think fits the profile much better. With a higher AV, a slightly smaller transport capacity, and the ability to haul big guns, it seems an apt fit. It's even better if you consider the 'Don't Press Dat!' roll looted vehicles are required to make - rather than the vehicle breaking down or careening off, it could represent the Sqiuggoth being ornery and breaking loose from the commands of it's handlers. The mean gob on the squiggoth can probably be used to represent a wrecking ball, reinforced ram, or perhaps even a grabbin' klaw if you can picture the squiggoth snatching things in it's maw. I think this is most likely what I'm going to end up doing with it, though I will also admit the idea makes me want a couple more!

I took a photo of this Squiggoth with one of my Gargantuans for further scale comparison.

I've been looking into new ways to add content to the site, and I thought it might be good to expand with a reviews section where I could cover products and the likes. After having it up for a day or two, and with a bit more consideration, I don't think I'll be keeping it - it's probably better for me to focus my efforts on more useful facets of the hobby. I could probably go on at length about how a kit like GW's new drop pod fits together, or whether Forgeworld's products are well-cast, but in the long run it imposes a bigger responsibility on my time to properly and thoroughly photograph and document a product for review. I think when I have the occasional praise or scorn to heap upon something, I'll just do it on the front page.

Spring Break rapidly approaches, and I've been developing plans for a folding 4x6 gaming table that can be easily transported and stored. I've worked up a rough model in google sketchup that should assist me in making the required measurements. I'm looking forward to starting construction sometime in the next week, and hoping that I'll be able to thoroughly document the project, both with video and photography, so that the concept might be shared.

Not exactly earth-shattering news, but I've gone ahead and added a 'FAQ' section to the site to address some of the more common e-mails I've been getting. The ones there so far are just a rough framework - I will attempt to flesh them out further in the coming days. By all means, feel free to still e-mail me if you have something that isn't covered (or covered well) by that list.

After getting a couple e-mails about my screwed-up thumbnailing, I've fixed a couple posts in the Biker Warboss project - apparently case sensitivity matters enough that .JPG and .jpg are not equivalent for most browsers. Thanks for letting me know it wasn't working, all of you, and if you spot any other trouble on the site please be sure to let me know so I can set about correcting it immediately.

So yesterday's BIG GAMING EVENT was a bit of a wash. After a fair bit of built-up and anticipation (not to mention buying an absolutely inhuman amount of liquor), I ended up with only two guests for my Paintaplayadrinkathon, who themselves did not bring armies to play with because they came from a long ways away. Because of that, no gaming was had, though we did play around with painting a couple orks. It's fair to say I'm a bit dissapointed in the outcome (of the event, not the painting) but I suppose I'll just have to try again, given the ridiculous amount of booze still claiming the real estate in my fridge.

I talked to my buddy Zach the day before the event, and he and I banged out a handy little tool for my iPhone that I'd like to share. We're tentatively calling it 'DICEHAMMER' for now, and you can see it by clicking here. It is designed to fit comfortably on the screen of the iphone's browser, and to make a horde army player's life immesurably easier. A quick breakdown of what it can do currently:

• 'FILTER' function allows you to sort dice into winning and losing categories, which are displayed at the bottom in the Total readout. For example, applying a filter of 5+ will report, at the bottom, how many dice that were just rolled successfully passed that test, and how many failed.
• 'REROLL' function is available if you have a filter selected; it will automatically reroll any dice that fall into the selected category before reporting the totals at the bottom.
• 'QUICK DICE' function is for those times that you have to roll fairly common things, but don't want to go through the hassle of adjusting the 'AMOUNT OF DICE' readout at the top of the screen.
• The totals readout displays the results by number, so you can still tell fairly easily if you rolled a 1 for overheating or a 6 for rending. Additionally, the TOTAL field will sum up all of the dice rolled, as well as how many were successful or failed if you have a filter on.
• 'USE PREVIOUS SELECTED RESULTS' button allows you to quickly change the 'Amount of Dice' field to however many dice successfully passed the filter last roll. You can also select and deselect values at the bottom by tapping on the white space beneath the 1's.. 2's.. 3's.. readout - green means that the 'USE PREVIOUS SELECTED RESULTS' button will take that # of dice and add it to the Amount of Dice to Roll total.

That last one is best illustrated by an example:

You roll 9 dice with a 4+ filter. The readout is as follows:
1's: 2
2's: 1
3's: 1
4's: 0
5's: 3
6's: 2
TOTAL: 34 (5 Pass, 4 Fail)

34 is the sum of all of the dice rolled. The 4's, 5's, and 6's category is made green (and therefore, selected) because you just rolled a 4+ filter. If you were to hit 'USE PREVIOUS SELECTED RESULTS' right then, it would change your Amount of Dice from 9 to 5. If, however, you were to also tap the 1 beneath the 3's column and turn that green before you hit the Previous Selected Result button, it would make your Amount of Dice number 6; the number of dice in the selected columns. By setting it up like this, you can easily switch from acquiring dice for hits (for things like shooting) to acquiring dice for saves.

Anyway, the page itself should be a huge timesaver for anyone who runs an actual horde army (30-boy ork squads). We're going to work on expanding the functionality further via a couple different menus, with things such as scatter dice and generating deployment.

A last little note. I just got an e-mail from one of my readers letting me know that my previously stated goal of trying to get my Stompa into CoolMiniOrNot's Top Last 7 Days section came true. Needless to say, I am beaming with vanity and pride over here. Thanks, guys.

Wee bit of dissapointing news was just delivered upon me. Apparently Gamesday Baltimore falls right on May 9th this year, which is right in the thick of my final exam season at law school. I'm really distressed by this, because I was looking forward to making my way down to that wonderous event and maybe entering some more stuff into the Daemons (with very little hopes of actually winning, granted).

I honestly am not quite sure why GW's picking these weird dates for their events, aside from maybe they were able to get space at an affordable rate for such dates. Most people I know (college and graduate school) have exams or, even more, classes, during that window. They've sort've cut their prospective audience down to very young kids who can get away with taking a random weekend off from their normal school, and those who are out of school and can make their own schedules. I sort've think a large portion of the hobbyist demographic is somewhere around my age, though I know there's obviously people much older and much younger that participate. Still, it seems like a bizarre bit of timing - last year, it fell on Father's Day, and this year they've decided to push it all the way forward to Mother's day.

I do crave a bit of wargaming-event-related goodness, though. I may look at going to GD Chicago, if I can come up with something that might be worthy of entry. Alternatively, I may try and make my way to PAX this year, as I'm told there's at least some good Warhammer stuff going on. I'm sure there's other conventions like Adepticon that are going on that I don't know much about - I'd be interested in hearing, particularly if they're not an ungodly distance away.

I realize a lot of my projects are in some sort of unholy limbo at the moment. Fear not, likely intermittent reader, for I shall win out over the forces of distraction and education and eventually complete said works. I have my Torts final exam on the 17th of Jan (thanks to a snow delay that pushed the exam back a whole entire goddamned month) which is consuming a lot of my free time, and atop that my Paintaplayadrinkathon requires a great deal of preparation (oh god I am sick removing mold lines from Black Reach Orks).

I've purchased two new nobz boxes, two stormboyz boxes, and one of the new Battlewagon kits, but I am resolved not to work on any of that until I finish up at least my ork bikers (including the boss) and my currently-unfinished Salamanders projects (vulkan, dreadnought, etc). I will try my best, though truth be told once I see that battlewagon kit I may just get carried away. I've been harshly missing my old battlewagon that got sold off, and brainstorming how I might remake its design with the new kit - a sort of updated version, if you will.

Likewise, I'm going to try to update the site more, at least after my exam is over on Saturday. I've invited my friends, Brian and Mike, to give me a hand with the site by contributing the occasional article for the site. Once they get around to putting some together for me, I'll throw them up in their own section. They've got a wealth of gaming (and drinking!) knowledge that I am certain will together provide some enjoyable wargaming content.

My father's just recently bought a rather neat video camera from Microcenter for around 300 dollars. I played around with it briefly, and I was actually really impressed. It records at a good resolution, and most importantly, it has a terriffic macro function; I could very easily record video of the fine print on a receiptI can't remember the brand and make of it off the top of my head, but when I find out I'll try and make an effort to post it. In any event, I mention this because I am probably going to 'borrow' it in the next month or so to try and put together the tutorials that I keep putting off. I've been neglecting doing such tutorials (for example, lighting a rhino) because I didn't have the video hardware to do it with, but now I have no excuse. I prefer to do such things with videos, largely because I find it simpler than taking hundreds of pictures, sorting them, typing up an article, and so on. Plus, it's a bit more intuitive to learn by watching, rather than learn by reading. For now, my father's gone on a two-week long cruise and taken the camera with him, so I have to wait a little bit regardless.

I will take plenty of pictures of Sunday's festivities, and they should be up sometime on Monday. I told my folks I was going to end up needing to buy alcohol for it, and in their unending generosity they dropped off what must have been enough booze to down a herd of elephants. I hardly have room in my fridge for food right now. It promises to be an entertaining weekend.

Lastly, a bit of vanity: The Gargant and my Waaaghboss have both been uploaded to CoolMiniOrNot. Vote them up (if you like 'em, at least)! I want to see if once in my life I might be able to make the 'Top Last 7 Days' category on their site.

So, seeing as I have a bit of time off from the labors of law school, and GW has seen fit to dump all sorts of new Orky eye-candy on us, I thought I might discuss some of it, as well as a few things for the site.

The first and most obvious thing to talk about is GW's new Stompa Kit. I assume you've all seen this already, as its shot around the internet from sources like Dakkadakka, Warseer, and Bell of Lost Souls, but I may as well provide the pictures myself:

My first impression with this kit was a bit of dissapointed sighing, but after a day to look it over some more and properly evaluate things, I think I'm pretty happy.

A lot of folks that have complaints with this model argue that it's basically a bucket upside-down, with armor plating. I'm going to go ahead and agree with this sentiment. However, that does not necessarily mean that the model's not any good; this stompa both simplifies constuction for the experienced converter, and opens up an entirely new option to those players who fear or are unable to convert at all.

I think the old Armorcast gargants had a bit more charm than these new ones. That said, this is not bad - it fits the new ork aesthetic a bit better, as GW's been slowly redirecting the race from comic relief to brutal barbarism. Being a recently new player myself (I came in towards the end of 4th edition) I don't necessarily have a problem with that - it's still charming in it's own way, with the grots hanging off all over.

The gun arm is a bit of a letdown. I can see I'm going to end up leaving that off and chopping the weapons up for other projects. As-is, it's just too flimsy and insubstantial to make me fall in love with it. Same goes for the other arm, really; though I love the chainsaw/rippy part, the arm leading to it is much more fragile looking than one might expect from an ork construct.

On the flipside, I am pretty happy with the scale. Judging by the ork in the photo, the Stompa stands about ten inches tall to the top of the exhaust stack - almost exactly the height of my own Stompa. The difference here is obvious, though, in that GW's kit looks like it has a transport capacity of twenty, whereas mine leaves one scratching their head. When I do actually put orks inside my stompa, I just try and explain that they're not inside, but running at it's feet and using it as a shield or cover. Anyway, I'm getting off on a tangent...

After deliberating it a bit, I think I'm bound to at least pick up one of these kits. I've been wanting a Big Mek Stompa to go with my existing one, and it seems like this would be a decent base to work off of. The arms are ridiculously thin for an ork warmachine, but if you're using the above chassis to make a Big Mek variant, you're going to end up making new ones anyway. This means I should have a chance to make a suitably beefy head and new set of arms for this body, to give it a bit more of a proper appearance.

The above is all mentioned without any knowledge of what the Stompa box actually contains. It could be that there's a couple different variant heads, arms, and so forth in there, which would facilitate construction of something like a Big Mek Stompa much easier. From what I understand, there is at least one variant belly plate which has a giant ork glyph across it, similar to the ones in the first Apocalypse book.

Basically, what I am trying to suggest to those of you considering this kit is that it's worth buying, even if you don't like the model itself, because invariably everything will find a use, and it is a huge time-saver over making your own stompa chassis. Personally, I'm going to be looking at my purchase as a way of encouraging GW to do more orks or gargantuan warmachines for apocalypse, because let's be honest, aren't they the most fun?

The other new ork kits look rather interesting. I find myself pining to have my old Battlewagon back, and fortunately enough, the new kit coming out looks like an ideal way to make a MK2 version of the original. It shares a similar design - the blunt front end with plow, the top-mounted turret, the big 'ol carryin' bed in the back, and the half-track driving mechanism. I think with a bit of work, I should be able to make a pretty reasonable facimile of my first wagon out of one of these new kits. Gargrim's been asking for a fancy ride, anyway.

I very much like the new Badrukk and Snikrot models, but I will probably be making my own versions of these, just because I like having unique-ish characters. Once I get through my bikers to a satisfying degree, I'll probably make a start on Flash Gitz and a Badrukk stand-in. I haven't thought of a name for him yet, but I do have some rough character concept ideas.

Speaking of bikers... I have to throw this up here, because it is impossibly cool. My Biker Warboss, Zanzag, is nearing completion, thanks to the commissioned help of the talented Nozeminer from The-Waaagh.com's forums. Some of you may recall his work from my earlier Big Boss project; he was primarily responsible for smoothing out and bulking up all that beautiful musculature on the miniature overtop the Privateer Press Dire Troll Mauler model. I have updated the blog entry for the Bikerboss with his latest sculpting work, and it is out of this world. It's really just not fair that he's that good at sculpting!

As far as my current projects go... well, right now, I'm using the winter break as something of a 'preparation' period. I'm keeping myself busy by despruing and removing mold lines from all the Space Marines I have that are going to be Salamanders, as well as the hundreds of Assault on Black Reach orks that I hope to work on painting during my aforementioned Paintathon event. Basically, I am setting everything up right now so that when I do have my short bits of free time throughout the next semester, I'll be able to bang out some serious work.

Before the winter break is over, though, I do hope to get one or two more video tutorials done and posted for the site. Right now, I'm hoping to do a 'styrene 101' tutorial which will demonstrate how to cut, handle, manipulate, glue, and obtain the magical substance known as plasticard. Also, if I manage to get my hands on a rhino chassis and some electrical equipment, I want to put up a tutorial on how to light a vehicle from start to finish. I don't have to go back to school 'till the 10th, so with any luck I may be able to get some good guides done!

I'll toss more up here later. For now, happy holidays everyone!