Hey everybody, The other day, I talked a bit about the latest news from Atomic Mass Games following Adepticon at the end of March. As it turned out, there wasn’t really a tremendous amount of new stuff announced there, although what they did announce was very exciting! For Games Workshop, however, we have a whole slew of stuff, including the formal announcement for 11th edition of Warhammer 40,000!
Warhammer Underworlds has a new warband for Lumineth Realmlords, which looks about as stunning as you’d expect, and there is a battle box for Age of Sigmar featuring the Skaven vs Cities of Sigmar. Cities of Sigmar are getting some very interesting things in the shape of the Cogforts, massive moving siege-tower structures that look beautiful in the grand tradition of diorama-models. It’s something I adore about AoS stuff, the way they have these massive models that have so much going on – the Ossiarch Bonereaper catapult has always been a great case in point for me.
A new box is coming for Kill Team, featuring Imperial Guard vs The Red Terror. This is quite interesting as we have a kill team going up against a single large model. The Red Terror of course is an old finecast Tyranids model that was removed from the range a while back; seeing the new version is really something – and I’m a sucker for a broken pillar on a base!
However, the big news, of course, is 11th edition!
Our three years for 10th edition is up, and this June we’ll be getting a launch box featuring Space Marines (of course) going up against Orks, with the Battle for Armageddon being the narrative here. The Space Marines, however, are painted as Blood Angels, and after almost ten years of Primaris Marines and Mark X power armour, the big talking point here is how they’re now mixing marks of armour, with the poster-child having a Mark VII helmet. I’m sure you can feel how underwhelmed I am.
In terms of the edition overall, it sounds more like the move from 8th to 9th in that the codex won’t be immediately invalid – which straightaway makes me think if 12th edition in 2029 will be another new re-set, and all even-numbered editions from here on will be handled in this way. 10th edition codexes have usually had 5-6 detachments in them, which shape how you build your army, and it seems like 11th is going to launch with more, as the new thing here is being able to blend detachments within a single army.
The detachments you use will feed into how the mission works, and there is a lot of talk about you’re trying to hold locations or relics rather than standard objective tokens, but I’ve been removed from 10th edition to the point where I’m not sure how this currently works, to know the differences. I’m interested to see if this means the mission card deck that was perpetually sold out whenever I looked (and so, by and large, prevented me from being able to actually play) will be gone. I’m also intrigued by the terrain rules they mention, as apparently terrain will impact the roll to hit, not the save roll, so it’s definitely something to keep an eye on.
11th edition is allegedly “groundbreaking” (aren’t they all?) but I am cautiously optimistic that this could see the return of my Necrons, Dark Eldar and Genestealer Cults to the table. I’ve sold off every other army I owned, so I don’t think my coverage here on the blog will be as extensive as it was in 2023, but I’m certainly going to be keeping my eyes on this…
Hey everybody, Earlier this week, I finished reading Brandon Sanderson’s Words of Radiance, the second novel in his Stormlight Archive series. Whereas the first book in the series, The Way of Kings, took me about two months to read, I breezed through this one in slightly under one month. It is an absolutely incredible book, and there aren’t the stars to rate it highly enough.
It takes place a few weeks after book one, with Kaladin and his bridge crew firmly in place as Dalinar Kholin’s guard. Whereas the first book principally followed Kaladin, with numerous flashback scenes to build him as a character, this book is definitely Shallan Davar’s book, as we get to delve deeply into her past. The last book ended with the king’s sister, Jasnah Kholin, taking Shallan as her ward and explaining her theories about the return of the Voidbringers and the coming Desolation. The two women are travelling to the Shattered Plains, where they believe the mythical city of Urithiru is located that will help them in their mission. However, their boat is attacked and Jasnah is killed.
The Way of Kings did an extremely good job of setting up the world of Roshar, and the various factions and power struggles. All of this is now allowed to simmer in Words of Radiance, and the world broadens out into an even richer tapestry. Through Shallan’s research, we get to learn more about the mythical past of the Voidbringers and the Knights Radiant – much like in the first novel, the book’s title is reference to another in-universe book, which gives Shallan an understanding of the ten different Orders within the Knights Radiant. Shallan is able to arrive at the Shattered Plains following Jasnah’s assassination, having met up with a mercenary named Tyn who was working for the Ghostbloods, an organization also searching for Urithiru but who had ordered the hit on Jasnah. Shallan infiltrates the organization, while also continuing her research, while also pursuing her betrothal to Dalinar’s son Adolin.
Shallan convinces Adolin to allow her to accompany a plateau assault, however Dalinar’s mechanical bridges are sabotaged by agents of the rival highprince Sadeas, and while Adolin was able to rescue his father, Shallan and Kaladin find themselves trapped in a chasm. Neither wishes to expose themselves to the other as able to use stormlight, however when they are hunted by one of the chasm-fiends, Shallan is forced to summon her shardblade and passes it to Kaladin to battle the beast. Kaladin is able to defeat it but is gravely injured in the process, and his connection to the spren, Syl, appears to have vanished.
As a result, Kaladin is forced to sit out Dalinar’s combined all-out assault on the Parshendi, which launches following the last highstorm of the season, before the period of continual rain known as the Weeping. Shallan accompanies the army, as Dalinar is now convinced that her work to find Urithiru is important and ties into his visions and the command to bring about the return of the Knights Radiant. When they find themselves in the centre of the Shattered Plains, they find a Parshendi army with glowing red eyes – the Voidbringers, returned! The Parshendi out on the plateaus are chanting to bring about the Everstorm, a massive highstorm that is blowing the wrong way, west to east.
At the climax of the novel, the mystical elements come out in full force as the Stormfather creates a highstorm to wash away the debris of this Everstorm, and the two clash over the Shattered Plains. Shallan is able to not only find the Oathgate to Urithiru but also brings as many soldiers as possible through, while Kaladin speaks the words to restore his link with Syl and becomes a full-on Radiant, taking on the king’s assassin Szeth in battle high above the clouds. As we’ve learned more about Szeth, we have discovered the reason for his exile was due to his belief that the Knights Radiant and the Voidbringers were returning; realizing that he was right all along, he essentially abandons the fight and Kaladin severs his arm holding the shardblade. With the Parshendi routed, the majority of the Alethi army has moved from the warcamps through to Urithiru, though they are acutely aware that it is only Shallan who can operate the Oathgate. However, when Kaladin travels through and his true nature as a Radiant is revealed, things begin to look up. Dalinar confronts the Stormfather over his visions, and he too becomes a Radiant, as does his second son Renarin. With Dalinar’s position secured, Adolin discovers Sadeas scouting the city as well, and realises that the highprince is still determined to undermine his father; he attacks and kills Sadeas, reclaiming his father’s shardblade.
In the epilogue, Szeth has survived his fall and he is met by another Herald, who offers him a second chance. And finally, Jasnah reappears and is ready for the fight against the Voidbringers, as news of Parshmen all across the world are being re-awakened by the Everstorm into their Voidbringer form…
There is so much that takes place in this book, that summary is just hopeless at trying to convey the epic sweep of the story. I said before that I didn’t have a rating high enough for it, and that’s so very true – I really enjoyed The Way of Kings, despite the fact that it does sometimes feel a bit plodding because it has an enormous task of setting up the world. However, Words of Radiance grabs you by the throat almost from the very start, and it drags you along through a whirlwind.
The book is Shallan’s, insofar as we have her backstory here that leads up to when we first met her on that boat, seeking to become Jasnah’s ward. Maybe that’s why I enjoyed this one so much, because she was by far my favourite character from the previous book. Here, she undergoes so much character development that it’s a real joy to behold, and there were many times where I was pretty much cheering to see how things were turning out for her. That’s not to say that she has it easy, but the storyline feels very natural and evolving, and aside from maybe the ease with which she is accepted into the warcamp of highprince Sebarial when she arrives at the Shattered Plains, I think everything she does, she earns.
Indeed, I have very few complaints about this book. Maybe it was a bit convenient how Sebarial seemed to just take her in, going along with her story a bit, but as part of the continual political games of the highprinces, and attempts to one-up each other, maybe it’s not entirely farfetched. My only other complaint is how the characters talk about the mythical past, with references to the Heralds, the Recreance, the Desolation and all the rest of it, and I find it all a bit confusing at times. These references are made sort of in-universe, so characters talking about them don’t launch into exposition for the audience, but it all feels like natural conversations. However, I found myself wanting some kind of timeline to work out what they’re talking about, but I haven’t wanted to google anything for fear of spoilers! (I’d already come across a reference to Jasnah seeming to survive her assassination, so didn’t want to know any more!)
I don’t know if Sanderson is some kind of feminist, but I really appreciate the way in which he writes women, particularly in this book. There are several moments where, if this were written by another writer, we’d surely have instances of sexual violence against her. However, Roshar seems to be beyond this, and women are not seen in the same, negative light as we paint them in our own world. As we’ve established in book one, women are the ones who can read and write, and men who can do so are looked down upon, however this naturally leads to the fact that women are engineers, among other things, and fulfil an absolutely critical role in the war effort by the fact that they’re creating new weapons for the army to gain an advantage. There are a couple of moments with Shallan, following her shipwreck, where it seems like she is likely to be attacked, but it’s actually refreshing to take a step back and realise that this is not how Roshar has evolved. She meets with the same slaver who initially held Kaladin in the first book, and while it seems to cross his mind to try to capture her as a slave, this is more because she is a living person who he can make a profit from, and not because she’s a woman and therefore more vulnerable. I’m probably not explaining this all that well, but suffice it to say that Shallan, and even a slightly lesser character like the king’s mother Navani, are depicted as real people with agency, and not simply pawns of the men who surround them.
I’ve missed out a great deal in my attempt to summarise the plot, but there are some real stand-out moments such as Adolin’s four-on-one duel, the plot against the King, and the assassin’s return and the crazy antics of Kaladin, Adolin and in particular, Dalinar, to stop him. We also learn the truth about Shallan’s family, which was particularly poignant. Along the way, we continue to have these interludes, though this time they seem less random – some of the running themes here are the decline of the Parshendi race, and their attempts to fight back through the Everstorm, and also more with Szeth and his remorse. There’s an interesting one with the new character Lift, who is the subject of the novella Edgedancer, which will be up next. We also have one interlude with Taravangian, the king from the first book who was killing people to record their dying words in an attempt to gain knowledge of the coming storm. Taravangian seems like he’s going to be a key player in the future, as he has somehow foreseen the Everstorm and the coming Desolation, and I wonder how that is going to factor into the Knights Radiant and so on.
This post is getting really long here, so I probably need to stop, but suffice it to say that I was so very impressed with this book, I could barely put it down. I think this is attested by the fact that it’s about a hundred pages longer than the first book, yet I read it in less than half the time. There is just so much going on but, as with the previous book, I think that the pacing is really good overall – it never feels rushed, yet so much happens. I really hope that this quality continues, as I’ve already bought the third and fourth books in the series! There will apparently be ten books in the series when it is done, though Sanderson is currently only halfway through, and is currently working on more Mistborn stuff. I think we can’t expect more Stormlight before 2031, which is quite upsetting! Hopefully book five doesn’t end with some kind of cliffhanger! Maybe I’ll just have to start again from book one…
Hey everybody, It’s been a while since I’ve talked about 40k here on the blog, but despite the fact that I’m not really playing, painting, building or buying Warhammer stuff these days, I do still think about it a lot. I suppose it’s not entirely untrue to say that I do actually miss it, as for many years it was a big part of my gaming life!
Recently, we’ve had two somewhat significant waves of model reveals from Games Workshop, and I’ve been pretty impressed with both of them. It’s going to be difficult to resist!
First up, we have the new Eldar Corsairs coming out. These are basically updated from the Forge World sculpts of yore, notably the Skyreavers. These are the things that look a bit like Swooping Hawks (and seem to have a similar battlefield role), though they always struck me as being a little bit goofy in the resin. They are joined by the Starfang, a bit like a Venom from the dark kin, and a new kit for the Vyper, which is a bit like the Craftworld version of a Venom. There are additionally two new characters coming out, Kharseth (using a classic bug-eyed helm) and none other than Prince Yriel himself! All of this is being packaged up in a launch box (alongside the existing Corsair kit), which looks like a fantastic way to get started.
Am I going to get started? Having now sold off my Eldar, I don’t think so. But I absolutely love the look of these models, and am sorely tempted by them!
The second batch of stuff is Chaos Space Marines, and kicked off with the return of Huron Blackheart and the Red Corsairs! These models have been drip-fed to us over the last few weeks now, with the new Mutilators seeing a reveal earlier on in the week.
A lot of this seems to be tied to the current narrative event that is going on, The Maelstrom. For many years now, we’ve had a narrative thing like this at the end of an edition, so it’s pretty safe to say that we’ll be seeing 11th Edition coming out this summer. The last batch of rumours that I’d seen point to a launch box that includes Space Marines vs Orks, and somewhere along the way there will apparently be a Dark Eldar range refresh. I hope that isn’t as extensive as it sounds, because I have a lot of these models and I love them very much. I guess we’ll see, though!
Something that struck me the other day, though, was how I was thinking about the possibility of Grey Knights being scaled up – there’s always been talk of this, I think, since the original Primaris Marines came out. However, the recent reveals also showed new Custodes models, which seem to be slightly taller than the current batch. So it does make me wonder if Grey Knights might actually get that sort of treatment. And if they do? Well, that could be an interesting time…
The Mortal Realms have also seen model reveals, with large numbers of Tzeentch models and Ossiarch Bonereapers being shown off. Yes, the Bonereaper Archers are finally here, along with chariots, new characters, and all sorts of goodies. Typically, this comes out a few months after I sold off my army! I do love the Bonereapers, they were “my lockdown army” and I think I’ll always enjoy seeing them because of that. However, AoS just doesn’t seem to be very well-played around here, so despite the fact that I love the look of it, and the rules seem really interesting, I don’t think I will ever get to play it. Sad faces all round.
All in all, it looks like there continues to be an amazing number of models being produced by Nottingham, and they look stunning. I don’t know if I will ever see the same level of interest as I had during 8th Edition, but I remain cautiously optimistic that the new edition coming this year could lead to some local interest and maybe some more games, even if they’re just small scale. I think the last couple of years have shown that I still have an interest in all of this, but I don’t have the capacity that I used to, so I need to try to tone it down if I want to keep any kind of engagement with the hobby. Of course, this is really hard to do with the way GW almost aggressively try to keep you in their orbit, with all the rules changes and whatnot. A few times when I’ve tried to casually return, I find it almost too impenetrable. Of course, there’s combat patrol, but I’m not interested in playing someone else’s idea of what a list should be, you know?
Hopefully I can find some way to make use of my toys, anyway!
The Silmarillion is one of those books that has quite the Reputation (capital R). It’s like Pelléaset Mélisande, where the snobs try to catch out the noobs by saying how much they enjoy it. Years ago, I bought myself a copy when Harper Collins released it with the same look as my box set of The Lord of the Rings, and around six years ago, I did try to read it.
I say try, because I did abandon it. It’s not technically DNF’d, I’ve very carefully noted on Goodreads which page I’m on so that I could come back to it… but I don’t think that’s incredibly likely now, is it?
See, the thing is, this book is actually pretty good. It’s not written like a story, as such – for all that The Lord of the Rings is dense, it’s still readable prose. The Silmarillion is, in contrast, written like an encyclopaedia. So rather than getting a flowing prose story that details the creation of the Silmarils and the subsequent battles for possession of them, instead we have something not unlike what we’d read if we were to look up Fëanor in an encyclopaedia, and read a sort of bald synopsis of what went down.
I don’t really mind that, because it reminds me of the sort of Greek Myths books that I used to love as a kid. I really enjoyed reading the roughly half of The Silmarillion that I have thus far waded through, and I’m not entirely sure why I put it down and didn’t carry on with it back in the day…
At any rate. This morning, I came across the YouTube video that I linked up at the top of the post, and it was an amazing ride. By giving us the highlights, it’s really raised my level of interest in the stories in this book, and for the first time in a long time, I’m thinking about giving it another try.
In actual fact, I’ve been thinking a lot about reading Tolkien again this year. I’ve only read these books once, in 2002, and back then it was peak-Tolkien because we’d just had The Fellowship of the Ring come out, plus I was in college so had next to no responsibilities and could spend a day just reading if I wanted to. (I actually read Book V of The Lord of the Rings in a single sitting, way back when…)
I’m currently very much on a Brando Sando high, and am really enjoying the second book of his Stormlight Archive series. But Tolkien is definitely there, hovering on the horizon…
Hey everybody, Well, here we are again, at the end of another month – and indeed, another year. At the risk of sounding extremely old here, it does seem to go by faster and faster each year… December, in particular, seems to have gone by in the blink of an eye for me. It really doesn’t seem like five minutes since I was ordering a pile of cards for Star Wars Destiny, and formulating vague plans for my 12 Days of Destiny series, and here we are, already seven days through!
I think that Star Wars Destiny has been the real stand-out for me this month, although I haven’t had all that much to say about it so far. I mean, there’s the aforementioned series of posts, though it’s all a bit low-key at the moment, as I’m still plotting my first “real” game with it. I’d made some plans to get together with JP and run through some decks the other day, but due to illnesses we had to postpone that. Hopefully in the new year, then, I’ll be able to get some games in! Of course, there’s also the solo variant, Destiny Encounters, which I have a lot of stuff printed out for, and have played roughly half a game while I tried to explore what that’s all about!
While I haven’t been able to play as many games as I would perhaps have liked, December has seen a lot of Marvel Champions played (what a surprise!) It’s my most-played game of the year (another surprise!) and I’m already expecting the same to be true next year, as well! Usually in December, I’ve been playing through a campaign, and this time it was the turn of Mad Titan’s Shadow – however, this is such a strange box that I haven’t quite played through the full campaign this time around. I was using Spectrum and Nick Fury, and while it was enjoyable going up against the Black Order and Thanos, I ended the campaign there simply because it feels so weird to go up against Thanos, and then have Hela and Loki as additional villains to fight. I think I’m going to try and use them as part of a mini-campaign of their own, so I’ll probably include Trickster Takeover somehow as well, and see how far I get.
In addition to that, of course, I’ve been enjoying more Jubilee with the X-Men villains, and have also (finally!) cracked into Nightcrawler. That poor guy hasn’t been touched since I sleeved up the whole third mutant wave, pretty much twelve months ago, so I was curious to see what he’s all about. Turns out, he’s pretty fun – he comes with a pre-built Protection deck that has a major emphasis on defending, so I quickly realised his actual turns are fairly boring, as he plays during the villain phase. Unfortunately, I was playing against Mister Sinister, who has quite the villain phase as well – I lost the game, but it was fun, all the same!
I still have so many heroes I haven’t tried out very much (if at all), so I want to try my best to play more games with the new stuff, to get a feel for how these heroes play, before Daredevil bursts onto the scene next summer.
The third pillar of my December gaming has been Lorcana. I picked up some stuff for this one during the Black Friday stuff, so have the first co-op expansion, Deep Trouble, and was able to go a few games against Ursula as I got to grips with how the game works. I have some posts coming out about this game in January, as I have been really surprised by just how it all works and whatnot, but suffice it to say, it’s a pretty enjoyable game, and I think it’ll be a lot of fun. I’ve picked up a load of singles for it, as well as seven of the pre-built starter decks, so I have enough cards to enjoy myself for a while. I know there’s a lot of talk about how the game is dying, or that it doesn’t have the legs to succeed long-term, but let’s be honest, Magic the Gathering has been dying for about 15 years now…
In other gaming news, Christmas has seen the arrival of Star Wars Legion into my life, and I’ve been working hard to get all of those models built up since the big day. James and I are embarking on this Legion journey together, and I believe he’s going to pick up the Empire starter set at some point, but I don’t think that has happened yet. We agreed that we’d start playing once both armies are fully painted, so I’m not currently sure when that’s gonna happen, but at least this will also give me the time to paint up some terrain for the whole venture, as well.
It should probably surprise nobody that I haven’t completed my painting goals that were set out at the start of November. I have done some more work on Cad Bane’s squad for Shatterpoint, so it hasn’t been the case that I’ve not even picked up a paintbrush, but still. Having now seen the new Legion sculpts, I’ve decided to get rid of all of my older stuff, as I want to have a clean slate with all-new plastic, so that’s one way to get through a backlog! But the Acolyte Hybrids still haven’t been touched, and I do find it hard to get motivated to paint 40k when there is so much good stuff to enjoy from Atomic Mass Games right now!
I’ve been spending December reading my way through the 2020 Star Wars comics from Marvel, which involves four series, all of which crossed over for four major events. I think I’m expecting to finish these not too far into January, so will no doubt have some final thoughts then, but suffice it to say, it has been a very uneven experience, as often happens with these sorts of things. I think I’ve enjoyed it, for the most part, but if I were to do this again (which I’m sure I will), I don’t think I would read everything in such an intertwined way. Instead, I would probably just read the Vader series, for instance, without crossing over into Aphra or whatever.
Weirdly, I have definitely felt the absence of the prequels this Christmas though! I’m now convinced that The Phantom Menace is a Christmas film to me, because I have so many abiding memories of watching it over the festive season!
So anyway, that’s December. Let’s take a look at 2025 in a wider context, shall we?
On the whole, I think 2025 has been a fantastic year for gaming. Some very old games came back to the table, such as Rune Age and Dungeon Quest, and I reached fairly far back into the archives to resurrect Call of Cthulhu LCG, as well as delving into the second edition of A Game of Thrones LCG. A lot of these card games involved proxies, as the physical product itself just no longer exists. It has been a lot of fun to go back, though, and I have enjoyed my so-far limited games with each. It’s definitely nice to have these things back in my life, and I’m looking forward to playing more with them as we move into 2026.
At the top of the year, I’d made some broad plans to try and play more games like Elder Sign and Eldritch Horror, by incorporating their expansions more. With a game like Elder Sign, I have played the base game far more than any of its expansions, and I wanted to really dive into those to see what I’ve been missing. Well, it should come as a shock to nobody that this has not happened – I have played two games with each game, so it’s not like I’ve ignored them! But I’ve found it very difficult to remain motivated to adhere to any kind of schedule for gaming, which has often been the failing of things like the 10×10 Challenge in the past.
Of course, the amount of work that is involved in generating proxy cards for Call of Cthulhu and Game of Thrones, as well as all of the content I’d found with re-skinned Marvel Champions, it has eaten into my available free time quite considerably. I’m not anticipating anything like this for 2026 of course, but I am currently having something of a long hard think about whether I want to try to plan out my year of gaming as I have done in previous years. Of course, it’s always good to focus the mind, but I generally don’t like it when I find myself thinking I “have to” play a specific game, just to get the numbers up, or whatever.
I’m sure there’ll be more to be said on that in the coming days!
In the spring, I caught up a great deal with the games that I have been following for some time, such as Dune Imperium and Arkham Horror, and found myself with a lot of expansions for these games which, as of yet, some of them still haven’t been played. Rise of Ix for Dune Imperium was very much a hit, of course, but The Feast of Hemlock Vale, while it has been sleeved, hasn’t been touched, and The Drowned City hasn’t even been properly looked at yet…
There was a lot of drama around the Living Card Games, of course, when FFG announced a rotation of sorts, without any further meat on those bones for nigh-on 10 months. 2025 was therefore a year of doom and gloom, as products went out of print and the company making no effort to address this until the very end of the year, when I’m not entirely sure their comments actually helped the situation. Arkham Horror LCG is getting a second edition, and so this is the stop where I get off with this game. I have ten full expansions to play, as well as so many investigator cards I am sure I’ll be happy for a long time. But I’ve noticed that I don’t play this game half as much as I’d like, so continuing to buy new stuff is something of a fool’s errand for me. Marvel Champions, on the other hand, is likely the game that I will continue to play until my own demise, rather than the game’s own closure.
While I have played a single game of Necromunda, as well as making a tentative return to 40k via Combat Patrol, Warhammer has remained off my radar during 2025, and I have been very firmly focused on Atomic Mass Games, as I continued to buy Shatterpoint and Marvel Crisis Protocol stuff. As far as games go, these have been some of the most enjoyable, and most memorable games I’ve had in tabletop miniatures games.
When it comes to painting, though, I think my output has well and truly dried up. In fact, let’s take a look at what I have actually finished painting in 2025:
I am quite disappointed with this, I have to say! There are a lot of single-character models here, so the list isn’t perhaps as impressive as it initially looks! I think this is definitely an area that I need to improve upon in 2026.
However, 2025 has definitely been the year of down-sizing the backlog, as I have sold off more of my Warhammer 40k armies – Tau, Sisters and Adeptus Mechanicus have now all been sold off, and I’ve also made the decision to sell my Age of Sigmar collections as well. I’ve sold off my Ossiarch Bonereapers, which was a bit of a shame as I was quite proud of those guys, however in all honesty, I am very unlikely to play this game. I’ve been holding on to some miniatures for years, but I’m getting nothing from them because they’re just in a box in the attic. For a time, I think it was a possibility that things might change, but as time has gone on, these things are just taking up space, both physical and mental, and I would prefer to pass them on to someone who is more likely to do something with them, and in turn I can get some cash for the things that I do want to make happen.
I still think that Age of Sigmar has got some of the most outstanding models in the Games Workshop catalogue, and it will likely be a sore point for a while yet, but I want to just clear out what I’m not using, and draw a line under it all. I’ll still have Warcry for an AoS fix, if need be!
There will doubtless be a few posts coming out with more vague plans and whatnot, although I had started this with my birthday post about Star Wars Legion. But I still want to have something at the start of the calendar year as I take aim into 2026 with what I would like to do.
Thank you to all of you for being with me over the last twelve months, and here’s to the next year of inane ramblings and missed deadlines!
Hey everybody, A couple of weeks ago, I was getting reflective about a few hobby projects from the past, and wanted to start a bit of a series of looking back at those that essentially “got away”. I dread to think how much I’ve spent on miniatures projects over the years, of course, both in time as well as money, so I don’t plan to look at everything that has passed across my hobby desk over the last decade…
One of my biggest regrets, I think, is the Deathwing project that I had started sometime around the end of 2015 when I picked up some of the terminators. I think the original idea for these guys was borne out of seeing the iconic venerable dreadnought with all the Gothic paraphernalia attached; purity seals and so on, but also censers and tassels and so on. The image was included in many a codex, and was really very striking!
Over time, I built up quite a collection of models for this project. I think at its fullest extent, I had something like 20 terminators, five Knights, a land raider, a venerable dreadnought, the command squad, and Belial, the leader first company. It was all pretty classic stuff, and I think at one point it was clocking in around 1500 points, so surprisingly it was a decent army at the time.
It’ll surprise nobody to hear that I didn’t get very far with painting it, however!
I absolutely adore the scheme, the bone colour of the armour with the green robes, the pink ropes and tassels, and the white feathers. It’s really quite beautiful, and I do wonder now why I didn’t get very far with painting them, because it’s one of those colour schemes that is so well-defined and stuff, it’s really enjoyable to do. I think this is one of the real highlights about Games Workshop stuff – they’re made for painters, so have really fantastic colour schemes. I can only assume it’s because I was also painting a myriad of other stuff at the time, like my Alpha Legion, Deathwatch, and Stormcast Eternals.
Over time, the army unfortunately floundered, and I eventually sold it all off en masse. I don’t think I got a particularly good deal for it, either. But such is life!
However, early in 2024 GW updated the Deathwing line with their version of Primaris terminators. This range looks phenomenal, and Belial especially has had a massive improvement as such. I have been so tempted to pick up more of these guys, I’m having to really hold myself back. Maybe one day I’ll buy some, and make a real effort to try to finish them this time. I don’t play 40k enough these days to warrant having a whole bunch of armies, but I think as a painting project, this could be quite something…
Hey everybody, It’s been almost two months since I’d started reading Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings, and what a book that is! Clocking in at a whopping 1137 pages, this is the first book in his Stormlight Archive series, which my fellow blogger Mr Bookstooge has told me is his magnum opus. I honestly don’t know where to begin with this review, because the book is so epic.
To begin, let’s just say that I really enjoyed this. It took me a long time, and that had been dragging me down a little bit because I’d read it throughout the week and just feel like I’m getting nowhere with it. Does it need to be this long? Well, I kinda feel that it does. See, plenty of reviews speak negatively of the book because of its overall lack of action, or how it spends too long on exposition, but I really don’t agree with this. It’s not Ulysses-levels of detail, it just takes an extremely long time because, in part, of the world-building.
It takes place on the continent of Roshar, and we follow three main characters for the most part. Roshar is plagued by these highstorms, massive tornado-like events that move from east to west. Consequently, the west is quite tame and lovely, but the flora and fauna of the east has adapted to the weather, so that even the grass can retract to escape the winds. It’s truly fantastical, and I was struck pretty much from the off by the level of detail in all of this. There are also the spren, fairy-like entities that materialise such as painspren, which turn up when someone is in pain, or firespren, which like to dance among the flames.
Our main character is Kaladin, a former soldier who was made a slave and then sold as such to the army of the highprince Sadeas. The highprinces of Alethkar, the largest kingdom in Roshar, are waging a war on the Shattered Plains, in the far east of the continent, against the Parshendi. These warriors are believed to have sent an assassin to kill the King of Alethkar, Gavilar, six years before. However, this war has devolved into something of a game for the highprinces, as they compete with each other and the Parshendi to kill massive crustacean-like beasts to claim their “gemhearts”. The currency of the continent is based on infused gemstones – stones that glow after being exposed to the highstorms.
Kaladin is a bridgeman, one of many tasked with dragging huge bridges across the chasms of the Shattered Plains to allow the main army to reach the plateau in time to fight the Parshendi and claim these gemhearts. Kaladin, however, makes several attempts to save the men who run Bridge Four with him, and eventually earns their trust. When one such attempt goes awry and many soldiers are killed, Sadeas has him left out during a highstorm on the understanding that it will kill him; however, he survives and is from then on able to “breathe in” the stormlight that infuses the spheres of currency.
Another of the point-of-view characters is the highprince Davilar Kholin, brother to the late King and one who is experiencing visions during highstorms that threaten his position in the army. Sadeas attempts to outmanoeuvre him when Davilar proposes the highprinces unite to defeat the Parshendi and end the war, but Davilar is able to survive Sadeas’ trap with the help of Kaladin and his bridge crew. As the book draws to a close, Davilar consolidates his power and promotes Kaladin to captain of his (and the King’s) bodyguard.
The final point-of-view character is Shallan, a highborn lady who manages to become the ward of Jasnah, the King’s sister and a well-known heretic. Shallan is attempting to steal a Soulcaster, a device that can turn things into other things, in a last-ditch effort to save her family fortunes. However, she finds that she enjoys her studies under Jasnah too much. Once she steals the Soulcaster though, she finds it more difficult to leave until she is poisoned while caught up in a plot to kill Jasnah. Interestingly, however, Jasnah is able to overcome the effects of the poison without the use of her Soulcaster, and eventually Shallan deduces that Jasnah is able to transmute matter without the device itself, something that she herself had also done accidentally. The two team up to delve further into the myths and legends of Roshar around the mythical beings called the Voidbringers and the Heralds who had formed to stop them.
This is a really incredible book. The world-building with the spren and the mobile flora was all fascinating, and the magical elements that come from the stormlight and Jasnah’s abilities are especially interesting. Indeed, I found that the chapters dealing with Shallan’s part of the story were the ones that I looked forward to the most, as I wanted to know more about the research being done. As the book ends, we learn that Jasnah is of the belief that the mythical Voidbringers are actually the Parshendi, however they have a sort of genetic off-shoot called Parshmen, fairly docile servant-beings used throughout Roshar. Jasnah believes the Parshmen could well rise up against the humans, and I found there to be many parallels with the way droids are seen in the Star Wars universe, particularly the storyline in The New Rebellion.
Something that I really appreciate about Sanderson in general is how he is able to write stories that don’t dissolve into some kind of vulgar drama. There are some pretty brutal things described here, but we aren’t in the “blood and piss” realm of authors trying to give their books legitimacy as adult works of fiction by delving into soft core pornography, or having every other word out of their mouths being “fuck”. I’m not a prude in any way, but if I’m very aware that I’m reading a story about dragons and magic, I don’t need to pretend that it’s something else by reading a detailed scene of quivering and/or throbbing anatomy.
But enough about that!
Kaladin is very much the main character of the book, and we spend the most time with him during the story. He’s got a fairly interesting background, the son of a surgeon who wanted to join the army for glory but instead determined to follow his father’s calling until his younger brother was press-ganged into the army. Kaladin followed to keep his brother safe, however he was unable to do so, and has carried the weight of guilt ever since. His newfound abilities with the stormlight place him in a very interesting position for book two, which I’m hoping to make a start on, probably in the new year. I don’t think I can face another tome like that just yet!
Finally, Davilar is our ticket into the King’s presence, and we find out a lot of the politics of Roshar and whatnot here. I do like a bit of politics, of course, but Davilar’s continued, unexplained visions during the storms did seem to drag on a little as the book carried on. I suppose I just wanted to get back to Shallan and the library, so was a bit put out on that front!
Along the way, we have interludes that follow some unconnected storylines that I suspect will come to fruition soon enough. There’s a through-line that follows the King’s assassin, Szeth, as he is essentially forced to work however his masters want him to, before he is sent on a mission to kill all of the Kings in Roshar. Turns out, King Taravangian of Kharbranth has been using him to eliminate the competition. Taravangian’s reputation as a benevolent king hides the truth that he has been killing hundreds at his hospitals, in order to record the final words of the dying. He has learnt that some dreadful calamity is coming, and is determined to unite Roshar to stop it. The book ends with one of the mythical Heralds, having survived for thousands of years, telling of the coming of the Everstorm.
All of these things provide such a rich background for the book that is one of the reasons I feel like it needs to be this chunky. It definitely seems to exist to set up the remaining books of the series – of which there are four in the first wave, but I believe Sanderson intends it to run to ten books in the end. I think if you are hoping for something more like the Mistborn series, which is somewhat lighter on the exposition as we don’t get as much detail on the Final Empire and all the rest of it as we do here, then you’re going to be in for a hard time. I really enjoyed that series though, but felt like I wanted more, so moving into the Stormlight Archive, I definitely feel like I got that! I can’t wait to continue, but hopefully I won’t take two months to read each of the other books, though!
Back in January, I wrote about wanting to get more models painted for Marvel Crisis Protocol, and in addition to get some Genestealer Cults painted. It’s been ten months, and the best I can offer up to this point is a few Marvel characters and some half-baked Acolyte Hybrids… well, no more!
I’m hoping that I can give myself a kick up the backside and get some stuff finished before the end of the year.
I’m aiming somewhat low, but I think that’s probably the best way to go for now. I want to start by finishing off those Acolytes, which I haven’t touched since August!
Next on the list is the Cad Bane squad for Shatterpoint. I made a start on these months ago, but made a mistake washing Cad’s jacket with an extremely dark brown, so it put me off! I have played Aurra Sing a fair bit, as well, and would like to actually get her painted as a result. So I think it would be good to get them finished, even if I don’t play the entire squad too often.
I’d also like to try to get the Shatterpoint terrain finished off, as well…
Finally, for now, I’ve decided to make an effort with these Legion miniatures that I’ve had since Covid struck. These models are the original Rebel Troopers that came in the bendy plastic from Fantasy Flight way back when, and I picked them up with the intention of getting a demo of the game about a week before the world shut down. I think it was about 2-3 years ago that I finally started to look at them, getting them built and primed, but then put them away again… I’m a bit strange like that…
With Atomic Mass giving Legion a significant facelift this year, and my current plans for 2026 being centred on giving the game a try, I think it could be useful to have a go painting up this squad, so that I’ve got my colour scheme ready to go when I pick up the Rebel Alliance starter box. I’ve cleared out a huge amount of stuff to make way for this, so I’m really hoping to make a strong start in the new year!
So that’s the plan. In two months, surely I’ll be able to make good on all this, right? Right?!
Hey everybody, I’m back to 40k stories today, following a buddy read with Bookstooge and Dave of the Adeptus Mechanicus novellas by Rob Sanders. Goodreads tells me I’ve read these before, but I don’t have any kind of memory of either, so it’s been nice to have a bit of a surprise there.
Skitarii follows the Skirarii Primus Haldron-44 Stroika as he leads part of the Magos Explorator Omnid Torquora’s exploration of Perborea, an ice planet believed to be the final resting place of the fabled Stella-Xenithica vessel. Stroika and his cohort of Sicarian Infiltrators are able to clear our the Orks that have chosen the vessel as their home, and they begin to plunder the vessel of its data. While work is ongoing, Torquora travels back to the forge world Satzica Secundus to bring the treasure of an STC back for the Fabricator General. The STC is schematics for a geller bomb, some kind of device that can push back one of the many Warp storms that plague the galaxy. The AdMech being the AdMech, of course, they immediately decide to build it and test it, though it all goes a bit wrong and they end up detonating the device early.
As if by design, though, the early detonation pushes back the Warp storm that has been surrounding the forge world Velchanos Magna, a corrupted world spewing out demon engines for the traitor legions. The Skitarii launch their assault, and all hell breaks loose when the Iron Warriors turn up and torpedo the main AdMech ship in orbit. After intense fighting, the Iron Warriors seem to carry the day; it transpires that they planted the STC on Perborea, knowing the AdMech would attempt to build the bomb, and so push back the Warp storm over Velchanos Magna. However, because the Warp is apparently much like whack-a-mole, pushing it back here means that nearby Satzica Secundus would in turn be enveloped in its own storm…
Tech Priest picks up the tale 344 days later. The AdMech under Omnid Torquora continue to prosecute the war against the Dark Mechanicum and the Iron Warriors, though with Satzica Secundus presumed lost there is no hope of reinforcement. The electro-priests on board Torquora’s vessel decide he is not acting in the best interests of the Omnissiah, and try to arrest him, but he’s able to fight his way free of them. When reinforcements do arrive in-system, they send a burst to the Iron Warriors, confirming the fact that Satzica Secundus has in fact fallen to Chaos. After a protracted campaign, Torquora reveals that he has built a bigger geller bomb than the last one, and detonates it in the demon-corrupted planetary core, destroying Velchanos Magna in the process.
Returning to Satzica Secundus, Torquora destroys the last fragments of the corrupted Fabricator General, and further reveals he has informed the Iron Fists of the presence of the Iron Warriors in the sector.
Overall, I think these stories were fine, though Tech Priest in particular felt like a massive, almost drawn-out fight description without much else to enjoy about it. There’s only so much pulsing fleshmetal and noospheric data-shunts that I want to read before the plot needs to advance, you know? I think, in part, my expectations were thrown off a bit by the titles of these novellas – Skitarii, the warriors of the Adeptus Mechanicus, involved an awful lot of politicking as they were working out who would build the bomb, etc, whereas Tech Priest, the leaders and authority-figures of the faction, was just all-out war. I get that the first book follows Stroika more closely, whereas Torquora is the main character of the second, but still! That said, there’s yet another part of me that disagreed with the need to split these stories up, anyway. They’re directly linked, and it should have just been sold as a single novel rather than splitting it in two like this.
The more I read books like this, though, I get the distinct impression that there’s a whole stratum of Black Library novels that exist purely for the players of these factions in the tabletop game to have something to read and (hopefully!) enjoy. There are novels that exist to tell the story, which currently seems confined to the Dawn of Fire series, and then we have books that are interesting stories, like The Infinite and the Divine. Then there are these throwaway stories. The actual plot feels pasted on, and it’s just an excuse to tell the story of AdMech vs Chaos. Sometimes, we get a book that still manages to work beyond this remit and it can be enjoyable to read.
All that said, as someone who has formerly owned an AdMech army, this was quite fun to see the various units in action. Much like reading Jain Zar made me think twice about selling off the Eldar, reading these two stories put me in mind of buying some Skitarii once again…
I always seem to get quite reflective at this time of year. I suppose it’s all tied up with the end-of-year mood, looking back and all that. Recently, though, I’ve been thinking about all the games and miniatures that I’ve bought and sold over the years. I mean, I dread to think of how much I must have spent on that stuff, none of which was exactly flipped for a profit!
Games like Android Netrunner have been reconstructed via proxy cards, whereas X-Wing has probably gone forever. I’ve already bought and sold two Tau armies; recently reading some 40k novels, though, has got me thinking about how much fun I’ve had with building and painting stuff like the AdMech, and Deathwing.
I’m kinda thinking about doing a miniseries about these things, though I’m not sure if doing so could be a bit dangerous. Hopefully I won’t end up buying a Tau army for the third time, though…
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