hobby progress

June 2023 retrospective

Hey everybody,
June has been a funny old month, hasn’t it? Here on the blog, I’ve had almost a month given over to Warhammer Age of Sigmar, between both the main game and Warcry. I think this was in part because the games are amazing, with some of the most beautiful and creative miniatures that Games Workshop produces, but also as a reaction to the negativity online surrounding Warhammer 40k 10th edition. Despite my better judgment, a lot of the bad feeling coming out of the AdMech community in particular seemed to affect me more than I thought it would, and I had to just walk away for a bit. It’s interesting, to me, because I’ve never really experienced that before – usually, you see people moaning and whinging online and you can just draw a line across it and forget about it, but it seemed at one point like every group I was in (and I have a lot of armies, remember!) was complaining about the new edition changes, and it soured me towards what otherwise had seemed like a new and exciting time for the game.

I’ve now played 10th edition, of course, and I’m very pleased to say that a lot of the criticism was pretty much unwarranted. Armies play differently in 10th, but I don’t think there’s really anything particularly awful about things as they stand. I do miss some things, but that’s going to be the same with any edition change, I think it’s right to say that we should wait for the codexes to see how the land truly lies, because I do feel like having the full suite of rules available will make things change.

In the meantime, I have embarked upon the mammoth task of trying to make sense of all of the armies I collect in the new edition, so stay tuned for a series of blogs where I will be taking a closer look at all this kind of stuff!

Age of Sigmar has been a big focus though, and I have really enjoyed getting back into looking at the Mortal Realms. I have even managed to play a game this week, as well! A guy nearby posted about learning the game in one of the many facebook groups that I’m in, and I left a half-hearted comment and, before you knew it, I was throwing dice! There seems to be a bit of an Age of Sigmar “scene” near me, which is both exciting and terrifying, to tell the truth. It’s exciting because it’s good to know that I won’t be building and painting models in a vacuum, but terrifying because it seemed like a very close-knit group of people, and I feel like it’s very difficult to get into such cliques. Moreover, everybody there seems to both know the game very well, and be hyper-competitive whereas I am both learning and really not that bothered by optimum builds and most competitive lists, etc. I don’t really like tournaments anymore, but that’s what a lot of people here seem to want.

I should try harder, though, as I don’t want to miss out on stuff, already having a sizeable Ossiarch Bonereapers army, and also now working on my Slaanesh forces. That’s been a lot of fun, as Slaanesh is an army that I have long wanted to have, but have bought and sold twice before. Working on my third attempt at the army has been really good, though, even if I have made the mistake of fully assembling that Exalted Chariot before painting it!

So far, I have been concentrating on getting my Daemonettes painted up. After assembling the whole force the other day, I think it’s quite surprising to me how few models have actually been painted, so I wanted to try and get this lot done, with the hope that they might be a quick win for me. Well, they haven’t been all that quick so far, but I think they’re definitely getting there! My colour scheme calls for a lot of faff with shades, diluting them for the skin so they don’t go too purple, but then stronger on the claws and feet, so there is almost a blend required. Drybrushing the skin then helps to blend things further, but it’s all a bit faffy! I’m currently not sure about the hair, either. I had followed my initial scheme as I had laid it out, but as it has been something like 4 years since I painted the first one, I could have got something wrong. The hair on some of the models looks more bright blue than I’d like, so I might need to revisit that somehow. But otherwise, it’s going well, and working on the Chariot crew at the same time both ensures consistency and will (hopefully) allow for me to finally get that model finished soon, as well!

There was a flurry of Warcry activity on the blog in the first half of the month, a lot of it was scheduled in because life was a bit crazy with birthdays and stuff, but I’m really excited for that game, and I’m looking forward to getting more warbands painted and playing more games as the year wears on. It’s such a good rules set, at least the first edition set that I am still playing through, I love how brutal it can be once the battle is joined! That said, the fact that you don’t deploy your warbands on opposite sides of the table, but instead have groups at a variety of points, does mean that melee combat is quick to get into, so you don’t lose those first few rounds to just simply moving about.

June hasn’t been just about plastic people from Nottingham, though. I had my first game with Star Wars Shatterpoint at the start of the month, and have been enjoying learning that and getting some of the models painted. Being bigger than GW scale, I had expected them to be somewhat easier, but it’s turned out not to be the case! So far, James and I have only managed one game, but I’m hoping we’ll be able to find the time for many more as the year progresses. It has overtaken Necromunda for us in terms of wanting to play games, but I still have a deep love for all things Underhive, and I am keeping my bits crossed we’ll get back to things there soon enough, as well.

I’ve also played a couple of games of Marvel Champions, which has been really nice as they have been games where I have tried to take my time with it all, rather than rushing the villain for the win. My usual style of playing this game has been to throw as much damage as I can against the villain, and react to whatever is happening as best as I can – which can sometimes lead to some very tricky situations! However, it was really quite nice to play it a bit slower, as it feels like you’re really playing the game, rather than just sitting through it happening quickly in front of you. Hopefully that makes sense! It’s just nice to see more cards, to play cards than otherwise I threw away as resources without ever trying them out, and in general, I’ve really enjoyed it! It’s also made me re-evaluate some cards I’ve never given much time to, so I might be deck-building a bit again with some heroes like Captain Marvel, to better effect this sort of long-term strategy.

I’ve also played against Ultron for the first time at the weekend, and while I did unfortunately lose, I really enjoyed that one for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it was a really great game, with Star-Lord and Nebula going up against him; I really like this hero pairing, for some reason – I suppose I still really like the Nebula deck, though, and have been enjoying seeing that come together. At the back of my mind, I had been thinking that I’d like to play against Ultron at least once before my first year in the game is up, and I’m quite pleased to say that has now happened. As is often the case with these types of games, the core set scenarios represent almost the full gamut from the basic, training scenario, to the almost-impossible mega-boss. Ultron is definitely in the latter category, but seeing how his scenario deck plays out was just great, all told.

But we’re at the halfway point of the year now, so let’s check-in with what has been accomplished, and re-calibrate a bit where necessary!

Let’s take a look at the hobby goals, to begin. I had an initial list of six things to accomplish, as follows:
1. Promethium Forge
2. 10 Hellions
3. Adepta Sororitas Exorcist
4. Necrons Canoptek Wraiths
5. Tau Crisis Suits
6. More Zone Mortalis terrain

The Promethium Forge has had a lot of work at the start of the year, and I think there are only railings left to do now. I’ve completed five of the ten Hellions, and the Exorcist tank is fully painted, one of my favourite models to have painted this year. I’ve done the Wraiths and the Crisis Suits, and I have finished painting all of the Zone Mortalis terrain that I had primed up – having run out of grey primer, I need to get some more before I can get more of that done. So all told, I’ve ticked off four and a half of the six, with the other one being almost done as well! Time, in that case, for some recalibration.

You might be thinking I will be coming up with a new list, but in all honesty I don’t think I want to tie myself down like this. What I will be doing, though, is listing the projects that are currently languishing as half-finished, and in need of some TLC. Whether I complete them all or not, who knows, but they’re things I would like to get to before the end of the year, regardless!
1. 10 Darkoath Savagers for Warcry
2. 8 Cypher Lords for Warcry
3. 10 Sisters Novitiates
4. Drukhari Venom
5. 10 Skitarii (5 Rangers, 5 Vanguard)

I’m obviously not saying that I only have five unfinished projects – I have easily 20 times that! – but these are the five that I think I would like to have finished by the end of the year. Adding the Promethium Forge and those other five Hellions, and it’s not too bad a list, really. Of course, this doesn’t mean that there is no chance I’ll start working on something else next week, but I think out of everything I currently have, these are the projects that I want to see finished. Some stuff is so close to being done that it’s a shame I left them where they were, but that can’t be helped I suppose. Once they are all finished, then I think I would like to start work on other things, more Warcry warbands for a start. The more I think about that game, the more I want to just paint the damn terrain, too. It came out in 2019, and the terrain is still just bare plastic, so it’s about time I got myself sorted out on that front!

I want to get myself in a good position for later in the year, because I’m kinda planning to do something as a bit of a painting celebration. I have talked for quite some time now about wanting to have a big project to really get my teeth into, and I have been thinking about it from quite a few angles, but I think it would be really cool to have some kind of army challenge, almost, where I have a box of miniatures that is the core foundation for an army, or a detachment within an army, and I set aside some time to just build and paint, doing nothing else until it’s finished. It’s been a long time since I was able to be quite so single-minded on a project, but I think it could be a lot of fun. It’s not necessarily about starting a new force, but I think having a character or two, a squad of basic troops, a squad of more elite troops, and maybe some kind of centrepiece model would be really fun. So nothing too grand, but more than just a single box of models. My initial thoughts are for something near the start of December, and obviously as I have a real life to attend to as well, it’s not going to be a case of being able to neglect my wife and kids for this, but I think it would be nice to have a month-long stretch where I just focus on that one thing.

You heard it here first!

So that’s where I’m at with the painting, what about my 10×10 gaming challenge?

June hasn’t seen much gaming, as I said, but I’m surprised nonetheless to see that I’ve played 59 games so far from the list. So I’m over halfway, just about! Of all ten games on the list, I still haven’t played Eldritch Horror once, which at first was a bit of a joke, because I was sure I’d get round to it before too long. It is one of my favourite boardgames, after all. But here we are, at the midpoint, and I haven’t yet played a single game. I think I need to get round to playing that one soon! I am really pleased about getting more Elder Sign played though – and this is really the point of the challenge, to play more of the games that I have. I’m not buying games with the same regularity that I used to, of course, but being able to devote time to playing just one game, and its plethora of expansions, is really great. It’s a similar story for Marvel Champions, of course – even though I’ve played it more than the ten times I had set out to do, I’m really pleased that I’m still playing it, going above and beyond. Runebound has been a surprising one, I think, in that it has seen a flurry of plays in June. I suppose it’s partly due to being focused on the fact that I want to play it for the challenge, but whereas some games might feel a bit like, “well I have to play this because I said I would”, I’ve actually really wanted to play Runebound, being in the mood for some classic fantasy board game action! So that that been surprising, but in a good way! There have been a few times where I’ve played it with a kind of narrative in my mind, so one hero is trying to find as many rune artifacts within the market deck as he can; one guy is only going to level up his melee stat line, to the exclusion of all else. It was just great, and it often felt like those great times from 10+ years ago, when I was first playing the game!

I think, then, even if I don’t get all 10 games played 10 times each by December, it has been a really great way to try to get me to play more with what I have. If I do it again next year, I might not pick 10 individual games, but I might look at expansions to games as well, and see if I can commit to playing, for instance, Omens of Ice ten times for Elder Sign, or Under the Pyramids for Eldritch Horror. I have these things, and in the case of some of these expansions, I’ve barely played any games with them. It’s really about time I made an effort to get my money’s worth from them all!

I haven’t talked much about this as a kind of ongoing project, or whatever, but I do want to briefly mention how my 2023 reading has been going. According to Goodreads, I’ve read 20 books so far this year – and all of them are what my wife would term “real books”, no graphic novels in sight! I am particularly excited about the fact I got to re-read the Han Solo trilogy back around April time, as that was something I always used to enjoy back in the day. I am intending to re-read more Bantam-era Star Wars novels, though it’s not like last year’s Prequel Summer. I’ll get to them when I get to them, I guess. I’ve recently started to read the final Witcher novel, which is part of the ongoing reading project with Dave from wordaholicsanonymous – along the way, we’ve lost and gained a few readers, but I think we’re both still standing from the beginning! It’s been a bumpy ride, for sure, but for completion’s sake, I’m looking forward to the end of this one. I’ve recently discovered Audible, as well, and while it makes me feel like I’m cheating to have an audiobook in my list, I suppose I’m spending the time to absorb the story, just through a different set of holes in my head. I’m sure there will be plenty more books making their way to the blog as a result, though!

This has become quite the exhaustive read, now, I’m sure. Congrats if you made it this far! At any rate, let’s see what the second half of the year has got in store for us!

April 2023 retrospective

Hey everybody,
April is already over, and so it’s time once more to take a look back at the month and see what has been going on in my little corner of the internet. At least it seems to have been a bit more exciting than the month of March, which was a bit of a washout thanks to all the germs that were doing the rounds – although I was tragically struck down with some kind of bug over Easter, which then seemed to turn into some kind of sinus infection. We’re hopefully out of the woods now, of course, but I think overall the month has been pretty good!

My gaming had taken a little dip at one point, I think due to generally not feeling that great, but I’ve begun to get some classics to the table once again, including A Touch of Evil and Runebound!

I love playing this game. One of the best things about it, for me, is how it allows you to kinda role-play the game without the need for any kind of in-built timer forcing you to keep an eye on the clock. There are a couple of timing mechanisms, of course, but generally speaking you can just go around the board, playing the game, and enjoying the theme, without the need to worry about getting from x to y in a certain time, or whatever. I do understand, though, that some people tend not to like those sorts of meandering games, and along with the mystery card, The Hour is Late, the first web villain for the game, the Delion Dryad, brought a couple more ways to ensure the game is kept moving along at a pace.

I haven’t played with the Dryad for a very long time, indeed my boardgamegeek stats tell me it’s almost ten years since I played against her. While that isn’t perhaps a surprise, as the game in general went unplayed for so long until I got it back to the table last autumn, I am nevertheless eternally surprised at how long ago some of these games were last played.

The Dryad is an interesting villain, and you can read more about that here. I had expanded the game quite a bit, all told, also using stuff from Hero Pack One and the Allies supplement. The Allies is one of those web exclusive card packs where you have to pretty much pay a premium to get if you live outside of the US; I think when I last looked at this, I was paying around £40 to get a dozen cards and the rest was shipping. But A Touch of Evil is one of my all-time favourite games, so I didn’t really mind it at the time, of course! I think these days I am a bit more circumspect, of course – there are new card supplements that I want to get, but again, shelling out £40+ for a dozen cards, or whatever it is, isn’t really top of my priority list!

The game, though, was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed playing it a lot. The Scarlet Shadow hero (from Hero Pack One) has the very interesting effect of having to take a Cunning test if he ends up in town, or else he loses investigation (the currency of the game). It’s all very thematic, of course, with him being a highwayman, and it led to some very interesting game decisions because he couldn’t always cross the town safely.

In the final showdown, most of the elders turned out to be evil and I was lucky to get both Lord and Lady Hanbrook on my side. Sophie had actually joined the villain, though, and made things a bit more difficult, but I was able to prevail thanks to some lucky dice rolls and a couple of flammable torches, which I suppose I used to set the Dryad on fire. That’ll learn her…

I have also had a game of Runebound this month, using a couple of the small card expansions as well. I have actually talked about this game on the blog, but I just want to reiterate how much fun it can be when you play a magic user and are able to tool them up for magical combat. It’s also wonderfully thematic to play a game called Runebound and use magical runes when you’re playing!

I have noticed that I have procrastinated a lot over playing bigger board games like these of late. Given the choice, I’d much prefer to go for one of the living card games (heh, I’d much prefer to go for Marvel Champions, let’s be honest). It’s a bit daft, as well, because I think there is an expectation that a big board game is going to take a long time to play, plus set-up and clear-up time, whereas my game with A Touch of Evil didn’t really take that long at all. I suppose there’s also the fact that I used to take ages playing these games, because I had the time and the inclination, whereas nowadays it’s a case of just trying to find the time to fit in a quick scamper around Terrinoth, or whatever!

I’ve talked about this before, I think, as well, but the other thing at play here seems to be a slight unwillingness to deviate from my 10×10 list, as I feel like I have to play something from that list of games back in January for it to “count”. It’s funny really, because this is precisely the situation I wanted to avoid, but I’ve ended up in a place where I only want to play a game so that I can get that closer to my goal, and not because I’m in the mood for playing a game, if that makes sense?

I think I need to have a word with myself!

At any rate, I’ve been able to tally up a few more games for the 10×10 challenge, and have in fact reached my second goal on that list, with Lord of the Rings LCG now seeing ten games from me this year. After recently having been playing the Ringmaker quests, a cycle that broke me back in the day, I have found myself a little more tentative with coming back to this game, however I have now made it, so will probably continue with my various cycle play-throughs but at a more relaxed pace. Overall, though, I’ve played 41 games since the start of the year – so I’m ahead of schedule if you think that we’re only a third of the way through the year, but I’ve played more than a third of the games on the plan!

Marvel Champions continues to see play as well, even though I had reached my goal of ten games for that back in February. Indeed, my current tally for the game is 28 plays this year, which I find quite funny. It’s such a good game though, and with it being quite new to me still, I’m finding that it’s difficult to grow tired of it just yet. Marvel Champions was the game I played to mark my blog’s ninth birthday the other week, using the Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch decks. There’s always so much to enjoy about this game, I am forever impressed with how it plays.

To help increase that excitement, we finally had the announcement this month of the next campaign box, NeXt Evolution, which will bring X-Force to the game, starting with Cable and Domino. We’ve also now had a preview for Psylocke, who is our second Psionic hero and her deck looks like it could be very exciting indeed, so I’m looking forward to getting my hands on all of that, from the late summer onwards! I think it’s very safe to say that it’s an exciting time for Marvel Champions, still!

Necromunda has seen a new Law & Misrule campaign begin, of course, with my Delaque vs James’ Venator Gang. Game one was a crushing blow for the House of Shadow, so we now need to figure out the next scenario while (hopefully!) my Delaque can survive it! Much like Marvel Champions, we’ve also had new stuff come out for Necromunda this month, principally the second part of the Succession Campaign, The Vaults of Temenos. I keep meaning to write a blog on the lore of this campaign, because it has been really quite amazing so far. I’ll have to try harder on that front! The book has got some very interesting narrative scenarios, anyway, which I might possibly purloin across for our campaign, even though we’re not doing anything in the Ash Wastes. We shall see!

Let’s move on to the hobby side of things now, then, and see how April has been going on that front. The short answer is, pretty damn well! I think I talked about this in a previous blog, but I’ve decided to give the White Dwarf “hobby bingo” a try, and see if it will work to help focus me on getting some projects done throughout the year. I know I have my 2023 resolutions, and we’ll get to them in a bit, but I would like to see if I could churn out some more units as the year goes on. I’ve adapted the White Dwarf grid, because a lot of the options I would just never do (how many lords of war do people generally paint in a year?!) so have a more personalised, achievable grid to work from.

In April, then, I have added three more squares to this grid, getting ten more Delaque fighters fully painted (mainly the Prospects and weird gribblies), then five Flesh Tearer assault marines as I embark upon a Space Marines army, and finally the three Canoptek Wraiths that I have had waiting for paint easily for the last five years.

I’m really pleased with the Delaque, as it has given me quite a lot of options ready to go, even if most of them aren’t in the starting gang. However, I did fall prey to the temptation of the weapons upgrade pack back in the day, so a lot of these fighters are built with improbably-expensive weapons, meaning I’m unlikely to be able to use them in the current campaign. That has actually required more building, so I have a couple more to paint up for the campaign soon! Luckily, I had more Delaque from the Hive War box, so have a lot of bodies to draw from to build my gangers.

The Space Marines force is a very slow-grow style of thing, and while my initial thoughts had been to get it ready for 10th edition in the summer, I’m now thinking of it more as a project for the year, so I don’t think it’s something that will be playable before Christmas. But you never know. Expect more to come on this topic in time!

Finally, the Wraiths are another of my Hobby Goals for 2023 that I can now check off! I’m actually doing really well insofar as those goals are concerned, getting the Crisis Suits and some Hellions finished up fairly quickly. I still have the Promethium Forge, five more Hellions, the Sisters’ Exorcist tank, and generally more Zone Mortalis scenery, but I think it’s still a solid start. Feels a bit like I’m at a proper checkpoint here, the more I’m thinking about it! Well, I guess we’re one-third through the year, so it makes sense to take some stock.

I’ve been tentatively starting to plan the approach to the Exorcist tank, after recently getting more in the mood for painting my Sisters again. While the infantry all have quite light grey armour, I’m thinking I might go for something a bit different for the vehicles, which might help to make them stand out while also tying-in with the rest of the force. Well, I’m sure having a massive pipe-organ missile-launcher on top of the vehicle will help it to stand out, of course! I’ve been thinking about it after building up three Paragon Warsuits, which I had bought as part of the Imperium magazine (saving quite a bit of money in the process!) I was thinking the warsuit would perhaps be of a different grey to the power armour that the Sisters themselves wear, so was considering a base of Dark Reaper rather than Mechanicus Standard Grey. I’m not sure yet, because it might be a really bad idea on the whole. I suppose we’ll see! The other thing, of course, would be go to very light for the tanks, but then I’ve not seen a nice looking pale grey tank, so It could be a terrible idea…

However, I want to try to finish the Promethium Forge before anything else on the list, because that is almost done, it’s just been floundering a bit for the last couple of months!

February 2023 retrospective

Hey everybody,
Well, February has been and gone, and it was about as long as January in the end, all told! At the start of the month, I wrote a blog where I outlined some of my priorities for the month, which mainly consisted of painting the Escher gang, and starting work on the Promethium Forge terrain kit. Well I am happy to say that both of these goals were achieved! In fairness, the Escher gang wasn’t that far off completion by the end of January, so it wasn’t a huge job to get them finished.

The Promethium Forge is a lovely kit, and I have really enjoyed working on it so far. Of course, there is a lot still to do with it, mainly the weathering on the main structure, but also there is a wealth of stuff to go up top, with all the railings and chimneys to still paint as well! I hope that it will be a really nice piece when it’s finished, anyway, and I do look forward to seeing how the table is going to look with three big Mechanicus structures on it!

I really like this terrain. Using one of the smaller Kill Team boards, you can make a really claustrophobic set-up that I think would work really well for Necromunda as well. Adding in stuff like the plasma conduits and the haemotrope reactor is just gravy, really! In the set-up above, I’ve tried to make sure these structures are connected to have something of a running walkway around the whole board, however there’s nothing to stop me having the three just stand-alone, and maybe connected via ladders or something.

I’ve been playing around a lot with terrain this month, fiddling about with several layouts for the Zone Mortalis board, as well. I think I was having a bit of a problem with the fact that I’ve made three structures with stairs, but have no idea how to link them all up in such a way as makes sense. Well, I think I am possibly getting somewhere, the more I’m using it all as well. I think it’s key to get a good balance of open areas and the more narrow corridor type of set-up. Especially now that I’ve started to work on the Underhive Market terrain, as well! It makes sense from a gameplay perspective to have a bit more open areas to work within, after all, so hopefully I will be able to strike a bit of a balance with this, moving forward.

And as luck would have it, I was able to test some more layouts in a game of Necromunda at the weekend! James and I are playing a Law & Misrule campaign, mainly as he has moved away from Orlocks and started to work on Enforcers. I’m still with my Goliath for the time being, as I’m enjoying getting to understand how to play them effectively. We played the Experimental Stimms scenario from a recent White Dwarf, and I made out like an absolute bandit with XP and credits! I have a proper blog coming soon on the campaign, though, so keep an eye out for that!

Gaming has otherwise been pretty good this month – I’ve already chronicled how I’ve managed to reach my goals for playing Marvel Champions 10 times this year, but as you can see, I’m making good progress with other stuff, as well! Only one game remains to be played now, Eldritch Horror, so I need to crack on with that I think and play some of the bigger games in my collection! The issue I’m finding, though, is that I really enjoy Marvel Champions, and so it’s almost all I ever want to play! I’ve started a separate tally of how many games with that I’m playing, as I think it might be funny to see just how many games I get to by the end of the year. I think it’ll be close to 100, but we shall have to see!

You’ll see from the chart above that I’ve also chosen game 10 now, Necromunda. We’ve played one game each month so far, and I think the way we’re going, it’s going to be quite easy to get a good number of games under our belt this year as we play through the campaign. Speaking of campaigns, though, I’ve not really found myself all that interested by the Dunwich Legacy re-play, oddly enough. I don’t know if it’s just a matter of riding this Marvel wave or something else, but while I have everything set up and ready, I just can’t bring myself to try it. Well, we’ll see what next month brings.

I’ve also started to keep a tally of the games that I’m playing overall in the month, because as time goes on I think the 10×10 thing is going to be a bit superseded, if that makes sense. So for example, in January I played 20 games for the 10×10 thing, however I played 22 overall because I’m not counting 40k in the first count. In February, I played 21 games in total, but only 9 of them count towards the 10×10 because, among other things, I also played 11 games of Marvel Champions, but only 3 of them were in that 10×10 count. As you may be able to tell, I am a bit of a stats geek.

In addition to painting the Escher gang, I’ve also managed to paint up the Crisis Suit team for my Tau, a project that got a bit derailed almost twelve months ago. But they’re finished now, so I’m happy about that, although I definitely need to get some more brushes before I move on to painting other stuff, as all of mine are pretty much rubbish now! It’s been really good to be painting more Tau, I have to say, as I do enjoy that colour scheme, and it’s nice to see the army taking shape. Hopefully next month I can get a few more models painted, and keep chipping away at things slowly but steadily.

This brings me on to the modified version of Hobby Bingo 2023 that I’ve decided to play! You may have seen this in White Dwarf in recent years, where you have a 5×5 square of goals to tick off as the year goes on? I’ve decided to change some stuff up for the 2023 edition, as I don’t really play with Lords of War and the like, and have got my square ready to go! So far, then, I’ve ticked three boxes – I’m counting the Escher in this, although they aren’t a traditional unit per se, but also the Crisis Team and the Promethium Tanks from last month! So that’s all good stuff. It’ll be interesting to see how far I get with this, anyway!

I’ve spent a few evenings building the terrain from Into the Dark, and I have to say, it is quite beautiful! I’ve talked about this recently, of course, but I do like the clustered walls and corridors feel of this stuff. I had initially bought Into the Dark with an eye to getting two boxes of this terrain for Boarding Actions games, but subsequent Kill Team releases have saved me a lot of money by just not being available in the wild. We’ll see if the story changes with box four whenever that is due, but I think I might well end up being the proud owner of just a single box from this season of the game! I suppose it can still be used for Necromunda, though, even though I’m not playing Kill Team, so that’s no big deal.

In terms of reading stuff, February has seen me finally catching up with all of the books that I’d read in January but not published any reviews on. I’ve also read the fourth Witcher novel, Tower of the Swallow, ahead of all my comrades in arms (mainly because I’d got it out from the library prematurely!) There will be a review of that coming at some point, possibly when everybody else on the team has caught up, the way I’ve been lagging with my reviews so far this year!! Suffice it to say, though, I thought it was a very good book, going against the grain of a lot of reviews I’ve read for it since I finished reading.

March is so far shaping up to be a bit more Star Wars orientated, as I’ve been catching up with Andor, and obviously building towards another Star Wars Easter! The third season of the Mandalorian is due out from tomorrow, of course, so that should be fun. I’ve also been thinking a lot about re-reading the New Jedi Order series, something I don’t think I’ve ever done since I initially read the series as a teenager when they came out! Unlike last year’s Prequel re-read, though, I might not try to read them all in such a short space of time, which should in turn leave enough room for me to read other stuff as the fancy takes me. We shall see. But don’t be surprised if a post comes up soon enough about Vector Prime, I guess!!

January 2023 retrospective

Hey everybody,
Just like that, January is over and we’re already one-twelfth of the way through the year. While I know for many people January is a long, long month, it somehow doesn’t seem to have been all that bad for me. I think I’m putting this down to the fact that I’ve tried my best to be organised about what I’m doing with my time, so that I have clear things to look forward to, and so on.

On a personal level, while I have lost the Christmas weight that I’d put on, I’ve not continued the downward trend yet. However, I’ve downloaded the Fantasy Hike app which tracks how far you walk and overlays this on Frodo’s journey to Mordor. So you get updates like Black Riders on the road, camping with the elves, and staying overnight with a farmer. It’s all pretty hilarious, and while I’m not yet projected to arrive at Mount Doom until Q3 2024, I have actually walked 70 miles in January, so I think that’s pretty impressive, actually! I want to take some time soon to try and plan more meals and stuff that would help me to lose weight while eating well, and then as the weather begins to improve (or at least, get more consistent), I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get out and about more, and with a bit of luck, I’ll keep going down from there!

Around the middle of the month, I had a day off to basically have a games day, something very indulgent I know. But that was one of the best things that I had going on, because it meant not only that I had that goal in my sights, but also I got to play with the Marvel Champions stuff that I got for my birthday and Christmas. It also prompted last week’s theme week, where I posted about the game every day of the week. It was really great to play some of the newer stuff, and it was a lot of fun to then have a blog go out at the same time each day with my rambling musings on it all. It’s definitely fired my interest in the game once more, which had somewhat waned during the Autumn last year, so that’s definitely a good thing now that I have almost the entire product line…

It’s also helped to really bump up my numbers for played games this year, as I’ve already played almost 20 games this year. That’s a fifth of my goal checked off already. I’ve also started on my third play-through with The Dunwich Legacy campaign for Arkham Horror LCG, which will of course go a long way to helping further with those numbers as a campaign is eight games. I’d spent part of my New Year’s Eve building up new decks, for Mandy Thompson and Tony Morgan, but couldn’t really decide in which campaign to play them. After vacillating over Dunwich and Innsmouth, Dunwich has now won out. However, I’ve also been finding myself thinking up which investigators I want to deckbuild for next, and so I don’t think it’ll be too long before I make it back to Innsmouth, after all!

January has seen 19 games being played, with Marvel Champions being the runaway leader here by far. I think there have been a few great games being played, though the real stand-out happened just yesterday, as I went back to Mutant Genesis and tackled the Project Wideawake scenario with Cyclops and Shadowcat. I love the X-Men, primarily from the Bryan Singer movies of the early 2000s, but I think in terms of overall superhero appeal, X-Men are very close to my heart. Which is probably why I was so disappointed after my first game with the new box. However, Cyclops and Shadowcat was a pretty good pairing, with only maybe a couple of cards swapped into both decks.

There is a lot going on in that scenario, and I think I had to play really slowly at times to make sure I was doing everything correctly. But it was incredibly enjoyable, as I was able to really experience the game, and it felt very much like the Sentinels were coming for my guys, especially with the Mk V Sentinel attaching that “marked for extermination” card to Cyclops. There was a lot of stuff going on with both heroes as well, and I think after the initial play with Cyclops, and then looking through his deck to try to make sense of what it is doing, I was a lot more prepared for this game. Shadowcat has some interesting things too, though without knowing a lot about both her deck and the scenario, it was difficult at times to know if I should be bothered by Patrol minions, for instance. Of course, all hell broke loose when her nemesis came into play, which I think is only the second time ever I’ve had that happen in a game, and towards the end I was almost drowning in side schemes! But I was able to get Cyclops’ Optical Blast off with the card that deals +8 damage to bring the Sentinels right down to 3 health, at which point it was almost trivial for Shadowcat to deal the final 3 damage for the win. It was by no means easy, but it was a lot of fun as the game went on!

Even though I’ve almost completed my Marvel Champions goal of 10 games this year, I think this is well on track for becoming my most-played game of all time, the way I’m going with it!

In terms of the hobby, I have been really pretty productive here, too. I’ve painted up my Goliath gang for Necromunda, which involves seven gangers and two vehicles, so it works in both the regular game but also Ash Wastes. That was a really great result, especially as I’m still quite surprised that I’ve gone all-in for these guys. Since the game came out in 2017, Goliaths have definitely been at the bottom of the list for me, and with each subsequent gang to come out, they only went further down. But after building up the big lads and especially their ridiculously over-the-top bikes, I’ve really become quite the fan! My first time painting yellow hasn’t been all that bad, either, so all in all, I am very pleased!

Even more pleasing is the fact that we’ve been able to have a game of Necromunda, as well! My Goliaths vs James’ Orlocks, using the Prison Break scenario from Gang War 3. We were intending to use this as the start of a campaign, but James has decided to switch from Orlocks to Enforcers, but we’re still hoping to use that opening game as a bit of a scene-setter for the upcoming Law & Misrule campaign. So stay tuned for more on that one!

I am definitely fired up for more Necromunda though, and have not only also started to paint the Escher gang that I have had built since 2017, but also more Zone Mortalis scenery! The Eschers have got a bright red armour thing going on, although with all their hair and feathers etc, the colours are tending towards quite bright right now. I suppose that makes sense, but I do worry a little bit that they’re not Underhive-y enough… I’m also finding it quite difficult in general because of both the way they were built, in terms of actual gluing of parts and also the weapon choices, and additionally the grey primer which is quite thick and chalky in places. I had a similar issue with my Orlocks when I first tried to paint them, but stripped the paint and it all seemed to be okay, however with the Escher I don’t think they’re robust enough to withstand stripping! However, I do have another Escher gang sprue from the Hive War box I picked up ages ago for the Delaque and terrain, so I can always build the Escher gang I want that way.

In terms of Zone Mortalis painting, I have managed to get more walls and columns painted up in about a weekend, which has been amazing really! My total ZM painting now stands at eight wall sections and seven columns, with one platform so far. This is great, of course, though I would say I’ve still got easily half the Dark Uprising box still to paint! My colour scheme requires an undercoat of Mechanicus Standard Grey, of which I have currently run out, so I suppose for the time being I am stalled on this one, but hopefully I’ll be able to get some more of that soon and make more headway.

Something that I’ve been thinking about for some time is how literally all of my ZM terrain is modular, which causes some problems because it can all move during play, etc. So I’ve recently glued together two pieces to create a bit of an anchor in games. I’ve got a corner tower, which has been glued to that height with ladders to provide access up the top, and then I’ve glued a small wall section to a small door section, both of which are then attached to a column. I find that the doors in particular can be problematic because you are actually moving the door piece in-game, which sometimes knocks the wall a bit. So it’s good to have that kind of anchor to keep stuff in-line. As it stands, both of these pieces should be easy enough to fit into a larger landscape on the table, and they shouldn’t be too difficult to work into the other pieces that I have which involve the staircases. But I suppose we shall see!

Speaking of stairs, though, I find myself wanting to get another set of those, as I want to try and make a few more accessways to upper levels. Something that I have found with our games so far in the Underhive has been that they’re mostly one-level. It was nice in the Prison Break scenario to have the Orlocks starting up in a second-storey area, because it meant that we could interact with height a bit more, although as the objective was to flee the board, they were coming down the stairs very early. I’ve been thinking more about finally buying some of the plastic tiles as well, but with only a 2×2 area rather than 2×3 that we’ve been used to, it had always been my thought that it wouldn’t be as interesting. But without two full tiles, the only way is up, really! So maybe doing this could mean that we would naturally play on more levels as a result? We shall see. Obviously, the plastic terrain fits better on those tiles than on the cardboard ones, but I always find myself wanting to spend my limited hobby funds on miniatures, and not tiles!

Anyway, that’s a lot of rambling about Zone Mortalis, but it has definitely been at the forefront of my mind this month, with the game and all, so I suppose it was inevitable, really!

I also had a game of 40k this month, with my Dark Eldar against JP’s Imperial Fists, and once again, Toughness 3 proved to be the lesser match to marines. The amount of stuff that space marines can do is just ridiculous, and I am quite envious of the way the army almost runs itself, as opposed to having to actually fight to make things work for the xenos armies that I otherwise love! Of course, mistakes were definitely made on my part, but I think I can definitely play smarter in games, so I really want to try to develop my game plan in games going forward. So that will be a work in progress for however longer we have 9th edition 40k.

It has definitely been a productive time in the hobby so far this month, and already I have been able to check off one of my hobby goals for the year, by getting more ZM scenery painted! I don’t know if I will actually be able to get the whole box painted, of course, but it would be just lovely if I did end up getting the whole lot finished. I imagine that games would look so much nicer, if nothing else! I am very aware that 2022 started out really productive too, of course, with lots of Tau units being painted, only for me to falter around Easter time and stuff, so I’m hoping that by taking a much more measured approach to all this, I will actually be able to get somewhere this time. Well, time will tell I suppose!

As far as the hobby stuff goes, then, it’s a little difficult to quantify at the minute because I’ve not really painted up a proper squad per se, but I suppose you could call it one unit (Goliaths) and some terrain (the ZM stuff). That’s against the box of Escher bikes that I bought, so I’m definitely up on the whole bought vs painted thing so far!

This is getting extremely long now though, so I’ll call it a day here. Let’s hope that February is just as productive!!

December 2022 Retrospective

And just like that, 2022 is over. Well, I suppose there are a few more hours to go, but you know what I mean. It’s been quite the month, as well, with quite a decent spread of stuff going on!!

To start with, I was quite impressed with myself for not only building four investigator decks and planning to play the full Dream-Eaters campaign for Arkham Horror LCG, but then making good on the whole thing and just steaming through it in pretty short order! I think my recent track record with Arkham campaigns taking me months to complete didn’t really make me all that positive! But there we have it. I haven’t yet picked up The Scarlet Keys, and I have played most of the Innsmouth campaign, so I’m in the curious place now where I don’t really have any new Arkham content to play…

I really enjoyed playing this one, which I think was important because I hadn’t particularly enjoyed Innsmouth (because of my investigator choice, I think) or Edge of the Earth (because of the story, I think), so it was good to get the love back! I’ve talked a bit recently about going back and playing some of the earlier stuff again, as I definitely preferred those campaigns, so I can see myself making another run at Dunwich in the new year! I do want to retry my luck with Innsmouth, as well, so I think it will possibly be a while before I do actually get round to buying The Scarlet Keys, but equally I am looking forward to seeing how that one works. There’s a lot to be excited about right now!!

I’ve recently had quite a huge splurge on Marvel Champions stuff though, getting a hefty injection of content for my collection between my birthday and Christmas, so I should probably look at playing more of that in the future as well! It’s mad, when I think about it objectively, how I’ve gone from zero to almost a full collection of this stuff in the space of not very long. I’ve definitely been enjoying the game, though, and have spent a couple of evenings sleeving up the new arrivals, so I have the Red Skull and X-Men boxes ready to go now. I can’t quite decide which one to go for first, though!! I’m not really interested in playing them as a campaign, having tried the Thanos campaign but being really underwhelmed with it. I think I’ll probably go towards Red Skull for starters, though, as I have a lot of Avengers heroes that I want to try out still. It doesn’t feel right yet to move on to the mutants…

Marvel does seem to have been on the radar a lot more of late, though, as I’ve finally started to chronicle my thoughts on the Phase 4 stuff we were watching back in the autumn. I think of myself very much as a casual Marvel fan – I’m more likely to froth at the mouth where Star Wars is concerned, than any inconsistencies in the MCU. Yet another reason why my sudden all-out acquisition of the Marvel Champions stuff is a bit mad. But it’s fun, and doesn’t take a lot of concentration to watch this stuff, so I can have it on while building or painting miniatures, or whatever. I’ve got some more catching up to do, though, before I can get to the end of this Phase, so there’s more to come in the new year, hopefully before Phase 5 kicks off in February with the next Ant Man film.

I mentioned Star Wars just now, and I did spend a decent chunk of the month reading the recently published Shadow of the Sith, which was very good! The sequel trilogy has been maligned, much like the prequel trilogy was back in the early 2000s, so I’m personally looking forward to 2035 (or so) when I expect the fans to start enjoying it in favour of whatever other new thing is currently causing the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. For me, the sequels aren’t great, but it’s what we have so I’m trying to find the positives. Books like this one help to tie in the new landscape that Disney has blasted into being, so I’m glad that some effort is being made to actually give a backstory to the films. It’s a difficult position to take, but I’ve come to peace with the fact the movies exist, no matter how disappointed I am with the decision to sweep away the old EU.

On an unrelated note, I need to get my act together and finish watching Andor! I’ve watched the first six episodes, but it just dropped off my radar and I’ve not had the inclination to get back to it! Shameful.

At any rate, I’m currently reading The Wraithbone Phoenix, the latest book in the Warhammer Crime series. I started it on Christmas Eve, as an early Christmas present, but I have to say, it’s been a bit of a slog up to now. I think I’m around halfway through, so it shouldn’t be too long before I come back here with some more thoughts. It’s a bit of a shame, though, as I really loved the first book in the imprint.

Speaking of shame, let’s talk about my hobby projects from the month! I’ve really put this whole thing on the back burner, it seems, which is a bit sad really as I had high hopes for another hobby-ful festive period! I have completed the five sword-and-board Lychguard that I had begun to work on back when I moved house, more than three years ago. Considering Lychguard are my favourite Necron models, I’ve actually had some real trouble with these guys, and the warscythe group too, but I’ve finally put those to rest now.

Drukhari have been sneaking into the painting queue for quite a few months now, and I’m so glad to get these three finished as the models were just horrible to paint. Part of that is probably down to my prep of them, but a big part is just the poor finecast material. Again, I’ve had these hanging around for years (at least two of them were built before I moved), so it’s been good to reach into that backlog and just get stuff done. I had planned to get five Wracks finished, then get to work on some more Wych Cult stuff before the year end – Hellions, and another Venom. Well, suffice it to say that the Wracks are close, but not yet finished, so… yeah…

Interestingly, I haven’t done any work on the Grey Knights this year. I often think of them as “my Christmas army” and definitely enjoyed playing games with them this time last year, but they’ve kinda passed me by this year. However, I think there have been a couple of things going on that have perhaps been at work here. First off, I have definitely been playing more other games this year, and have been enjoying a far wider selection of things than I have in years gone by, which has potentially taken time away that would otherwise have been put into painting miniatures. I’ve also just felt like the days have gone by too quickly to really accomplish much of anything!! But also, both of my regular gaming buddies have moved slightly away from 40k, JP towards Middle Earth and James into Age of Sigmar. So my 40k outlets have diminished a bit, though neither of them refuses to play of course (I think both have had significant 40k projects from Santa, too, so they’re not going anywhere!) But it’s been five months since my last game of 40k, and I think it’s beginning to show on me…

I’m sure when I come to think of my 2023 hobby goals, however, I’ll be fired up to get stuff done once again!!

That’s December, so how has 2022 been, overall? I’m a word: odd. My WordPress stats tell me I’ve made 181 posts this year, which is quite good (I posted every day in May, which probably helped!) and my views are up 30% on last year. How wonderful! I know it’s easy to say, but I really do this for the hell of it, and not for the views – if you do read my drivel, I thank you! It’s not like this blog is any kind of revenue stream though, so the views don’t really come into play, I just post stuff regardless! (If you’re interested, my most-viewed post of all time is about Tau support systems, which dates back to 2018. Even all these years later, it keeps getting looked at!)

I touched on this earlier, but I seem to have had a bit of a balance-shift away from the hobby treadmill and instead I’ve moved back to more regular board and card games. Of all the games that I’ve played this year, the living card games have come out on top once again, probably because co-op, solo play is the easiest to effect, and I don’t need to arrange anything in advance.

In all fairness, it has been quite a productive year for me. I think I have benefited from the fact that the kids are just a little bit older now, and even though at 3 and 18 months they can be demanding, we’re in that sort of routine with them both where we can actually get stuff done. I’ve been able to play a lot of games, get a lot of painting done, and I’ve read quite a few books over the course of the year, so I’m quite pleased with that!

According to the stats on boardgamegeek, I’ve played 106 games this year, which doesn’t really seem a lot, I know. Almost nine a month? Hm. There are some very interesting titles among those games, of course, such as getting in a game of Warhammer Underworlds, trying out the Ghostbusters game, I even got to play Rune Age and Runebound once again! 2022 has definitely been a year or rediscovery for me, of breaking the run of games going unplayed. Looking ahead, I’m planning to initiate a bit of a plan to get more games played, but not something that relies on me playing three or four campaigns of Arkham Horror LCG to bump the numbers up!! It does irk me a little when I look at my games, and how much a lot of them have cost, but how many of them are going unplayed. I’m therefore not trying to set out some kind of stringent plan that must be adhered to, but instead I want to come up with something, a bit like the hobby goals blog that you’re all doubtless looking forward to reading tomorrow, that will focus the mind so that I can just make sure I do get to enjoy all of these games that I’ve bought!

Reading
My major project for 2022 was the Summer of Star Wars, where I re-read the prequel era stuff. There were a couple of things that I had never read before, but by and large I was reading stuff that I was fairly-to-very familiar with. I think it was a little over 5 months, in total, to read from Darth Plagueis all the way through to Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader, and while it was a lot of fun to read some of these things that I hadn’t read for ages I think I went a bit overboard at times, and was reading a lot of stuff for the sake of it, etc. Normally, when I would re-read the prequel stuff, I had formed “my version” of the continuity, leaving out the boring stuff, and just sticking with the good stuff (like Cloak of Deception – yes, it’s an amazing book!)

I’d started the year with the new Thrawn: Ascendancy trilogy, which was a pretty good series if truth be told. I think reading it back-to-back like that was a good benefit, as otherwise I suppose it might have lost something. I had been surprised at how un-Star Wars the trilogy felt, and yet it remained great! I’ve also pretty much finished the year with Star Wars as well, reading Shadow of the Sith and being pretty impressed, I have to say! The sequel era is still like some kind of weird wasteland though, and I definitely want to have more of the timeline filled out there – more info on what is going on between the trilogies, especially. Mystery is good and all, but when it isn’t paid off, there’s just no point!!

In addition to all the Star Wars stuff, I’ve made a return to the Horus Heresy, and have made a start with reading The Witcher books with my fellow bloggers Jenn, Dave and Milou. We’re poised to start on book four in the new year, so it’ll be interesting to see where the series goes as I have no prior knowledge for what to expect, having never really been into the gaming side of it all.

Gaming
This year has been pretty spectacular in many respects. In addition to the usual stuff, 40k and Lord of the Rings, Arkham Horror LCG etc, which have made regular appearances for the last few years, I’ve really rediscovered loads of games, bringing a lot of old favourites back to the table such as Runebound, A Touch of Evil, Eldritch Horror and even the Star Wars LCG!

The game that has stood out for me by far is Marvel Champions, which was a fairly late discovery as I only started to play with it in August. It has proven to be really easy and really enjoyable to play though, and I’m surprised I hadn’t looked into it sooner. Over the latter half of the year, especially Christmas time, I’ve picked up almost the whole line for the game, with just a few odd packs still on the shopping list. By virtue of it being a quick game that is fairly self-contained, it is up there as one of the games that I have played the most this year.

Vying for the top spot of Most Played Game of 2022 is Arkham Horror LCG, which has seen a lot of table time by virtue of having played through three whole campaigns, plus part of a fourth, as well as giving some of the stand-alone scenarios a try. I talked about this recently, but I would like to play some of the early campaigns again, so have started to think about who I would like to take with me through Dunwich or Carcosa again – I have played Dunwich twice already, so I think I might try Carcosa again. And given the fact that I really like it when Arkham Horror takes place in Arkham, I think I might go for The Circle Undone once more as well. I’m planning to pick up The Silver Keys in due course as well, though, so I’m sure that will appear on the radar.

I am planning to try to get much more regular gaming in throughout 2023 though – getting to play with some of those big-box classics has really made me want to play more, if for no other reason than to try and get my money’s worth from them! I have a lot of games, and they aren’t exactly cheap either, so it would be great if I could actually play more with them. I’m not really into discovering new games these days, as I know a lot of tabletop gamers can be, so I’ll have a blog about my plans for the coming year coming up early on in January!

Painting
Ah yes, the dreaded Hobby Progress 2022 update! Let’s remind ourselves, shall we, of the goals that I’d set at the start of the year…

Paint more terrain
Adepta Sororitas – paint more models
Build & paint the Ossiarch Bonereapers units I have
Continue to paint Genestealer Cults
Paint up those Tyranids that have been primed
Try to sort out the other armies!
Start painting a new Tau army

Well, in going over those points, I was struck by how much I actually have done towards these goals. It’s not like I’m going to get some kind of bar chart out, but I think I have done a fair bit within every point to say that it has been a success, this year!

To start with, I have painted more terrain. I spent almost two-thirds of the year painting up the Galvanic Magnavent, but it’s finally finished, so that’s the second big piece of terrain that I can firmly tick off the list. To add to this, I’ve also finished off the Thermic Plasma Conduits, and the first Haemotrope Reactor. In addition, I’ve also painted up the entire box of Ash Wastes terrain for Necromunda! So I’m quite pleased with the first point there, getting a number of kits finished.

The Adepta Sororitas were something of a bete-noir for me for a long time, as I had gone through so many different ideas for colour schemes for them. After setting myself the goal this year of painting them once more, I floundered for a long time, and I think around Easter I did consider just off-loading the whole lot, as it just didn’t seem like it was going to happen for me. But then, during the Wimbledon final, I stripped the paint off those models that I had tried a few schemes on and, in very short order I was able to get the squad of ten finished. Since then, it’s kinda snowballed for me, and I’ve been able to get a good chunk of models painted up! I’m very pleased with this one, and would go as far as to say it’s been my biggest success of the year!

As far as the Bonereapers are concerned, however, I have built up five cavalry models, and primed them. And that’s where it ends… Genestealer Cults have had the Nexos painted, which I know is just one model, but still! I do have quite a few models left to paint here, and I would like to try to get back to these guys at some point. Tyranids were a bit of a surprise, as they’re an army that’s always in the back of my mind, but I never seem to make any effort with them. However, this year I did get two carnifexes finished, which was a real delight – horrible models to assemble, but they look great when they’re finished!

In terms of my other armies, I have done some work to thin the ranks, getting the Blood Angels sold off. I still have my Deathwatch and Tempestus Scions, which I’ve just not been able to part with as I love the models so much, but we’ll have to see on that front. I have a good amount of AdMech to keep as a single army, so I might get round to finishing off painting some of those models at some point. I have actually spent a good chunk of the year painting up Drukhari, getting my Wych Cult models off to a better start, as well as that Raider, then the Grotesques and Wracks most recently. In terms of my Necrons, I have finished off the Lychguard and Tomb Blades, which have been projects in varying stages of half-completion for years, and I have done some more work on the Immortals to make their weapons look nicer. Chaos Marines have had some love too, with the Sorcerer and my first ten-man squad being completed. To top it all off, I’ve been able to paint two of the Kill Teams from the big boxes, as well. So within the catch-all heading of “other stuff”, it’s been pretty good!

Finally, my Tau army. It all started so well, but I think maybe I had been too blinkered in just painting Tau for the first few months of the year, and so I grew a bit listless and stuff. It’s a very exciting project for me, though, and I have recently begun to think once again about getting the brushes out for these guys. I think it’s a better idea to take more of a measured approach this time, though, and not just go all-in but try to keep things mixed-up for variety. Maybe a couple of Tau things, a couple of Sisters, some Drukhari or Necrons, maybe even some Genestealers, and see where we get to. But I have painted up a fairly decent amount of stuff over those first few months, so I think it’ll be nice to add to that once again.

All in all, then, I’m quite pleased with my progress during 2022. I’ve been totting up the bought vs painted figures, and in terms of boxes painted, the painted far outweighs the bought (14 bought and 37 painted), but in terms of the models, if we assume the distribution for some stuff like Kill Team boxes, I’ve actually bought 178 models, and painted 179! So that’s very interesting indeed!

This is all getting very wordy now, though, so I think I will stop rambling now. Have a wonderful new year, everybody, and stay tuned for more rambles in 2023! You know you love it!

Hobby Goals 2022 – two months left

With just two months left of this year, it’s time to check-in with the hobby goals and see what I can do to get myself back on track before new year. Let’s just take another look at what I had decided to do this year:
1. Paint more terrain
2. Start painting the Adepta Sororitas
3. Finish painting the Ossiarch Bonereapers kits that I have
4. Continue to paint up the Genestealer Cultists
5. Paint up the Tyranid models that are currently primed
6. Try to sort out the AdMech, Drukhari, Necrons and Chaos Marines, and other bits!
7. Start painting the new Tau army

I’ve got a fairly nice start to the sector mechanicus stuff now, with two of the big kits done. I was toying with possibly doing a third, but for now I’ve moved into other stuff, namely the Haemotrope Reactor, and I am thinking I might try to get at least one armoured container before the year is out. But I don’t want to go too crazy, as I seem to have a lot that I want to get through!

Considering when I last looked at the hobby goals, back in July, I hadn’t done anything with the Sisters, I now have a whole bunch of them done! 30+ models painted across the last couple of months is pretty good going, even if I say so myself! I’m really enjoying the colour scheme as well, it’s quite easy to replicate across the various units, and it’s great to see the army coming together – at long last!!

Okay, so I haven’t actually painted any more Bonereaper miniatures, but after playing my first game at the end of July, I did build these cavalry up in short order. They’re primed and ready, but just not on the list for me right now.

Now, I haven’t painted up any more Genestealer Cultists since that great run I had on them twelve months back, but you never know whether I might still pick up the bikers before Christmas! For the last couple of weeks, they have been back on my radar…

Tyranids made a surprise return to my painting queue a while back, and I finished the carnifexes that have been hanging about for a few years. It was a surprise move, but it was nice to have a couple more models painted up for these bugs. I think I mentioned it before, but I do consider the models that I have as a complete force, so in a way it is quite nice to dip in and out every so often to just add to a couple more to the painted pile, as it were! I have a few more primed models now, but as with the Bonereapers, I don’t think I’m going to be adding any more to the list of what to do by the end of the year.

My Chaos Marines have had a bit of love this year, with a few more models added to the painted pile – the first squad of Legionnaires and the Sorcerer are now joining the Master of Possession! I had hoped to start on the Cultists this year, but as is now becoming a theme with this post, it probably isn’t something that I’m going to get round to soon…

My Necrons have actually had a couple of outings this year, and I’ve been trying to spruce some of the models up to get the blue, in particular, looking better. I’m actually really pleased to say that all of the troops have been looked over now. I also recently finished getting the tomb blades painted up, which is very good! Slowly but surely, I’m getting all of these mechanical chaps painted! In a surprise twist, I am intending to get some more Necrons done – hopefully I’ll be able to get some Lychguard done soon, anyway.

The Dark Eldar seem to have been making a bit of a stealth return, after doing the Raider, plus of course the Wych Cult!

It’s one of my favourite armies that I own, and I’m really excited to have been able to get more of these painted recently. The Wych Cult in particular is good to get to the table, as they’ve been languishing for ages now. Unfortunately, I still haven’t been able to get a game with them, though I hope that will change in due course. I’m also hoping that I might get some more Dark Eldar painted soon, too…

The Tau project is a curious one. I started the year really strongly with getting two units of Pathfinders, a unit of Fire Warriors, and the Commander done within the space of about ten weeks. I guess I was a little burnt out though? I started casting around for other projects as a bit of a palette cleanser, and eight months on, I still haven’t picked them back up. I’m not saying that I’m going off them, not at all, but I seem to have a lot of competing projects and the Tau currently aren’t on the agenda, sadly. But I’m hoping that I will be able to get back to the Sa’cea Sept very soon!!

I’ve got a few projects for the winter that I’m looking forward to getting round to. Near to the top of that list is, of course, this beautiful Ash Wastes terrain. The tutorial video that I’ve been keeping in mind, from Mediocre Hobbies, reckons it won’t be long to get painted, but I’m not so sure – it is me, after all!! But you never know.

More Necrons, possibly more Dark Eldar, and likely more Sisters are all on the list for the next two months, though I’m also aware that we’re approaching Grey Knights season! If you’ve not been reading my blog for very long, every winter for the past 4-5 years, I’ve been working on my Grey Knights, and it now feels wrong for me to think about painting or playing with the army at any other time of the year! I think I will very likely be working once more on these models by December, so I am conscious that I don’t want to be over-loading myself with projects being crammed in just for the sake of things.

Join me in two months’ time, to see where I end up!!

January 2022 retrospective

Hey everybody,
January has been pretty damn productive, I have to say! I’m very impressed with myself, even if the month did feel like it lasted for about a decade. For starters, I’ve made a really good start with my new year, new army, getting two full squads of Tau Pathfinders painted, along with their associated drones. That’s been a really big boost, as far as I’m concerned, because I think I’ve shown that I can get a lot of models finished in a fairly quick turnaround. As with all these sorts of things, it’s often slower while sorting out the colour scheme, so now that I’ve got that sorted out, I think I should be able to keep the pace and have a half-decent army painted by the time Easter rolls around!

For February, I’m planning to paint up some Fire Warriors, again with their associated drones, so we shall see where I get to there.

I had my first game with the new Genestealer Cults book as well, and it was quite the uphill struggle, I have to say! The last time I had a game with these guys, it was 8^th edition and I had no idea what I was up to, but the army was predominantly unpainted – this time, everything was painted, and it made such a difference to the visual style, I have to say. I had no idea about the stratagems, and I think potentially only used one or two the whole game – I was otherwise using Command Re-Roll all the time! I think I made a mistake with going all-Neophytes in my troops, though, and using the Hybrid Metamorphs for close combat seemed a bit of a waste as they really weren’t as good as I had been expecting. I think I’ve been clinging to the Metamorph bomb idea from last edition, but as I said last time, it’s something that I wanted to try, just to see what would happen.

I should clarify that the Metamorphs aren’t necessarily bad per se, they just didn’t seem to work well at the lower points limit. I think at a higher points game, they could still be useful as a bodyguard-type unit. We shall see!

For the next time, though, I’m making some swaps – so removing the Metamorphs and the truck, and taking the bikes and a group of Acolyte Hybrids. It seems there are some interesting things that you can do with the Atalan Jackals, so I’m excited to see what will happen there. I’ve made some notes, though, so have a better idea of what I can get up to with the army. Hopefully this is something that I will be doing more of as time goes on, and I try to improve as a player – I’m not talking tournament-dedicated or anything, but I definitely want to be a better player, and hopefully provide a better sort of game for my opponent. I’ll probably be talking more about this in the coming weeks, anyway.

I’ve begun the long and arduous process of going through my various piles of shame as well, in an attempt to properly thin the ranks once more. I’m sure there’ll be more to say on this in the fullness of time, of course, but I’ve discovered that I have almost 900 points of AdMech and 1300 points of Black Legion, which is quite a surprise! I have big chunks of Sisters and Tyranids, among others, which will all need to be looked at quite carefully in the coming months, as I really feel like I’m drowning in plastic at the minute. I have some projects that I haven’t touched either at all, or else for years, which is making me wonder if I’ll ever get round to them.

I think I need to be much more careful with my hobby spends and my hobby time, as the family grows and whatnot. I am somewhere in the area of having my hobby feeling a bit less enjoyable right now, like something I have to do, so it would definitely be an idea to give this some serious thought. There’s also so much coming out that I’m looking forward to…

I’ve also been chipping away at the scenery piece that I’ve got on the table, and it’s coming along quite nicely, I think! I have been through all of my Sector Mechanicus terrain pieces to see what’s going on. There is a lot still to do, but in all honesty I’m not focusing on this stuff right now, it’s all been about the Tau Pathfinders!!

It’s not been all about 40k though. I’ve been reading the Thrawn Ascendancy series, and have made it through the first two books of the trilogy so far. I’ve already written up some thoughts on the first book, which you can read here, and after finishing the second book last night, I’ll get my next instalment out sometime this week. I had the third book for Christmas, so will move on to that one next, I think.

A bit disappointingly, I’ve not been playing any Arkham Horror LCG for weeks, now! I played In Too Deep at the end of November, but for two months now it’s just been untouched! Meanwhile, the Edge of the Earth campaign that has been sleeved and is ready to go. I definitely need to get my act together, although I am clinging to the idea that I wasn’t really playing The Circle Undone until March, so there’s hope!

I am enjoying The Innsmouth Conspiracy, and I am looking forward to getting my teeth into The Edge of the Earth when the time comes! But everything has been so much about 40k so far, so I guess I need to just ride that wave!

Painting Updates!

Hey everybody,
I feel like 2022 has started out in a really positive way for me and the hobby! I’ve been painting every evening, which always makes me feel better about things as I can see my progress with stuff.

To start with, I’ve been having a lot of fun painting up the unit of Tau Pathfinders. Initially, there were some hurdles to overcome as I was trying to devise my paint scheme for them, working from the old Citadel pdf guide, and even once that was sorted, I was somehow finding it easier to paint models one at a time. Urgh! However, since the weekend I’ve gone for more of a traditional batch paint style, and have gotten them to a decent point so far.

The cloth is drybrushed with Mechanicus Standard Grey and then Dawnstone, only lightly. I’m toying with the idea of then shading with Nuln Oil, but for now have left it as it is. The armour is then painted with Russ Grey – the original mini I painted up then had an all-over layer of Fenrisian Grey, but I’m thinking I may go for an edge highlight of that instead. I’m also going to try and line shade them with Drakenhof Nightshade. The skin is a light drybrush of Mournfang Brown and Squig Orange – a departure from the normal Tau skin tone, which would otherwise have been too close to the armour colour.

For the weapons, I’ve gone for a layer of Dawnstone and then Administratum Grey, then a shade of Drakenhof Nightshade, aiming for a slightly patchy look to simulate camo. This is largely the scheme – there are some metallic areas that I will paint accordingly, and some of the special kit is painted with Sotek Green and highlighted with Temple Guard Blue, but in the main the basic scheme is quite straightforward. The scheme is also replicated across the drones, and I was initially a bit concerned that they might look a little flat, having no highlights, but really that’s kinda the point – I want a sort of plasticky look to them, if you know what I mean?

I’ve bought a Start Collecting set for the army as well, as I thought it would be good to get the Crisis Suits and Fire Warriors for such a good price, as well as a bonus Ethereal. They have recently announced the Combat Patrol box, which switches up Crisis Suits for a Ghostkeel and Stealth Suit team, and includes a Cadre Fireblade as well as Ethereal and Fire Warriors. So that’s very impressive, though the price will be adjusted as well, no doubt! However, I paid £54 for the SC box, and CP boxes are £65.50 at my local shop, so it’s not much of a hike – and I have been thinking about a Ghostkeel recently, more for the model than any kind of desire for a stealth aspect to the force! I really think the Stealth team looks goofy, so I don’t know if I’d want those guys as well. But anyway!

I’ve also been painting some more terrain, which is just wonderful! Back in 2020 I painted up a Ferratonic Incinerator but didn’t make any notes on the scheme, more fool me. Interestingly, though, it is fairly close to my Tau – the actual vats are drybrushed with Russ Grey and Fenrisian Grey, and then Administratum Grey, in a crosswise pattern to try to simulate paint. The walkways are Macragge Blue, which has been heavily drybrushed on, then further drybrushes of Fenrisian Grey and Screaming Skull have been added to lighten it up a little. The support struts are just drybrushed with Administratum Grey. I’m then picking out pipes and associated bits and pieces with metallics, trying not to go too overboard.

I’m painting up a Galvanic Magnavent this time around – it’s one of two that I have built, though neither of them is built according to the instructions! I think I’ve always been a bit like that – as a child with Lego, I would always enjoy more the alternative builds from the back of the box, you know? So I have the current build, and I have this one, which was the first one I had built.

I love this scenery, and I really want to do something fancy with it all. I mean, certainly do something fancy to link up some of the kits that I have! In addition to the big pieces, I’ve got the Haemotrope Reactors and Alchomite Stack stuff that would possibly look fantastic with something to link it all together. I’m not sure what, though, and I’m not sure how, but I think it would be marvellous! I guess we’ll just have to see.

Hobby Update 2021!

Hey everybody,
It’s New Year’s Eve, which can mean only one thing – let’s evaluate the past twelve months, and tot up all the places where I succeeded and where I missed out on my hobby goals that were projected a year ago! Spoiler alert: I don’t think I did very well…

Paint up the Sisters of Battle 500-point list (well, it’s a little more than 500 points, but the point stands!)
Hm. I did make some efforts with the Sisters during the year, and I think I have a colour scheme that I like now, but I have not made massive in-roads here, as the project was fairly quickly abandoned, if I’m honest! I don’t want to get rid of these models though, so I think I might give it some more thought in 2022 and see whether I can make more of an effort to get some models finished.

Finish up the Drukhari models – 5 Wracks, 3 Grotesques, 5 Incubi and Drahzar.
I did actually paint up 5 Incubi, and I’ve done the skin on both the Wracks and the Grotesques. But that’s pretty much as far as it goes. I don’t know if it’s been the lack of games, or something else, but I just haven’t really been feeling the Dark Eldar in 2021.

Paint up at least 2 Tyranid units, at least one of which is a big bug!
Well, this one failed pretty badly! I have sort of painted five Genestealers, but I don’t think that’s even a minimum-sized squad. Tyranids have been big on my radar during this year, but for whatever reason, I’ve just not really found the inclination to actually make this one come through, either.

Continue rescuing Necron models – Triarch Praetorians, Canoptek Spyder, etc
Okay, so I have painted some Necron models, but I haven’t really rescued all that many. They’re on my list – heck, some of them have been on my painting station for a long time! – and while I still have a lot of affection for the undead space robots, I haven’t managed to get all that many models painted this year. I did paint the five Triarch Praetorians that were a rescue job around two years in the making, and I have painted up a couple of the character models from Indomitus and the Psychomancer, so it’s not a complete failure on this one.

Paint more Grey Knights! At least three more units, maybe a vehicle too.
Well. I’ve not actually finished any further Grey Knights units just yet, but my goodness, I’ve been playing with them, and it has been great! I’ve started work on my second Strike Squad, but I really want to do these models justice, so I’m just slowly taking my time and working through them, and I hope that eventually I’ll have a good force fully painted up. As ever, stay tuned for this one!

Also paint more Chaos Marines! At least three units, and perhaps a bigger thing, as well.
I haven’t painted anything for the Heretic Astartes this year – shocking, I know! I believe there is a huge new release due for them in the new year, however, so I imagine there might be some more movement on this one soon…

Make a decision about the Scions, Deathwatch and AdMech models! Do I want to keep all of those Space Marines kits?
I don’t know! I really don’t know if I want to keep all of these extraneous models. I just want to have them, but I can’t really imagine myself ever playing games with them, really. AdMech I can possibly see myself playing as allies for maybe the Grey Knights or something, though I just don’t know yet… These are mostly just kept in the loft still, though. Shame!

Paint more terrain – mainly for Necromunda, but also general 40k stuff.
While I haven’t painted any more terrain (certainly not to completion), I have built up plenty. The Gang Stronghold from last Christmas, the new Kill Team box, the Sanctum and the associated ruins… There is a lot of terrain that has been constructed in 2021, and I think I need to be better at chipping away at this sort of thing, though without a real plan for it I do find myself floundering at times! All that said, I have done myself proud with the Zone Mortalis stuff, getting a few walls and columns painted up there. So it hasn’t been a complete waste, at least!

Okay, so if that’s all of the stuff that I had planned to do – what have I actually been doing with my time?!

To start with, I painted up a fairly significant chunk of Ossiarch Bonereapers, I think the final count has it around 1500 points of models there, not quite sure. I do love those models, and I’m thinking I might come back to them in 2022 if there are more models promised for release – archers, maybe?! I also painted up some of the Sigmarite ruins scatter terrain, a fairly quick job across some small pieces, and finally finished the Unmade warband for Warcry. That game has informed a lot of my time in 2021, I feel – and a surprise discovery of Underworlds meant that I spent a good chunk of the early part of the year in the Mortal Realms – which, of course, I hadn’t planned for!

Back in September, though, all of my hobby plans were slightly de-railed when I decided to throw everything out the window and focus almost exclusively on my Genestealer Cultists, having had the models since their initial release in 7th edition, but never really making any serious effort to paint them. Well, I’m currently around the 1200 points mark with these guys, which is just great, so I’m looking forward to getting their codex in the new year, and hopefully getting some games in with them!

Speaking of games, I’m surprised at how many times I was able to play GW games this year. True, a lot of these were solo affairs while we were stuck in one of the many lockdowns, but I’ve still managed to play Necromunda, Warhammer Underworlds, Warcry and Warhammer 40k during the year! Underworlds, as I mentioned, was a surprise at how much I enjoyed it, and while I might not necessarily be following it in the new Harrowdeep season, I do like the fact that I have a good collection of stuff to have (hopefully!) many fun and enjoyable games in the future. Warcry is a firm favourite, and the recent Red Harvest set has just bowled me over once again at how much they put into these releases. I’m still in the process of building this up, so I haven’t yet been able to try out the new mine terrain etc, but I am very excited to get it all finished, etc!

40k has been good, as well. I’ve played a lot of games with Grey Knights, both small and large, and I think I’m getting to grips with the way these guys play now. It’s been a lot of fun to play the smaller scale games with James and his Black Templars, as we’re both learning these armies, but by extension we’re finally getting to cement the small rules tweaks of 9th edition in our minds, as we’re not playing particularly rushed or competitive, but instead taking the time to ensure we’re doing things properly. James is a great thinker about the game, too, and he watches more battle reports than me, so I enjoy the post-mortem afterwards as we go through what had happened.

Come back tomorrow, though, as I run through some of my hopes and dreams for the hobby in 2022!

2021 Hobby Goals check-in

Hey everybody,

We’re a little way over halfway through the year now, so I thought it would be good to check in on where I’m up to, as regards fulfilling those goals that were set out back in January!

To start with, I’ve been trying to do more with my Sisters, working on the original Battle Sister squad from the launch box, which I had previously tried to paint in a couple of different schemes, but haven’t yet managed to get very far! I have been doing a great deal of research into the faction, which had been inspiring me to get them painted, but the project stalled when Necromunda came heavily back onto my radar!

So far, then, not much has been done.

Next up we’re the Drukhari, and I had planned to paint up 5 Wracks, 3 Grotesques, 5 Incubi and Drahzar. So far, I’ve painted 5 Incubi, which is delightful, and I’ve also made some progress with the Coven models as well. I’m hopeful that I might actually achieve this one by the end of the year, anyway!

I need to think about what I want to do with those armies for which I have so many unpainted or partially painted things. AdMech, Deathwatch, Tempestus Scions and Blood Angels, specifically. I’m pretty much set on keeping my Genestealer Cults and my Tyranids, though at this point I don’t really have them on my radar. The same is true of my Grey Knights – I think the winter time is when I tend to go down that road, anyway – though with the new Castellan Crowe model on the horizon, that could well change. I still have Heretic Astartes on the radar as well, though not far enough up the list where I want to start working on them. Similar story with my Necrons really, I had wanted to try to rescue some more of the older models that I have hanging about, but so far all I’ve done is finish a couple of the newer models.

I’m always in a bit of a quandary over the Imperium armies, because on the one hand I think it’s really cool to have the sort of classic 40k army, with tanks and such – I just find it so inspirational! But on the other hand, I feel as though I’m forever taking on too much, and I do feel that need to trim back my projects!!

Lastly, I wanted to paint more terrain. Well, I’ve not managed to do anything with that one yet, either!! I really want to try and get some Sector Mechanicus stuff finished, in particular the Alchomite Stack that has been partially painted for a couple of years now. I have quite a lot of stuff though, but having finally figured out a colour scheme when painting up the Ferratonic Incinerator at the end of last year, I’m hopeful that I could get another terrain piece finished by the end of the year!

So, if I’m doing this badly at keeping to my goals, what the hell have I been doing?!

Despite all of my goals being centred around 40k, I’ve actually spent the year painting up a near-complete army for Age of Sigmar! I’ve painted up loads of Ossiarch Bonereapers, which makes me happy! I’ve even done some terrain for the fantasy game! Definitely unexpected, that one!

At the minute, I’m not really able to paint anything, as I’m in full-on baby-care mode. But hopefully as the year moves on, I’ll be able to get somewhere as life returns to something like normal. Fingers crossed!! It’ll be interesting to see how far I get with all this!!