It’s been a a long time since my last post, a few months now.

Truth is, one of my best friends, and most trusted companions, Mary, passed away.

She was diagnosed with cervical cancer earlier this year, and in around three months it took her from us.

It was a particularly aggressive form of cancer, by the time they discovered it, it was already stage 4 and it ravaged her body despite several types of chemotherapy being tried on it.

She leaves behind the rest of the polycule, devastated, particularly her husband Paul. They were only married in October and we are all heartbroken.

So as a result my mental health pretty much hit rock bottom and I let everything just go to hell.

Too many things were ignored, not properly written down and neglected.

It took some friends telling me that I looked and sounded like shit to try and pull myself together, and so yeah, I have kinda been working towards that.

As a result of her passing, we are relocating to Hartlepool, Paul needs looking after as he is a bit of a disaster of a human being, and with him working away from home a lot, someone needs to feed his cats, Lexi and Lilo.

We found a place, just 10 minutes walk away from his, and we pick up the keys on Tuesday.

We start moving in from Thursday when me and Megan Will be taking a bunch of stuff we transferred to storage at her parents, to the new house.

It’s a bit smaller, but to be honest not by much, other than the kitchen which is teeny tiny!

It has a dining room, in which we can pop our dining table and a lot of our kitchen stuff too, plus perhaps some board games, but it’s largely going to be a food eating/prep area.

The living room is huge compared to ours now and we will comfortably fit in there with a place for the telly and some board games with the sofa!

The first floor has two bedrooms, and because unlike most of the houses round there, it hasn’t tried to squeeze in a box room, these are both much bigger.

The loft is going to be my new studio, we are picking up some new desktops and a few bits and bob’s to make me and Megan a much bigger and better desk with more room.

Hopefully I can fit a gaming table in there too, well Paul has been commissioned to build us one.

Most of my stuff is out of the house now and in storage and the majority will be moved over in the first big day of moving.

The broadband gets switched on a week Wednesday and I need to be there for then do I am going to set up my desk then.

Still onwards and upwards

UK Games Expo

I worked the UK Games Expo, well as much as I could within the limits of my disability.

I worked the Catan stand with my good friend Donna from the Catan Studio in the US and mostly demoed 3D Catan, which I now want, despite the ruinous price tag!

I picked up the Port Royale big box, I bought direct from the publisher, so paid over the odds, but I am fairly happy with the choice as they got a bigger cut of the money.

I also purchased some bits for my Imperial Fists and some Primaris Company Champions!

The rest of the stuff took a bit longer to arrive.

Horus Heresy 2.0

As a Heresy nut I was so excited by the unveiling of the new edition of Heresy!

I managed to get hold of the new boxset, plus both books from Asgard Games, soon to be my FLGS.

I also got a set of the special weapons from Games Workshop.

As I am doing Imperial Fists I got myself the transfer sheet.

I later on grabbed them a Kratos!

I also managed to pick up a cheap sprue of the characters from Calth, so another Praetor and a Chaplain.

So far, all I have done with them, is to build three HQs, two Tactical Squads and three Terminator Squads, and I have airbrushed on the first coat of yellow for a single squad of each.

Media Servers

As we move, one thing I am doing is to reduce down my physical media, so all of my DVDs and BRDs have been ripped and I am only keeping the ones I really want to have physically.

So we have set up the Raspberry Pi which has been doing very little as a media server.

First up we installed Audio Book Shelf, a fantastic piece of software that runs in a docket container and is a wonderful little audio book server.

I love audio books and have an awful bloody lot of them, mostly Sci-Fi, a lot of Doctor Who, like pretty much most of Big Finishes catalogue, plus I think every Black Library audio published, and everything from Aconyte thus far.

The dude behind the software is constantly providing updates and so far it’s utterly fantastic.The two bugs I found were fixed in a matter of hours

The second side of the project is PLEX, for serving most other types of media.

So far we have transferred almost every single one of the over 1500 DVDs and BRDs we own.

Most of the way there and some are proving tricky to rip, but hopefully by the time Friday rolls along the project will be finished.

What I Am Modelling

It’s been very very slow, grief has destroyed my motivation.

But I painted the Kill Team barricades.

I then got painted up the a set of Thermic Plasma Conduits for my Inperium table.

And then painted up the barricades and rubble heaps from Speed Freeks.

Followed by the Ork scenery from Octarius.

And after that I painted a Tomb Blade for my Necrons!

I then painted some Ork Burna Boyz.

After that was a Mortis Poisoner Squad for my Death Guard.

I then worked with Megan to make these bases for some Totoro minis for our handfasting.

After that I finished off a T’au Breacher Team.

I then painted this Primaris Company Champion for the Blood Ravens.

Followed by a Cannoness for the Sisters of Battle.

But photos of those need to wait until next week I am afraid!

So what’s coming up next?

  1. Imperial Fists Tactical Squad x 10
  2. Sicarian Infiltrators x 5
  3. T’au Strike Team x 10
  4. Ork Nobz x 5
  5. Orruk Gutrippas x 12
  6. Blood Angels Assault Intercessors x 5
  7. Ultramarines Intercessors x 7
  8. T’au Crisis Suit Team x 3
  9. Silver Tower Heroes
  10. Hobgrot Slittas x 20

What I Am Reading

Since last time I have read a couple of books, I finished Splinter Cell Firewall by James Swallow, you can read my review here.

I also finished Sigismund The Eternal Crusader by John French, which was excellent.

Watch Dogs Legion: Day Zero by Josh Reynolds and James Swallow was also very good, and a review is here.

Three Swords by CL Werner was great, review coming very soon.

And finally Black Cat Discord by Cath Lauria was amazing.

I am now reading The Division – Recruited by Thomas Parott.

What Video Games I am Playing

Mostly been playing Horizon Zero Dawn, with the odd session of Halo Infinite.

So lots of streams happened and here they are!

https://youtu.be/l2V1wyJanuo
https://youtu.be/CKCowoKjeNI
https://youtu.be/2slrLVwAxwA
https://youtu.be/_5s-l9BRcI0

I have now started on Assassins Creed 2 and yeah I had some audio issues, but here are the videos!

What I Am Creating

I published the next battle report for Imperium the other Saturday.

A couple of new Edge of Empire episodes have dropped.

What I Am Backing

I backed Ravage by the Cybertronic Spree, which I am looking forward to a lot.

And my Redgrass Wet Palette V2 arrived, and it’s really nice.

Of course I already have it covered with stickers!

My copy of Car Wars 6th Editon finally arrived, and it’s gone straight into storage for the house move.

What I Am Spending

I picked up a few movies whilst they were on sale, Godzilla, Godzilla: King of Monsters, Godzilla vs King Kong and Minority Report.

I grabbed the new Battletome for the Nighthaunt, along with their Warscroll cards and dice.

Plus a Big’Ed Bossbunka to add to my Ork Scrap Town.

As my chair was dying we took a trip to IKEA and picked up a new one for me, a Matchspiel which is one of the ROG collaborations and it’s really nice.

We also picked up a set of Alex drawers to replace the cupboard which is moving to another part of the studio, this gives me more space to store stuff and actually get to what I need when I need it.

I did some market research for KFC and got a £20 Amazon voucher, which I used to buy Star Wars Episode IV on 4K Blu-Ray.

I got a couple more of these, starting with The Empire Strikes Back.

And The Last Jedi, cause it was on cheap.

My 9 month anniversary of Warhammer + was here, so I got the two exclusive models, plus some Kruleboyz for Warcry!

And I got a case to put my Switch in for when I travel!

I grabbed a 6TB external HDD for my PLEX/Audio Book Shelf server.

I grabbed the new Imperial Fist Legion Dice cause they looked nice!

And my studio needs a new Amazon Echo device.

The current Echo that’s in the studio is to be paired up with the current living room one to form a stereo pair for better music playback in that room.

So I got the kids Tiger version, cause look at it, it’s a mother fucking tiger, and I fucking love tigers!!!