I will be honest, I did really badly in 2023 and I just feel too depressed to go over them
So lets try and look forwards with some new plans for 2024!
Complete 6 Combat Patrols
This one is gonna be a fun one, and a bit easier, because I have three in progress!
Tyranids are half built, Sisters just need a Rhino, which is waiting to prime and the Chaos Space Marines is on the shelf needing to be built.
My plans were set, but then Hachette came out with the news for Warhammer 40,000 Combat Patrol, which will contain NINE different combat patrols, probably coming in late September I would imagine!
So my focus for adding will be stuff not included in that, so the the three I will add to my collection will likely be the new Ad Mech one, Grey Knights, Chaos Deamons (only need one pack of Bloodletters).
Bring My Gloomspite Gitz to 2000 Point
Should be relatively easy thanks to Stormbringer, I already have 640 points painted that I completed in the last few weeks, and I am adding two units of Stabbas and a Fungoid Cave-Shaman next.
That’s it, just read 40 books, and yeah I include shorts!
Start the Combat Patrol Battle Reports
Thats what I really want to focus on this year, battle reports with the Combat Patrol format!
I currently have painted and ready to play:-
Original Adeptus Mechanicus
Necrons
Space Marines (Blood Ravens)
Drukhari
Death Guard
T’au
As previously said, sitting on my shelf waiting to be added are a Tyranid and Chaos Space Marines Combat Patrol and the Sisters just need a Rhino which is waiting to be primed.
I also am just a few units short of the Adeptus Custodes (need a single squad of Sisters of Silence), Chaos Deamons (need a single squad of Bloodletters)
The gaming table is going up in the studio tonight or tomorrow to record the first battle report which will be, Necrons vs Space Marines!!!
Bring my Primaris Ultramarines to 2000 Points – 93.25% Complete
This month we added the Bladeguard Veterans and the Bladeguard Anicent to the list, along with a Ballistus Dreadnought, Firestrike Servo Turret, the Apothecaries and a squad of Sternguard Veterans!
So I am in the middle of a doctor imposed period of rest and relaxation, not that I can do that much more, and I don’t think I have achieved any of what I was expected to do.
Its been four weeks of the six I was told to take, and I am struggling to center myself and sort out the things I am meant to do, and I think I need to sit and sort that out in the next two weeks.
So I am setting myself some targets over the next couple of weeks, lets say three weeks.
Finish Bayonetta
Get my studio into a constant state of tidiness
Sort out my desk (Its a huge mess)
Film a Battle Report
Cook something
Finish a book
Sort out my 3D Printer
Paint that Lascannon Squad for the Death Guard you forgot you needed
So here is what I need to do
Finish Bayonetta
Just sit and play on my Steam Deck for at least 30 minutes a day
Get My Studio into a Constant State of Tidiness
The big things are to get some stuff into the eaves, clean up the bookcase and take some old Codexes and rulebooks to a charity shop.
I also need to put this unexpected terrain into a box, so a trip to ASDA or Ikea is needed (so I need to ask Lindsay for help, or perhaps Paul) and put the new PLEX server in its permanent home, which may also involve setting up a KDM using a Pi.
Sort Out My Desk
Linked to the above but its a bit of an issue with the left side being a huge issue
Film a Battle Report
I think I have a workflow figured out, so I am gonna try and do this next week, and perhaps do an overview of one or two of my armies.
Cook Something
I have been struggling so much with the electric hobs, so on Sunday, I am going to cook a meal for the otters.
Finish a Book
The brain damage is an issue here, causing concentration to really suck, but I just need to sit down and read, force myself if I have to.
Sort Out My 3D Printer
I have yet to use it since I moved here, and its been over a year!
Paint that Lascannon Squad for the Death Guard You Forgot You Needed
I forgot I didn’t have a Lascannon squad for my Death Guard and I put it in a list, so yeah, I need to build one, I have the marines, just need to buy the weapons on pay day!
I know I will need the assistance of Lindsay and Megan, but I am gonna really try to sort this out
What I Am Modelling
I started out with the Praetor for the Death Guard I got a few months ago
And I listened to The Rapture by Joseph Lidster, and I forgot the mad lads at Big Finish did an audio in which the 7th Doctor went clubbing with Tony Blackburn in Ibiza.
I actually managed to get all 19 models painted up on the day, and I am so happy about that!
Although I was absolutely shattered afterwards, but I raised £195 for The Willow Foundation, and if you want to add to that, you can here.
So I am very very happy, more details about the models in the next section.
But a special shoutout to Megan and Lindsay who really helped get me through it, particularly Megan given that it was a sad anniversary, but you guys are amazing!
And Paul helped too with his micky taking in the first couple of hours!
So next years challenge will be happening and I am gonna have a good think on what to paint for that closer to the time!
What I Am Modelling
Most of the week was dominated by the 24 hour charity stream and I painted the Drukhari Combat Patrol.
I managed to get it all done which I was super happy with, and even had 25 minutes to spare!
Hopefully it will be here by the weekend, its already been dispatched and is in the hands of GLS right now!
In the meantime, I grabbed a 1TB Corsair MP600 Mini, a 256GB Micro SD Card and a JSAUX Screen Protector to upgrade the deck a little bit from its 64GB of storage and protect it a little bit.
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!
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:-
The final game was a big 3500 point list and for that I took my 2k list replacing the Champion with Fafnir Rann, and adding a Warhound Scout Titan and a few other bits!
I played Damian’s World Eaters in game one, and my lack of weapons that could intercept was a flaw that allowed a Leviathan to drop down and kill my Kratos.
The Contemptors were a bugger to deal with, but I managed to take them out, but at the end of the game I just had 5 Templar Brethren and a Champion plus Apothecary left!
I played against Jacobs Sons of Horus, and the addition of a pair of Sicarans, and a Warhound Titan really changed things up for me!
The Sicaran is, if I am honest, a bit more effective than the Kratos, but the Kratos actually did get to shine a bit here, until it was taken out by a Terminator!
Sadly however, my bane was a pair of Leviathan Siege Dreadnoughts which over 4 or 5 rounds of combat took out my Warhound, but it was only able to do 6 wounds in response, I just couldn’t hurt them.
In the end I won, destroying everything in the table apart from the Leviathans and a couple of straggling Veterans.
My Thoughts On The Event
Pretty good event, the tables terrain was nice, especially the last games.
A few teething issues, particularly around general admin at the end, but show me an event that doesn’t deal with that, and as an EO myself I thought they did really well.
If they run anymore Heresy events, I will be returning for them, really really fun day!
Imperium Expansion
We have known for quite a while now that Warhammer 40,000 Imperium was being extended by 10 issues, and I thought, why not mention what I think about the contents!
Issues 81 – 83
The Sisters get a hell of an expansion with the Paragon Warsuits, spread over three issues, costing £8.99, that means you get them for £26.97, saving nearly £20 off the RRP!
These are great looking models and I have ordered an additional two of each issue!
Issue 84
A Skitarii Marshall, seems a bit of a let down when compared to the stuff the other factions are getting, yeah it’s a lovely model, but still, would have preferred something else, but to be fair, the Mechanicus range isn’t easy to grab something from for this.
Issue 85
The Hexmark Destroyer is one of the best looking models in the Necron range, ok, a bit pants in game, who cares when it looks like that!
I already have one, but I don’t mind having another!
Issue 86 – 88
The Space Marines get the full multipart Redemptor Dreadnought, which is a great kit and pretty cool to have in here.
Personally I would have preferred the Invictor Tactical Warsuit, but that’s down to my personal collection!
Issue 89
Inquisitor Draxus is a cool looking model, but we subscribers already got an Inquisitor in the form of Katarina Greyfax, so this whilst cool, wasn’t the greatest choice, personally I would have replaced this and the Skitarii Marshall with a two part AdMech kit.
Still great model and I can’t wait to paint her to join the rest of my Inquisitorial forces!
Issue 90
Not only does Illuminator Szeras represent great value, but also, is a wonderful and beautiful model for your collection!
Really over the moon we are getting this amazing character
In Conclusion
We are getting some really nice models, for my personal collection, a couple don’t make sense, but hey, it’s not all about me.
The only thing that I am currently wondering, is where to put the Redemptor Dreadnought.
Not sure any of my Space Marine armies need another one, but it’s likely going with the Ultramarines.
What I Am Modelling
Started off urgently beavering away to finish the bits for the Imperial Fists for the event by painting first up a pair of Sicaran Battle Tanks.
I then rebased an old Reiver Squad for my Space Wolves, originally built for Kill Team in the last edition, but on a different basing scheme, when I convinced myself that my Wolves wouldn’t have any Primarise stuff!
Anyway, they now join the Infiltrators, Redemptor Dreadnought, Ragnar, Aggressors and Repulsor that currently comprise the Wolves Primaris forces, and I have more on the way at some point!
Then, the last Tomb Blade was finished for the Necrons!
Been trying to play The Witcher 3, but the latest update has caused an issue with random crashes, so I may have to abandon the game for a bit until that’s fixed.
