I know some people are determined to not get Warhammer +, but I have, and I will walk you through the reasons.
And I have honestly seen a lot of rants about it, mostly seeming to focus ok the animation side, but I do have to say that Warhammer + is a service that is more than just Warhammer TV, it’s also the included mini, the Warhammer Vault access, the apps, etc. to base your impression on just one aspect is just a bit daft.
First off, I would never usually suggest getting a service/product based on its possible future potential as I find this is usually a waste of money as nothing is ever guaranteed. Products should have a decent feature set before launching rather than promises of future features.
However Warhammer + makes sense financially for me, let me walk you through it. I play both Age of Sigmar and 40K, and I use the apps, which currently cost me £2.98, which is going to rise to £3.98 with the new AoS app.
So annually I will be paying £47.76 to Games Workshop for these two services, so Warhammer + would only cost me £2.23 if I get the annual plan.
Now the £10 voucher for signing up before 1st September means actually it’s going to be -£7.77, and when add in the model you get with the subscription, models that I want both of, you save even more.
These models I have set at a price of £20, although the Megaboss from the normal range is £25. So that means it’s actually now at -£27.77.
So it works for me, of course for other people the maths will vary and for them it may not be worth it, but it is for me.
What’s It Actually Like???
Well in all honesty, it’s a little thin on the ground right now, but what’s on there is good.
Angels of Death is very cool, although the mouths are a bit odd, but I can live with that.
I am yet to watch any of Hammer and Bolter apart from Old Bale Eye, which I really enjoyed.
The Battle Reports are well, extremely high end and professional and really raise the bar for those. Makes my stuff look pants by comparison.
The painting Masterclass is superb and I am digging out some Thousand Sons Terminators to try out some wet blending.
The Vault, that’s the one aspect I am less keen on, simply because you can’t download stuff, and the site is clunky when using a phone, if they bring us an app for that it will be better.
In general I am happy with the service, if they keep up with the new content every Wednesday I will be very happy.
I would like to see the YouTube painting videos included in the service at some point, just so everything is together in one place that’s a bit easier to navigate.
The service is as I said, thin on the ground, but I think within a few months it will be a lot better.
I have subscribed for a year because I want it to be a success, I want it to work, and I am breaking my own rule because if this does work, it will be an amazing resource for the community.
The reveal of the first weeks new releases, is a bit underwhelming, I would have hoped for a couple of the Citadel Masterclasses and at least two animations.
The Vault additions are actually pretty nice, with some White Dwarfs for this year being added.
But it’s still early days.
What I Am Modelling
I started off the week with some Triarch Praetorians.
These have been painted as being from the Szarekhan Dynasty because they serve the Triarch and thus why would their armour be in the colours of another dynasty?
Stormcast Eternals Praetors x 3, Knight-Vexellor & Vindictor
Legio Custodes Agamatus Jetbikes x 3
Stormcast Eternals Anhiliators x 3, Lord Imperatant & Gryph Hound
Blitzkrieg HQ & MG34 MMG Team
Death Guard Fire Raptor
Necron Canoptek Wraiths x 6
Mechanicum Magos Macrotek Engineseer & Servoautomata x 4
Flesh-Eater Courts Crypt Flayers x 3
What I Am Reading
Ummm I actually haven’t read all week 🙁
What Video Games Am I Playing
Not played a lot, but just a few bits and pieces here and there.
I did manage to get the Saturn emulator running properly. Retroarch ended up being a bust, there wasn’t a single core that could run the games correctly and the way it handles six button controllers is kinda annoying.
So I ended up going with Mednafen which works like a dream, just need to add a graphical front end.
Speaking of six button controllers, I finally managed to get my hands on a reasonably priced 6 button USB Mega Drive controller, and playing Street Fighter 2 on the Mega Drive Mini is no longer an awful nightmare!
I am a big fan of Imperial Knights, but I need to add a few more to my force, got a Warden in the box, but want another Crusader, some Helverins and then perhaps some Cerastus Knights.
And I am currently backing Avatar Legends at the Otter-Penguin level, considered going up to Polar Bear Dog, but the girls aren’t joining in, so I can’t justify the extra $25
This week has been a week in which I have just really been cracking on with stuff.
I have had more self-isolation, some babysitting and a couple of days with a little bug.
But not really much else.
What I Am Modelling
I started the week by painting four characters for my Stormcast Eternals. 3. Sylas Beastbane, Leena Stormspire, Astreia Solbright & Berek the Indomitable.
I have been asked a couple of times how I paint my Death Korps of Krieg and considering a certain release coming out this Saturday, I figured I would share it.
And if you want to help me and the podcast out, use this link to purchase from Element Games and links to any products will be affiliate links.
I developed the scheme to be different from the army that I painted for Niki, which were very traditionally Krieg with blue French style uniforms.
These are my 510th Siege Regiment, and their uniform is a dark green greatcoat, grey trousers, dark green helmets and tan leather.
Their weapons also have wooden casings as I feel like they would want to ensure their equipment is manufactured as easily and as cheaply as possible.
Anyway let’s crack on, with a squad of Firing Infantry.
We start by priming all the models with black, in this instance I used Wilkos Satin Black.
All the paints I am using are all Citadel, apart from two Vallejo colours.
Step One
The first step is just getting on the base coats which are as follows.
It’s a super simple scheme, not a lot to it and it looks nice on the table, dirty and subdued, just like the Death Korps of Krieg.
I like to combo it up with a muddy and wet basing scheme, which is more or less the same scheme as Duncan Rhodes has demonstrated on his website and I think it looks really nice.
If I were to start over, the helmets would be black as the German Dark Camo Green is influenced by the Heer helmets, which is something I was trying to avoid.
I know I am not the worlds best painter, I paint for fun and to a tabletop standard, but I am really proud of these and I enjoy painting them.
For the Home Assistant server, I am going with the Raspberry Pi 4 solution, but just to ensure it’s going to be as future proof as possible, I am going to build it around the 8GB version.
That’s probably gonna get out together in the next six weeks or so, and I will hopefully be able to join up a lot of the house smart systems together properly.
That said, I am actively looking to see if IFTTT can do many of those functions and if it’s possible we could put off the Home Assistant server by using that. Then again, I do like to tinker and Home Assistant would be a challenge and something to occupy me.
The Network Attached Storage is already in progress. When I built Megan’s PC I also built a PC for her dad, he had an old Dell Optiplex eBay special which managed to screw itself up all the bloody time.
Anyway I got sick of fixing it, so I built him a new PC that should last him a fair few years as his biggest usage is amateur photo editing.
Anyway this Optiolex has a couple of hardware issues, the motherboard has a couple of dead SATA ports and is very much at the end of its usable life as a general PC.
So I intend to use it to fiction as a the houses NAS for the short term, I have grabbed a SATA SSD to serve as it’s system drive and I am gonna pick up a couple of Ironwolf Drives next payday to run in RAID.
The idea being that all of our files can be stored centrally and backed up at the same time.
Next year I plan to transfer the NAS to dedicated hardware, potentially by pinching Megan’s motherboard after replacing hers for something a bit more high end. Plus either grabbing a new GPU for Megan so the 1660 Ti in her system can go into the NAS or getting something like a 1650 Super for the NAS.
The GPU would be needed because by the time I get ti the situation where I can put the NAS into dedicated hardware, I want it to be running a PLEX server too, so we can have our own home Netflix with all of the DVDs and Blu-Rays we have ripped onto the server.
I have a rough plan in my head now, and think that it’s possible in a couple of months I will have the basics of both of these systems up and running.
They are going to be housed in the cat cave (spare/junk room) and we have a monitor already set up in there for them, we will need a network switch still as both devices will need to be plugged in via Ethernet.
What I Am Modelling
I started the week by painting the Judicators with Boltstorm Crossbows for my Stormcast Eternals, two squads of five.
And then I painted the Beastmen for Blackstone Fortress. I have tried to give them a load of variety, with at least one dedicated to each of the four Chaos Gods and one that’s Chaos undivided.
I am also working on printing a fleet for Battlefleet Heresy, so far I have gotten printed out a Battlebarge, with some damage from a print failure and four Strike Cruisers.
You can see my Bioshock Infinite play videos here.
I also got my Saturn emulator up and running and can now play some games I always wanted to play as a kid, but couldn’t because my parents couldn’t afford a Saturn.
I have been provided with an advance copy of the new Pandemic book Pandemic: Patient Zero by Amanda Bridgeman, 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 this cloud my judgement in this review, but I accept that subconsciously it might.
What Is Pandemic
Pandemic is a cooperative board game designed by Matt Leacock, in the game you work together to discover the cure for several diseases rampaging though the world.
Players take on various roles, such as medic, dispatcher, scientist, quarantine expert etc and though the combined efforts, collect enough data and information to find the cures to save the world.
The game is incredibly successful and has three expansions for itself as well as numerous spin off games and variations. As well as the extremely popular Legacy versions of the game.
The story starts with a nun falling ill in Peru, and quickly the disease she later dies from starts popping up in Brazil and Columbia too.
It’s a new disease to which humanity has no immunity and it rapidly kills those it infects.
The Global Health Agency dispatches a team from its base in Lyon to discover the cause of this disease and hopefully find a cure.
We have a cast who roughly represent many of the possible roles within the Pandemic board game, and a nice mixture of nationalities and genders. There is also an interesting little bit of minor subplot about one of the field team finding it more difficult to traverse the world due to her being from Nigeria rather than the US, UK or Australia.
The story takes us on a hunt for the source of the disease, from Lima, into the jungle and down the Amazon river and then deep into a drug lords village as the team desperately search for patient zero and understand how this disease came into existence.
Conclusion
Look I need to be straight up here, I got Covid early on in the pandemic, it took a third of my lungs from me and has ruined my lungs to the point where I can’t climb stairs without an inhaler.
This book was extremely difficult to read because it quite often referred to Covid in the past tense, when Covid is still very much with us and killing people.
The book itself is well written, it’s a by the numbers virus outbreak kind of story, nowt ground breaking but well done and brilliantly written with relatable characters.
But it feels far too soon for a book to talk about Covid as being in the past, had I known this book would have done this, I would never have read it.
So it comes down to this, if you can handle many references to Covid and a new respiratory disease, then it’s a good book to read, but if like me you basically have PTSD when it comes to Covid, I would strongly advise giving this book a miss for now.
Just for now though, because it is a good book, but frankly it needs a trigger warning, I donMt know why I pushed myself to keep reading, I really shouldn’t have.
I don’t know how to score this book so I am going to ignore my instincts which are to refuse to score it because of how much it triggered my PTSD and made my chest feel incredibly tight.
It’s a well written book with a good story so I will give it a 4 out of 5 stars, but as I said, it desperately needs a proper trigger warning.
The book is published as an ebook on 7th September and will hit bookstores on the 11th November.
I have been provided with an advance copy of the new Marvel Crisis Protocol book Target Kree by Stuart Moore, 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 this cloud my judgement in this review, but I accept that subconsciously it might.
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!
Marvel Crisis Protocol is a tabletop skirmish miniatures game from Atomic Mass Games based on the Marvel comic characters, with its starter set conations five of the Avengers (Captain America, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Spider-Man and Black Widow) and five of the Kabel (Barron Zemo, Red Skull, Crossbones, Doctor Octopus and Ultron).
I own the core set and its well worth investing into, if you fancy it you can purchase it from my Element Games affiliate link!
The Story
The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy team up in a search for a planet killer amongst a group of Kree refugees on earth working for Tony Stark.
The story starts with the Guardians of the Galaxy trying to save which is in the middle of being destroyed, but they sadly fail and lose a beloved member in the process.
The story then picks up on earth six months later as the Guardians hunt down the planet killer and Tony Stark (Iron Man) faces the wrath of Jennifer Walters (She Hulk) and Kamala Khan (Ms Marvel) over the conditions of the refugees from the planet, but of course the Guardians crash the party and chaos ensues.
You know what there isn’t much to talk about in regards to the plot, its very simply and as it develops you end up with a huge number of Marvel characters making an appearance, most included in Crisis Protocol, but at least two who are not.
Conclusion
This is a hard book to review, on the one hand, it’s filled with lots of fun and some cool interesting fight sequences.
But there is way too much fighting and not enough stories, especially when you are cramming so many characters into the book.
At points it’s felt like they were just throwing in extra characters for the sake of it, I mean there is a scene with Black Panther that goes nowhere and serves no purpose other than to have Black Panther in the book.
The characters all want the same thing but they are too busy fighting each other to figure that out, and that’s not exactly in keeping with the characters.
The book starts off great, the first part is fantastic, but honestly, I think this would have been better as a comic rather than a prose book.
But then again it is promoting a skirmish combat game.
It’s a 3 1/2 stars from me, and had it just had a bit more dialogue and story in it, it could have really been a lot better. That’s not to say its bad, its actually quite fun, but it wasn’t quite what I was hoping it would be.
But if all you want is literally a fun beat-em-up story, give this a go as it is rather entertaining.
The eBook is released this Friday the 6th July and the paperback hits the shelves on the 2nd September.
I started my playthrough of Bioshock Infinite which is so far a lot of fun, you can see the first video below. Thus far its very very different to the games set in Rapture!
I also had a go on Flight Simulator on the Xbox just for shits and giggles, and its a lot of fun.
Just to update you on the current playthrough plan
Ok so this week I have really been working at getting back on tack and it’s mostly working.
We may have discovered a reason why I am just so ugh at the minute, a blood test revealed that my iron is in the toilet.
This means I am starting an intensive three month course of iron supplements and have to give a bunch of blood samples and other stuff to try and figure out the issue.
Douggie is as ever being a charmer and I love the photo of him I have used for this post, he is just so bloody cute!
More PC Stuff
Megan’s PC is mostly complete now, we put it in a new case, a Corsair 220T RGB Airflow, in white, and it looks really nice.
The only other thing we wish to do to it, is add a Corsair H60i RGB Pro XT to cool her CPU and some sort of heat sink for her SSD.
Possibly add a Corsair Commander Pro as well to manage all the fans.
She is going to get a capture card in the near future, I am adding an Elgato HD60 Pro to my setup, arrives tomorrow, and in time it’s going to take over console capture from my 4K60 Pro so a CamLink Pro can take the place of that.
The 4K60 Pro will then find it’s way into Megan’s rig and that will be hers basically complete.
I have also grabbed her a dock and charger for the Nintendo Switch so she can use it on the monitor at her desk.
So now my attention turns to building a NAS, the basis for its first iteration will be a Dell Optiplex 760, an ancient computer, but one which will do the job initially until a system that is tailored to the job better can be procured.
I have already obtained a cheap SATA 128GB SSD to run as it’s boot drive for FreeNAS and will be adding a couple of large HDDs (hopefully a round 6TB each) to run in RAID as they initial storage solution.
What I Am Modelling
I started off with some Dominion of Sigmar statues from Mortal Realms, both with a slightly different finish to indicate that they were added to the city of Esasa.
Stormcast Eternals Judicators with Boltstorm Crossbows x 10
Necron Night Scythe
Blackstone Fortress Beastmen x 6
Sylas Beastbane, Leena Stormspire, Astreia Solbright & Berek the Indomitable
Necron Lychguard with Warscythes x 5
Death Korps of Krieg Infantry Squad x 10
Stormcast Eternals Vindictors x 10
Legio Custodes Pallas Grav-Attack x 2
What I Am Reading
I am now about halfway through Target Kree, which is pretty good thus far if a bit fighty.
I also finished the audiobook of Mortis which was very good as the prose version was.
What Video Games Am I Playing
I decided to split the What Am I Playing section up, to try and force me to play more tabletop games and get more focused on my video games.
So I am going to start streaming games again, The Witcher is going to feature a little bit but I have decided to work through a list, which you can see below.
Bioshock Infinite
Assassins Creed
Borderlands
Assassins Creed 2
Horizon Zero Dawn
So I will start streaming Bioshock Infinite as of Tuesday.
What Tabletop Games Am I Playing
Sadly none 🙁
What Am I Creating
The stream upgrade video is almost done and will be published this week!
