Due to family issues, one wasn’t published this month, but I plan to upload two in April, starting with T’au vs Adepta Sororitas and followed by Dark Angels vs Daemons of Chaos
Its been a tough few weeks, we have had a death in the family and some other stuff that’s caused some challenges
I have been feeling my depression quite deep and its really doing a number on my life, I am really finding it very hard to even leave the house.
I know I need to try harder, so I am going to try and have a better month in April now that the worst is behind us, I mean that is all I can do right, just keep going and try to be better.
I had a particularly bad instance of doing my normal rushing ahead last week, and it hurt some of my friends, so I need to watch myself and keep an eye on my tendency to just rush ahead and not stop to check things are sound.
I am organising a Heresy event as part of my getting back on top of things, and tickets sold out right away, gonna try and have my Zone Mortalis table finished by then so I can set it up and try and convince someone to come play on it with me whilst I EO.
I finally finished sorting out all the metadata on the Audio Book Shelf server, and oh my word, that was a lot of stuff to deal with!
I still have to sort out the authors and series, but we will get there!
I am currently uploading my BBC Doctor Who audio books, which is a sizable pile, still need to buy The Church on Ruby Road by Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson, which is the latest release, might spend my next Audible token on it!
What I Am Modelling
Its been a bit of a weird period of time, but I have painted up two squads of Vigilors for my Celestial Vindicators.
I also listened to Lazarus: Enmity’s Edge by Gary Kloster which was pretty good, but I kinda expected the bad guy to turn out to be a Fallen, but it wasn’t and that was still cool. It actually humanised the Dark Angels quite a bit.
What Video Games I Am Playing
Finished up with Yakuza 0, and I have to admit, the story was phenomenal, really good.
I also sold my old iPhone 12 and was able to afford to buy the Solar Auxilia Battlegroup as a result, which you would have seen the unboxing for video earlier.
About a month ago, I realized that the geniuses behind Audio Book Shelf had released a native Windows version of the application. Until then, I had been running it in a Docker install. However, this method was slow and could only allocate 2GB of RAM, greatly impacting performance.
So, I decided to switch from Docker to the Windows version. Unfortunately, this transition resulted in the loss of all metadata due to differences in how Linux and Windows file structures operate.
Consequently, I find myself having to re-add all the metadata. While this isn’t an issue for much of the content, as Audio Book Shelf can scrape data from Audible, it’s a manual task for Big Finish, which constitutes the majority of my collection. Thus, it’s quite time-consuming.
Currently, I’ve managed to complete the metadata for all titles up to those beginning with ‘O’. Although it’s taking time, the effort will certainly be worth it.
Furthermore, I’ve adjusted settings so that metadata is now stored with the files rather than in a central database. This change aims to prevent similar issues in the future, particularly if I decide to switch my server back to Linux from Windows.
What I Am Modelling
I started off by painting a Loonboss on a Giant Cave Squig for my Gloomspite Gitz
We did add Blood Angels to the painting pile, for these the Librarian and Aggressors have previously been painted, so those models will join the Dark Angels.
So we now have 2 of the 6 Combat Patrols I wanted to get done this year done.
Bring My Gloomspite Gitz to 2000 Point – 56% Complete
I added a Loonboss on a Giant Cave Squig this month, and next up I am going to be painting two more units of Stabbas next along with a couple units of Fanatics
This weekend, we headed south to visit family. First, we attended Megan’s nanny’s 95th birthday party in Thame. Then, we went to Suffolk to see my parents and treated my oldest nephew, Dylan, to dinner for his 18th birthday. Finally, we squeezed in a quick trip to Warhammer World!
Friday, we left about 10:30 and had to stop just once to charge the car, which was done at Watford Gap, but only because bizarrely all the chargers at Leicester Forest East were offline. We then had tea at the Harvester, and stayed at the Ramada at Oxford Services.
Saturday was a bit chaotic, we got to the party fine, but, though a miscommunication, the car keys got locked in the car, and the only viable option to get back in was to smash the rear passenger window!
We did that (which was a lot of fun) and then had to zoom over to Aylesbury to get a Perspex window fitted to make the car weatherproof, so me and Lindsay got to sit in Morrisons and have a cup of tea and a piece of cake!
So we got on the road to Sudbury a bit later than planned, not arriving until 7:30pm, we got to see my parents and Dylan for a couple of hours before we had to head off to our hotel at Haverhill, via a stop at McDonalds for tea.
The next day we took a trip to Cambridge, and we had a little bit of a wander, looking at some of the university buildings, our Durham graduate, Megan, was not impressed.
But we found Warhammer at the new location, I say new, the last time I was in the Games Workshop in Durham was 1999, when it was at a totally different location!
Then we drove up to Nottingham, arriving at the Riverside Travelodge, where we ordered in some food from German Donner Kebab via Deliveroo, and settled in.
I then listened to Davros by Lance Parkin, which was very cool, nice to see Davros without the Daleks, gave a chance for his villainy to shine. And I then listened to Master by Joseph Lidster which was a nice story with a bit of a twist!
What Tabletop Games I Am Playing
As said earlier, myself and Megan played a game of Combat Patrol at Warhammer World, I played Necrons, Megan played Sisters.
We played the Archeotech Recovery mission and Megan beat me 70-20.
Her dice rolls were on fire and her Penitent Engine, just ripped through my Skorpeh Destroyers and my Doomstalker!
The chest is feeling better, I am coughing less and I am able to climb stairs without needing my inhaler halfway up.
But the fatigue is another thing, I think I have spent more of the last couple of weeks in bed asleep, than awake, and its pretty annoying.
It having a marked effect on my memory as I am forgetting so much, and I have become a real burden on Megan and especially Lindsay as she has family stuff going on right now.
Hopefully I can push though it, and I will try as much as I can, that’s all I can do right.
What I Am Modelling
I started the week with a Nexus Syphon for my Age of Sigmar terrain box
A couple of games of the 40k league, but the third one I was due to play today, I utterly forgot about cause of the aforementioned issues, utterly unfair on my opponent and I feel like such a dickhead for it.
a bit more of Yakuza 0, its a weird game, but I am loving the story.
I also returned to the Halo Infinite campaign, the last time I had fired it up until last Thursday was the day Mary passed away, so I guess that explains why I didn’t pick it up again, especially as we moved house shortly afterwards.
What I Am Creating
I published the next battle report of Combat Patrol, this episode features the Drukhari taking on the Vangaurd Space Marines of the Ultramarines Chapter!
What I Am Backing
Nowt new, but I realised I forgot to pay for shipping on the Firefly: The Game – 10th Anniversary Collector’s Edition project, so we got that done, and I cannot imagine we will get it until later on in the year and not in the main wave!
But back in the day, Space Marines were the default starter army, S4, T4 and hitting on 3s with a 3+ armour save, they were decently tough, and didn’t need a lot to make them work well.
Plus they were really easy to paint and make your own.
But these days, they are not a good starter set, they have a bloated list that half the time makes little sense.
Here is the thing, how would you recommend starting a Space Marine army, its always been to recommend the Battleforce/Start Collecting/Combat patrol as they always included a Troops/Battleline, that you could build your army around.
But today, the Combat Patrol doesn’t contain a Battleline unit, the Infernus Marines aren’t one, and its a pretty elite force, simply not one that its easy to build an army around.
And even then, look at what is available, its so many units that its hard to actually look at the list as a beginner and figure out how to start an army.
A kid I know who wants to play Ultramarines was genuinely confused, because, they simply couldn’t figure out how to build an army, what they absolutely needed and how to synergise the army.
Look I am not saying Space Marines are now crap, its just really difficult to build a list as a beginner, and there is no starter box that represents the army as the very basic units which can form a decent core.
How would I fix it, well I would love to see a Combat Patrol with Intercessors at its core, the ETB Redemptor Dreadnought, and a Lieutenant.
Heck, why not release the sprue from Dark Imperium which had the Intercessors, Ancient, and two Lieutenants, then throw in an ETB kit, perhaps the Invader ATV, or as I suggested the ETB Redemptor Dreadnought.
Here is the crack, I ended up recommending the Dark Angels Combat Patrol, or the Blood Angels Combat Patrol, as these have generic units, one of which is an Intercessor Squad, a HQ and a couple of other interesting units. Actually, if you can, get both, they synergise well together, and just sell the upgrade sprues!
What I Am Modelling
I started the week by painting a unit of 10 Gutrippas for my Orruk Warclans
Followed by Snazzgar Stinkmullett the Fungoid Cave Shaman for the Gloomspite Gitz, which means I have now painted all four of the Harbingers of the Malign Portents!
I started to listed to The Talon of Horus by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, it’s a book I have started a couple of times, but never gotten past the first 30 minutes cause I get disturbed then forget about it.
I was horribly ill on Sunday, so played through Portal on my Steam Deck for the first time since 2007, I want to play Portal RTX but my 3070 struggles with it!
We needed a KVM for the studio to allow easy switching between the media server and Lindsay’s laptop. This Ugreen one was on special offer on Amazon, so we grabbed it and it does what we need.
I then started on Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster, I have never played any of the first 6 games in the series as they were never released in Europe when I was a nipper, and even then they were on Nintendo consoles, which weren’t that common in the UK.
I returned to Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, its a great game and I want to finish it, then play it again!!!
What I Am Creating
The first Warhammer 40k Combat Patrol Battle Report has been published, this one was between the Blood Ravens Space Marines Chapter and the Necrons of the Sautekh Dynasty.
We are brining back the tradition of having breakfast together on a Sunday morning, and I cooked the first one, which was croissants with ham, cheese and egg!
I have gotten a new headset, but not by buying it, my friend gave me a broken headset and said it was mine if I could fix it, turned out the dongle was borked, so after asking Logitech if I can buy replacement, they told me it was still in warranty and replaced the whole thing, which my friend was cool with as theirs had already been replaced.
