Today Lindsay and Megan insisted we put up the Christmas trees, personally I’d rather have left it until next weekend, but I always get overruled on this.

I say trees, because we have two trees, in the office we have an adult grown up tree, and in the den, we have a geeky/nerdy tree.

The adult tree has our oldest collection of decorations on it, but it’s an ever evolving collection, as we add to it every year, these generally until the last few years kept to the red, green, gold theme, but recently whites, woods and even blues have been creeping in.

Something that I insisted on, and Lindsay eventually came to love was that no two decorations on the tree should be the same. I hate trees which are filled with identical decorations, they just feel so impersonal.

Having each decoration be unique has meant that everything on there has a story to tell, for example, a favourite of mine is one of the oldest we own, it came from ASDA about 17 years ago and looks like the derided sculpture called B of the Bang. I like it because of that, it just makes me smile every time we put it on.

There are also a couple of decorations that Lindsay brought home from India, and a bunch now that Megan brought from her parents tree to give it an infusion of her, and since we came together, we have bought decorations together.

The upstairs tree, the nerdy one, has at its core a box of Disney decorations that Lindsay got from her grandparents plus some other ones that we have picked up other the years.

Star Wars has a good representation on this tree, but no Star Trek yet, we have just added , Captain Marvel, and have our eyes in Beymax.

My personal favourite decorations on this tree is a Spider-Man one we picked up a couple of years ago from Poundland and a Stormcast Eternal and Primaris Intercessor I got from Games Workshop a couple of years ago, that I have painted up gold and turned into decorations.

Oh and the tree topper is a Cthulhu stuffy that Megan crocheted, although he is looking a little worse for wear now.

What Am I Painting

The week started with the first of the Death Korps of Krieg Death Riders, finished on late Saturday night, followed by the others on Monday.

I then picked up the Tempestus Scions and their Taurox and got them finished over a couple of days, I needed to do something whilst I sought out mental inspiration for finishing up Ghazghkull Thraka.

I love the Scions and have plans to do an army of them allied with some Sisters of Battle led by an Inquisitor.

With those done I came back to Ghazghkull Thraka and got him finished off for Alexander, and I am quite happy with how he turned out.

I then picked up two Lords of Contagion, and the remaining five Death Riders to paint up and got them finished on Saturday afternoon.

I then painted Zarbag’s Gitz, I am very behind on my Underworlds Warbands and I am going to try and finish the Nightvault ones by the end of the year. So after this I will be doing The Godsworn Hunt and later on in the month Mollog’s Mob and Ylthari’s Guardians.

I am now working on all 20 Poxwalkers I got from Warhammer 40,000 Conquest, but these are being done with Contrast so they won’t take long at all.

My painting queue currently looks like this now, I have sent a Death Korps of Krieg Infantry Squad back a bit in the schedule, I have quite a bit of them at the moment painted and until I hand over this batch to Niki, I don’t want to try and squeeze more in the box.

  1. The Godsworn Hunt
  2. Death Korps of Krieg Infantry Squad
  3. Plague Marines and Icon Bearer
  4. Custodian Guard
  5. Imperial Objectives
  6. Death Korps of Krieg Commissars and Severina Raine
  7. Blood Ravens Lieutenants
  8. Foetid Bloat-Drones
  9. Death Korps of Krieg Infantry Squad
  10. Mollog’s Mob

What I am Reading

I started with the novella Wreak and Ruin which was an entertaining little yarn, and leaves me desperate for more stories in this series. I think a full novel for Sister Augusta is needed to be honest.

I then read The Crystal Cathedral, which is another young Sister Augusta story, and it was pretty good, but way too short.

At this point I decided to pick up a big book, Sister of Battle: The Omnibus by James Swallow, these were the first stories written about the Sisters of Battle and I have only read the first novel, and that was a long time ago.

So I was looking forward to this and quickly demolished the first story, Red and Black, which was previously only available as an audio drama, but it’s a really good audio drama, and one I think lots of people should listen to.

I am well on my way through Faith and Fire and it’s as enjoyable as the first time I read it, but I have never read Hammer & Anvil before so I am looking forward to that one.

I also listened to a couple of audio books, Spear of the Emperor was really good, not a lot of action but you got a real good story about the chapter and about the experiences of the helots of the Mentors.

Then I listened to The Tranzia Rebellion, I had got up to part 6 when it first came out, but it got put aside for a longer book, I can’t remember which. But it was a decent audio, and I am glad I finished it, a cool old fashioned radio drama.

I just finished listening to Call of Archaon as I am quite behind on Age of Sigmar fiction and I want to start reading and listening to some more and figure getting through The Realmgate Wars will give me a good grounding in the setting.

What I am Playing

On Tuesday night we went to Megan’s parents and we wanted to play Hint and Just One, but because the evening went quite wrong, we ended up just playing a couple of games of Just One, but we did manage to score 11 points in the second game!

What I am Backing

Can’t really afford to back anything else right now, so sticking with Car Wars Sixth Edition for which now my pledge also includes Miniatures Set 3, a Dice Bag, Crew Pack and Linked Weapons in addition to what I had in it last week, other game components continue to be improved as tuning slowly climbs up.

Munchkin Pathfinder 3 arrived with my friend in the US and is now on its way to me, so I look forward to having that in a couple of weeks.

What I am Cooking

I was supposed to cook enchiladas on Thursday night with Megan, but I chickened out.

What I am Spending

Very broke, so apart from a couple of Christmas presents and my Secret Santa’s, I have spent nowt.