This is a long delayed battle report, and I am very sorry its taken so long, was a bit of a case of lining things up and developing a new workflow that didn’t need days to edit a single report!
Figured it out now, so I have to catch up in order to meet my resolution requirements!
Anyway, enjoy!
Fleet Lists
United Colonies of Mankind
Line Battlegroup
Strategy Rating: 5
1 X Rio
Vanguard Battlegroup
Strategy Rating: 12
1 X Moscow
2 X New Orleans
Pathfinder Battlegroup
Strategy Rating: 7
2 X Toulon
1 X Berlin
The Scourge
Pathfinder Battlegroup 1
Strategy Rating: 7
1 X Ifrit
2 X Harpy
Line Battlegroup 1
Strategy Rating: 5
1 X Wyvern
Vanguard Battlegroup 1
Strategy Rating: 12
2 X Gargoyle
1 X Shenlong
These two fleets are made up of models you can find in the Dropfleet Commander boxset from TT Combat, and you can get yourself a copy from Element Games for just £54 and start playing with everything you need!
Alternatively, my old Air Cadet buddy runs Extra Fox Games on eBay where he sells it for £54.49 and helps him out, plus has free postage!
So here is an important disclaimer which is always important to put out there first. I have a casual work contact with Asmodee to demonstrate board games for them in stores and at conventions. Asmodee being the parent company of Aconyte the publisher.
I am going to try my best to not let that cloud my judgement in this review, but I accept that subconsciously it might.
What is Arkham Horror
Anyway that put to one side, let’s look at this book, by first looking at the game Arkham Horror which is a cooperative game, originally designed by Richard Launius, and is now in its third edition which was released in 2019.
It’s published by Fantasy Flight Games, a subsidiary of Asmodee, and is set in 1926 in the town of Arkham, Massachusetts. Each player takes on the role of an investigator, who are working to stop the Ancient Ones, eldritch horrors which lurk in the void beyond space and time.
It’s a 1-6 player game and you work together to gather clues and defeat the evil of the Ancient Ones and save the world.
As I said I haven’t actually played Arkham Horror but I do own its spin off Elder Sign the cooperative dice game.
The Story
In this story we find Professor Miranda Ventham, seriously ill with TB as she books herself into the Stroud Institute, a new sanatorium with a new modern way to treat the disease and heal the patients of Arkham.
But dreams, bad dreams plague Miranda, and she cannot quite shake the feeling that something is wrong, deeply wrong with the Stroud Institute, especially with its mysterious director, Donovan Stroud.
With help from her friend, the parapsycholist Agatha Crane, they work to unravel the mystery of the Stroud Institute, in an investigation that takes them from Arkham, to Scotland and into the heart of the mysterious labyrinth, and the sinister secrets it holds, that is longing to be set free.
Conclusion
This is a subtle book, there aren’t many cultists or monsters as with most Arkham Horror books, but a look at the blurring between dreams and reality with a smattering of Romantic poetry and a look at 1920s health care.
I have been very critical in the past of David Annadales books, but I must admit his Arkham Horror stuff is very good, in fact its probably his strongest stuff and this shows off what he does well, brilliantly. Its a subtle type of horror, almost insidious and it feels like its getting under your skin.
For me this book feels like an idea way to get into the Arkham Horror series, its not too in depth, but touches on and introduces key concepts in the series and the wider Lovecraft mythos is a way that is very apporachable.
The protagonists are really rather good, and I hope to see their further adventures in the future.
One negative, that very nearly had me give up right at the beginning, the prologue is set in Scotland and the local priest is involved, and the locals refer to him as a Vicar, and that annoyed me, because there is not a chance in hell a Scotsman in any day or age will use that word for a priest, and it did destroy any chance of immersion in that prologue and made me feel like the book was going to have been very poorly researched. It just felt lazy, so please rectify that for the next printing, that needs changing to minister, or rector.
But the thing is, the book is incredible well researched, I found myself checking things about the treatment of TB and yeah, they really did stuff like that, so gah, why do I let myself get obsessed over little things like that!
Regardless of that tiny issue, I really loved this book, incredibly good story and its so well written and flows really well.
4 out of 5 stars!
In the Coils of the Labyrinth is out now as a paperback, eBook or audiobook!
The other weekend we had our friend Iain, a fellow games demonstrator, down from Scotland to play Firefly: The Game, which is one of our favourite board games!
So we took the whole day had snacks planned out and we laid out our Whole Damn ‘Verse Mat, and set up all the contact and supply decks and just played a very basic game, in which the aim was to raise $12,000!
For ships, Iain took the Artful Dodger, Lindsay captained Jetwash, Megan sailed on the Emeralda and I was lugging around the S.S. Walden from Pirates & Bounty Hunters.
So there were some interesting differences in our tactics, I went for slow and steady with lots of space for cargo and passengers, Iain went for speed and more crew space, Lindsay wanted a fast ship with some tricks and Megan opted for a ship that could carry people who didn’t want any Alliance entanglements.
We had a great time and played for a good number of hours, but in the end, of course Megan won, me and Iain were quite close with just $200 between us, and Lindsay ended up with no meney!
Well let’s be honest, there were a lot of issues, huge numbers of them, and let me be frank about the biggest issue, the shop.
The shop is something that GW should be able to and can do well, at the UK Games Expo last year they had a far bigger presence and more stock, what they had in Manchester was small and focused on a few stands.
The queue to pay was 90 minutes long, there was very very little third party licenced stuff, a few McFarlane and JoyToy figures, a small selection of the Cubicle 7 RPGs and a limited number of art prints.
So no board games, clothing, dice bags, posters, phone cases, mugs, notebooks etc
It felt very lacking in terms of that stuff.
There were a few gaming stalls and credit to them, they put on an amazing show, but because they were one of the few things there, the queues were mental.
Never got a chance to try Boltgun, but I am gonna preorder it anyway, the community lass from Tacticus convinced me to give it a go, and it’s actually pretty good.
Warpforge seems a lot of fun and Horus Heresy Legions is as good as ever.
There was one set of painted models on display for 10th edition 40K, in between the queue for the shop and the queue to try 10th edition, so you could barely get to take a gander at them.
There were 5 tables to try 10th on and a lad I know queued for 4 hours to get a turn at trying it, which if I am honest was ridiculous and a bit of stupid decision, at the Fest when 8th launched there were 20 or 30 tables if I remember correctly.
Its sad cause the last event was so good, and this was just a real let down.
But I still had lots of fun, but that’s cause I got to meet up with people I rarely get to see and play with and in that respect it was good, but still it shouldn’t have been so lacking in content.
Will I go again, depends, if I can get a tournament to play in sure, but if not, perhaps I won’t.
I went and got the Skådis Pegboard from IKEA, well I had them delivered to a local shop, IKEA want 20 notes to deliver to the house, but only £2 to send it to a shop 5 minutes away!!!
First up I had to remove all the controller mounts from the wall, then fill in the holes and paint over them.
This meant the girls insisted that I sort out the cupboard under the stairs, and I will have to take a trip to B&Q to get colour matched paint.
So I started with the cuboard sort, then filled in the holes with the filler and the put the boards up, the bits of filled wall need painting still, but B&Q in Hartlepool is now closed so it’s a trip to Stockton for that!
The pegboard went up pretty easily, I went with the black Skådis, I did consider the Uppspel board with the ROG branding, but that would have been an extra £20 I didn’t fancy spending!
The controllers are now all up, I went with the Skådis hooks to mount them, because it works, mostly.
I did get an Uppspel accessory kit, mostly for the magnetic strip, but the straps are great for holding the NES and SNES controllers, and I plan to get a couple more to hold the PC Engine, CD32, Neo Geo CD and SN30 Pro controllers.
Also, my future Steam Deck may be stored in the board using these straps!
The magnetic strip currently holds a pair of nice braided cables to connect the controllers to the PC directly, one cable is USB C and the other is Micro USB. The WaveBird receiver is also held on it too!
What I Am Modelling
I started out by painting the Imagifier for the Sisters of Battle!
Myself, Graham, Rob and Niall had a game of 30K at Element Games, which was a hell of a lot of fun, and my first time visiting Element in person, and its a really fun place.
Last weekend we went to my beautiful sister-in-laws wedding to my brother Paul.
It was a wonderful day and much joy was had.
The ceremony was lovely and the food was divine, and my nibblings were all little terrors!
It was held at Kersy Mill, near Haverhill in Suffolk and the surroundings were really nice, the building was a converted mill and was pretty nice.
It was just a really awesome day all round to be frank.
On the Sunday we popped into Ipswich, had dinner at Prezzo and saw Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, but we missed the last 5-10 minutes as there was a fire alarm and the cinema was evacuated.
The long stairs out of the cinema left be too exhausted to return to the screen, so we kinda gave up and went back to my parents, curse my lack of spoons!
And my playthrough of Control: Ultimate Edition has seen me upload the videos from the week
What I Am Backing
I backed the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game Monster Seeds project by Steve Jackson Games, I would have loved to be able to back it at the physical level, but alas they are no longer doing any physical rewards for people outside of the US, which is sad.
What I Am Winning
I won a copy of The Curator by Owen King, so that’s going on the TBR pile.
I also got a PS5 controller charger, the PS5 is gonna move downstairs so we need an easier way to charge the two DualSense controllers that are moving with it.
I won a £25 voucher for Amazon from a KFC competition so I used that to buy a £15 PlayStation voucher to get Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores, and some LED lights for the pegboard I am planning on buying next week. Still awaiting delivery of the LEDS.
I ordered the Abhorant Ghoul King with Crown of Delusion from Warhammer Middlesbrough on Boxing Day (or the day after) and he finally arrived, and of course he is now built and ready to paint!
I have been provided with an advance copy of the new Marvel Heroines book Squirrel Girl: Universe by Tristan Palmgren and published by Aconyte Books, so here is the honest review I promised in exchange for the book.
So here is an important disclaimer which is always important to put out there first. I have a casual work contact with Asmodee to demonstrate board games for them in stores and at conventions. Asmodee being the parent company of Aconyte the publisher.
I am going to try my best to not let these things cloud my judgement in this review, but I accept that subconsciously it might.
Also, I won’t lie, I have looked at other reviews to see what others think, so there may be some influences from them in this book review. If I am going to quote them, I will attribute them. But if I forget to, or something is highly influenced by them, and you think I ought to attribute someone, let me know so that I can.
What is Marvel
Look at this point I would bore you with a bit of background to the game/universe, but lets not, you all know the Marvel Universe, if you don’t have you been living under a rock!
The Marvel Heroines series focuses on the female hero’s of the Marvel universe, the other books in the series so far have all be very very good!
The Story
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl aka Doreen Green, the heroine with the powers of a squirrel AND a girl, is one of Marvels most beloved modern characters, she is quirky, bubbly and fun, something which Tristan captures so well.
And above all else, she is a selfless hero who puts others before herself, and that’s where this story begins, as the Mad Thinker tries to relocate her adopted home of New York to the other side of the universe!
Taking action to prevent the entire city being moved, she takes action, but this ends up moving herself along with her trusty side squirrel Tippy Toe, fellow heroes Chipmunk Hunk, Koi Boy and Brain Drain, along with friends Nancy and Mary to a strange new world along with the Mad Thinker!
Hitching a ride on a passing Space Whale, turns out Koi Boy can communicate with stellar aquatic lifeforms too, and head to an alien space station, where they find themselves taken hostage on the frontline of a looming interstellar war that could claim the lives of trillions!
So just a perfectly normal week for THE UNBEATABLE SQUIRREL GIRL!!!!
Conclusion
This book took me ages to read, but that’s largely down to my brain injury giving me issues, but over the past couple of days I utterly devoured it, its an amazing book and captures the spirit of Squirrel Girl just right, as she sets out to prevent the war that to most seems inevitable.
That Squirrel Girl will stop this war against all odds, is never in question, its what she does, but how she gets there is fun!
The book is boisterous, fun and chaotic as well as super wholesome, and part of me wonders if this would be better targeted at young adults, but its juts as awesome for humans and squirrels of all ages!
There is literally nothing wrong with this book, its perfect, it has captured the spirit of the character perfectly and is a great example of what prose can do that comics can’t, especially in its beautiful descriptions of black holes and other stellar phenomena!
Also the Warhammer 40,000 and other sci-fi references are just *chefs kiss*!
I already bought the eBook to read again and Megan has gotten the paperback!
5 out of 5
Squirrel Girl: Universe is available now as an eBook and paperback.
I was having a few issues with OBS, seems to have been the last version update that was the issue, so I rolled back to 29.0.2 and that resolved the issues I was having.
What I Am Winning
Won a competition on Twitter for a copy of Star Wars Rouge Squadron 3D and Shadows of the Empire on Steam to celebrate the Star Wars Celebrationz
Played these games a lot as a nipper so will be nice to play it as an adult on a much better system!
What I Am Spending
I bought myself the Star Wars Deckbuilding Game at Star Wars Celebration, and got with it Star Wars Storycubes, the GameGenic sleeves, and a pin for Fennec Shand.
I also had a second Fennec Shand pin, that I swapped with Forbidden Planet for Chopper!
And although I didn’t spend the money, I did get a poster for the “Strike Me Down” promo along with a shiny promo card for Shatterpoint from Atomic Mass Games.
Also the Nvidia Shield Controller I was potentially getting was sorted and arrived, all I had to do was pay postage!
So all that’s left on my to buy list of controllers is a Luna and the Hyperkin Xeneon and the collection I am after is completed for now, although I must say a DualShock 4 is tempting!
Given that most of the ships, are in face tall sailing ships, the plan is to build a community of players and paint up our ships, displaying them in June publicly!
The T’au Objective markers I ordered also finally arrived, and will look great when used with that army!
This will be a short one, I am in London spending the weekend showing people how to play Shatterpoint and Legion.
We woke on Monday to find the leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition outside, which was weird!
But my sleep has been all over the shop so I expect this weekend to be difficult.
Some Studio Remodel Plans
Ok the controller holders look pants, mostly cause I put them up so badly, so they are gonna come down next month and I am replacing them with some pegboards from IKEA so the controllers can be mounted and look great.
At the moment the controllers I want displayed are:-
PC Engine
Stadia
CD32
GameCube
Xbox 360 (Gonna replace this with a Xenon when that comes out in the summer)
Switch Pro
SNES
NES
Wavebird
Xbox Duke
Saturn
Tribute 64
Neo Geo CD
Dualshock 3
PlayStation Controller
Mega Drive
Mega Drive 6 Button
Steam Controller
Xbox Core
DualSense
Plus I think I have found a cheap NVIDIA Shield Controller, and I hope to have this in my hands by late next week, meaning all I want beyond that is a Luna controller. Actually I am not sure on that, it looks cool, but it doesn’t seem to have even the same interestingness as the Stadia controller.
I’d also like to display one of my SN30 as well if I can, that’s currently away in a drawer, its place having been taken by the Steam Controller.
I am thinking of getting two black Skâdis boards and mounting them one on top of the other above my desk, which should get me enough space to store the controllers, and hopefully eventually my Switch JoyCons and Wiimotes.
Plus I am gonna get a nice braided pair of USB A-C and USB A-Micro B cables to hang up there for use with the controllers when I want to use normally wireless controllers (I prefer to use controllers in wired mode for the lowest latency possible)
I am going to mount a RGB strip around the border of the whole thing to make it really gamery!
That said, its more expensive, but there are the Uppspel boards which whilst £10 more expensive, do look quite a bit cooler with that ROG branding. Either way the Uppsepel accessory kits will be getting used for some stuff as they are compatible with the Skâdis boards, and the magnetic strip would absolutely have some uses.
Thinking the straps might be a good way to store/display the Steam Deck when I get it.
Also I am hoping my Govee prize will come soon which could add some more coolness.
And finally, I am considering a clock, I know I have one on the PC, but I think I want a physical one, oh and a couple more fake plants.
What I Am Modelling
I started out by painting the second Firestrike Servo Turret for the Space Wolves.
So what will be up to paint once I am, back from London!
Ultramarines Assault Intercessors x 10
Man-Skewer Bolt-Boyz x 6
Necron Triarch Stalkers x 3 & Triarch Praetorians x 5
Kairic Acolytes x 18
Drukhari Helions x 10
Imagifier
The Guild x 8
Ultramarines Repulsor
Hedkrakka’s Madmob
Skaven Deathrunners x 2
What I Am Reading
I finished Echoes of Eternity as an audiobook, and yeah, what a story, really blows my mind away!
I listened to The Eye of the Scorpion by Iain McLaughlin, which was fairly good, would have been great if it had been made into a TV serial, but alas. Anyway that brought me 2 years into the Monthly Adventures series!
I then listened to Colditz by Steve Lyons, which as well as being an interesting story of growth for Ace, is also the Doctor Who debut of David Tennant, in a villainous role, which in my opinion is just as insidious as his portrayal of The Purple Man!
Then I moved on to Primeval by Lance Parkin, a bit of a sequel/prequel to the first Nyssa story, The Keeper of Traken. Very good story and I loved how it expanded on that story and established a deeper understanding of the culture and history of Traken.
I finally finished processing my Big Finish Doctor Who audio stuff on to the audio book server, and oh wow that was a slog that has taken over six months to get sorted!
Mind you its a complete collection dating back 25 years, so yeah its a lot of stuff to sort out, would be easier if the software could scrape data from Big Finish, but sadly it can’t so I have to enter the data in manually!
What Video Games I Am Playing
Played a bit more of The Witcher 3, have transitioned to using the Steam Controller, just to really give it a go.
But alas the game still has major crashing issues, and I get maybe an hour and then it crashes to the desktop 🙁
I tried to play Control on stream on Tuesday night only for OBS to keep crashing so I gave up, edited what videos I had together, and then uploaded them.
I have now transferred the gameplay videos for Horizon Zero Dawn over to the Big Geordie Geek Plays channel, so you can find them there, if you want mind-numbingly bad game play videos!
What I Am Spending
I bought Vampire Survivors, it looked alright for a few quid and well, it did win the BAFTA, the bundle I got also came with its expansion, Legacy of the Moonspell.
And cause it was super cheap, and I really fancy playing it again after having last done so on the Sega Saturn, I bought Resident Evil HD which came with Resident Evil 0 HD.
My Humble Choice also came out this week for April, and that got me:-
