I will be honest I have had quite a boring week, other than a night away in Newcastle with Megan it’s been all rather dull and ordinary, with that last part of the week taken up with a little bit of a tummy bug.

What I am Modelling

I finally finished the Heavy Support Squad for my Word Bearers, might go back to them and add some scripture, but I am actually rather happy with them. They were built using the Forgeworld MKIV Legion Heavy Support Squad with some of the Word Bearers torso and head upgrades, which I regret using as the size of the Missile Launchers make it hard to see them. But these knock off something from my January list which is nice.

I also finished a unit of five Blood Reavers from the Storm of Sigmar box, which will begin my slow build Khorne Bloodbound. For the entirety of next year, the Durham Raiders are going to be running a slow build Age of Sigmar campaign where we all build and paint things to eventually get to a list of 2000 points. I have decided to do Khorne Bloodbound because it’s more than likely a number of players will be doing Stormcast Eternals from the starter box, so I figured I would be a little different. Plus it’s more of a challenge to me, they represent something very different from what I normally paint. It also had my first ever attempt at Dark Skin in there, and I think I did ok with it, well I am happy at least.

I have a squad of Word Bearers Cataphractii Terminators which have just hit the table, tonight I have finished the red armour, something I do by first of all painting it with Mepheston Red, then washing it with Nuln Oil, tidy up with Mepheston Red again, then a dry brush of Astoreth Red followed by a lighter dry brush of Kindleflame.

I also have the Cataphractii Praetor at this stage as well, this is the event only model with the Combi-Volkite and Thunderhammer.

What I am Reading

I have started reading Sons of the Forge, I must admit I have not been the biggest fan of the Salamanders books by Nick Kyme, I don’t know what it is, but I just can’t follow them as easily as other books, and this is proving no different. I suspect it’s the very large cast in it, a cast with names which are not as easy to remember because they are unusual names, I never used to have this kind of trouble but that’s what a brain injury will do I suppose.

On the audio book front, I just finished listening to The Honoured and have just started The Unburdened, so still very much on the Calth stuff. These two books themselves were ok, they didn’t really do much bar fill in a bit of the background of Kurtha Sedd. But then again they were tie in novels for the Betrayal at Calth game and follow the scenarios in that game, so they are rather limited in nature, but seeing the same events from two different perspectives is interesting.

What I am Playing

Played my first game of Blood Bowl in about 20 years on Tuesday at club, I played David, who had his Skaven and I had the Orcs. I chose to kick first after winning the toss, which in reflection may have been a mistake.

The Skaven were able to swamp my Black Orcs with a Rat Ogre, which let the Gutter Runner through to score a touchdown very quickly. I then readjusted my strategy and decided to make it as difficult as possible for him to get his Gutter Runners down the wide zones as had been his tactic when scoring and trying to get the ball and throw it upfield to an awaiting Lineman. 

This actually worked for me, bar the fact it ended up being a Blitzer I had upfield, but still I got a touchdown and the game looked to be headed to a draw.

But then in the last few turns of the last half, disaster struck, David got so very lucky, he set himself up so that he could get a gutter runner in my half, and swamped players in his so that they couldn’t assist one another in attempting to take his down. And with some very lucky dice rolls and more sixes than I have seen in a long time, he passed the ball to his Gutter Runner, who then passed through two players tackle zones to fly downfield and score a touchdown for the final moment of the game, meaning I lost 2-1.

I really enjoyed the game and it was a lot of fun, but the Rat Ogre was very hard to play against, so my thoughts at the moment are that it’s a little difficult for the initial basic teams to come up against some of the extras that players who never stoped playing have. But given time I am sure that will be resolved. My loss in all honesty was down to me simply not being able to take out those ruddy Gutter Runners, they were just too fast.

What I am Backing

Nowt right now, but I am eagerly hoping that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:- Shadows of the Past game will be with me by Christmas, currently I am not confident it will be.

What I am Spending

I think I am finally done with Christmas presents, so I treat myself to a meal at Laus 202 in Newcastle, and a second hand copy of the updated Tau Empire Codex from eBay.