A couple of weeks ago I was really feeling very low, drifting without aim, and I realised, it was because I finished my current project focus, the early war Germans. At least for now whilst my Saturn 4 Ultra is awaiting a new Z-Axis motor so I can print more.
I had noting new to work on with any overall aim, and that did a real number on my mental health.
Until I realised what was going on, and well, Jason from Gamers@Hart gave me what I needed, a project to paint the stores Old World starter set, in which I am going to be starting off with the Grand Cathy army.
And knowing I need this, I am trying my best to line up projects for the medium term, I am still a hobby butterfly, I always will be, but I think I need a sort of overarching project that I am working on.
Right now I have got the Grand Cathy stuff on my desk, I want to have all the foot infantry done before I go away on holiday, but we shall see how I do on that, but these are my next projects lined up
Grand Cathy G@H Demo Army
Warriors of Chaos G@H Demo Army
Bolt Action Northern France Terrain
Late War Germans
Astra Militarium
Just got to make sure I keep on top and have a few overarching projects on the go!
What I Am Modelling
I started off by painting up the Fire and Jade scenery I got from the Spearhead magazine collection
I got this Airfix Spirfire MK1A for Christmas from Lindsay and Megan, and I decided to give a crack painting it up using the various techniques I have developed since I started painting these things at about 5.
Not talking millitary modelling techniques or owt, well I did use some pencil leaf on the engine, but simple things like recess washes and highlights, you know, Warhammer painting!
I then painted a Kettenkrad for my early war Germans, would have preferred one with a rider, but all the ones I found with Heer riders were very much late war, so this one from Wargame3D will do
And finally I listened to Command by Al Murray, he managed to insert quite a bit of humour into that one, throughly recommended on my part, it’s a weird book in some ways, being a serious (dad) history book written by a comedian, an interesting walk though the war
What Tabletop Games I Am Playing
Played a game of Bolt Action against Graham, now that Lindsay is driving and is able to take me to Durham
Two cans each of Grey Primer and Matt Black from Poundland, which offers the best value for spray primer in the UK, at least in my opinion
I also picked up from Gamers@Hart, a pot of Loren Forest, some Agrax Earthshade and a bottle of Refractive Green
I also picked up a box of German Grenadiers from Warlord Games for my Late War Germans project, originally this was going to be a very Fallschirmjäger project but that’s kinda shifted for reasons
Megan also picked me up some Mr Mark Setter and Mr Mark Softner
Video game wise, I picked up Call of Duty and Call of Duty 2 on sale, dunno why, but I just fancy giving the originals a go again, especially as I cannot find the discs I bought many moons ago for them on Xbox!
I have just finished watching The Great War, the 1964 BBC documentary series about the First World War. It was an important precursor to The World at War, the definitive television documentary series about the Second World War, and is still fascinating to watch more than sixty years later.
I watched a very condensed version of The Great War at school, very, very condensed, so it has been fascinating going back to it properly all these years later.
It is, of course, a flawed series. It only briefly touches on the Eastern and Ottoman fronts and almost entirely ignores Austria-Hungary. Even when it covers something like the Easter Rising, it is very much told from an English perspective.
Despite that, it still mostly stands up remarkably well.
In fact, it has made me want the guys behind The Great War YouTube channel to make their own documentary series in the style of this one. I think they could cover the conflict in a much more balanced way, particularly by giving some of the less-covered fronts and combatants the attention they deserve.
But why am I talking about this amazing piece of influential television history?
There is a theory that most boys pick a period of history to become obsessed with. One of the running jokes is that it will either be the Roman Empire or World War II.
For me, though, the period of history that has become my real special interest is the First World War and the period surrounding it.
In fact, I’d probably stretch it from the Franco-Prussian War through to around 1930.
Because if you only consider 1914–1918, you miss so much of the context.
The causes of the First World War are considerably more complicated than simply Gavrilo Princip shooting Archduke Franz Ferdinand. That assassination was incredibly important, but it was the match that lit the fuse rather than the thing that created the powder keg in the first place.
The build-up had been going on for decades.
The fall of Bismarck and the subsequent realignment of European alliances saw France and Russia become increasingly aligned, while Germany and Austria-Hungary were already closely allied. Britain then increasingly found itself aligned with France and Russia through the Entente system.
At the same time, the Ottoman Empire was continuing its long decline.
And then there was everything else: the Russo-Turkish War, the Russo-Japanese War, the Moroccan Crises, Britain’s emergence from Splendid Isolation, the Italo-Turkish War, the Anglo-German naval arms race, the Balkan Wars, and the various imperial rivalries across Africa and Asia.
Honestly, this list could go on and on and on.
To be fair, you could probably trace some of the roots right back to the French Revolution. But let’s be reasonable, pretty much all history contributes to future history.
What is undeniable, though, is that things such as the levée en masse fundamentally changed the character of warfare, creating the possibility of armies that eventually numbered in the millions.
And that is part of what fascinates me about the period.
Franz Ferdinand’s death wasn’t, by itself, enough to cause a world war.
What mattered was the political situation surrounding it. Austria-Hungary’s fears about Serbian nationalism, Russia’s relationship with Serbia, Germany’s support for Austria-Hungary, France’s alliance with Russia, Britain’s relationship with France and Russia, and decades of diplomatic crises and military planning all turned what could have been a regional crisis into something much, much bigger.
The assassination was the match.
Europe had spent decades building the powder keg.
And that is why my interest in the period extends so far beyond 1914–1918.
The period afterwards is just as important.
Because the war might have ended in 1918, but for many people, especially across Eastern and Central Europe, it didn’t!
The Russian Civil War, the Polish-Soviet War, the Turkish War of Independence, the Greco-Turkish War, the Irish Civil War, the rise of Mussolini, the conflicts surrounding the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and countless other conflicts and political movements all emerged from the chaos created by the First World War.
Even the May Fourth Movement in China was partly driven by the anger surrounding the post-war settlement and the decision to transfer Germany’s former concessions in Shandong to Japan rather than returning them to China.
The aftermath was absolute chaos.
In places such as Ukraine and Poland, you had armies fighting each other that were made up of veterans of the Russian, German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, often wearing the uniforms and using the equipment they had been issued at the end of the war, all mixed together.
The First World War itself is, as many people have said, utterly pointless in many ways.
But it was also a genuine turning point in history, perhaps more so than almost any other conflict.
So many of the world’s later problems can be traced directly or indirectly back to it.
Four major empires disappeared. The map of Europe was completely redrawn. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire helped create the political landscape of the modern Middle East. The United States emerged from the war as the world’s dominant economic power. Communism became one of the defining political forces of the twentieth century. Nationalism and demands for self-determination transformed Europe and much of the wider world.
And you can even trace part of the story of the Vietnam War back to the aftermath of the conflict.
In 1919, Ho Chi Minh went to Paris and submitted a petition to the Versailles peace conference calling for greater rights for the Vietnamese people, and was refused.
And, of course, in many ways the First World War helped create the conditions that eventually led to the Second World War, and all the horrors that came with it.
One thing that always strikes me is that, from my perspective, 1917 is probably the last point at which Russia was really on the same broad political page as the Western powers.
Russia was an ally of Britain and France during the First World War, but the Revolution changed everything.
And even the idea that Russia and the West were simply allies during the Second World War is more complicated than we sometimes remember.
The Soviet Union and the Western Allies ultimately fought on the same side because they had a common enemy, but Stalin’s USSR had already signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany in 1939. The agreement included secret provisions dividing Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence, and the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland shortly after Germany invaded from the west.
It was only after Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa in 1941 that the Soviet Union became an outright member of the Allied war effort against Nazi Germany.
So while they were certainly allies by the end of the war, it was very much a case of the enemy of my enemy being my ally.
And that, again, is why the period fascinates me.
It is all connected.
I think what originally triggered my interest in all of this was a photograph.
It was a photograph of a German cavalryman wearing a gas mask and carrying a lance.
I think I was about six or seven when I first saw it, and something about it just struck me as incredibly odd.
And I think that photograph represents something fundamental about the First World War.
The armies that entered the conflict were, in many ways, still preparing to fight the wars of the nineteenth century. They had cavalry with lances, brightly coloured uniforms and tactics influenced by the Napoleonic era.
Then they discovered what modern industrial warfare actually meant.
Machine guns, smokeless powder, rapid-firing rifles and increasingly powerful artillery destroyed that old way of thinking remarkably quickly.
The French started the war wearing their famous bright red trousers, while their cavalry still looked remarkably similar to the cavalry of the previous century.
Soldiers on all sides were still wearing soft caps that offered virtually no protection from artillery.
And then there is the famous German Pickelhaube.
People often assume it was made from metal.
It wasn’t.
The classic version was made primarily from pressed leather with metal fittings. It looked imposing, but it provided very little protection against modern artillery fragments. By 1916 it was being replaced by the much more practical Stahlhelm.
Technology was advancing incredibly rapidly, but sometimes the solutions looked backwards.
The Stahlhelm, with its distinctive coal-scuttle shape, has an almost medieval appearance. Yet the simple act of putting a practical steel helmet on a soldier represented a huge improvement in protection.
The French had a similar experience.
The first months of the war produced enormous numbers of head wounds, and the French responded by developing the Adrian helmet, one of the first modern steel helmets to be widely issued. It was introduced in 1915 and became an iconic piece of French military equipment.
Camouflage and concealment techniques also began to develop into something much closer to what we recognise today.
The French quickly abandoned their bright red trousers in favour of the much harder-to-spot Horizon Blue. The British and Germans were arguably a little ahead of the curve, having already adopted khaki and field grey respectively.
That combination of old and new is probably one of the things I find most fascinating about the First World War.
It was a conflict where cavalry charges with lances existed alongside tanks.
Men went into battle wearing uniforms designed in the nineteenth century and ended up fighting with machine guns, aircraft, chemical weapons and enormous artillery pieces.
It was essentially the world of the Napoleonic Wars colliding head-on with the industrial age. Never had warfare changed so rapidly in such a small period of time, the battlefield was utterly transformed into an industrial killing field with equipment that in many ways would have been science fiction to most peop in 1914.
So yeah, that’s my special-interest period of history.
And it is one that I want to start exploring more through wargaming.
I now have a rulebook for 1918: A First World War Miniatures Game from Warfulcrum Games, and I think that might be the game I really want to use to explore the First World War on the tabletop.
I think Ken might join me in that as well.
My only issue is that the current 1918: Spring Offensive rules are very specifically focused on , specifically the Kaiserschlacht and 100 days offensive
the final year of the war on the Western Front. The initial force lists cover Britain, France, Germany and the United States.
Which is a shame, because Austria-Hungary and Russia in particular would be great fun to play.
And that’s before we even get to the British fighting the Ottomans in the Middle East.
That said, the designers have said they intend to expand the game to other nations and fronts in future, so perhaps we’ll get there eventually.
I have also bought myself a German army STL pack from W3s Retreat Hell Part 2 and plan to start printing as soon as my Saturn 4 Ultra is repaired.
I think the Z-axis motor has failed, so I am absolutely dreading the repair bill.
Once it’s back up and running, I plan to print up some Germans—especially an A7V—and see if I can get some games on the table.
I wonder what other periods of history fascinate you guys?
And is anyone else here similarly fascinated by the Great War?
As an aside, I keep meaning to revisit the Heugh Battery here in Hartlepool.
I haven’t been since I was a nipper, and frankly, it’s a crime given that I’ve lived in Hartlepool for four years and still haven’t visited the UK’s only First World War battlefield!
The Heugh Battery was the site of the bombardment of Hartlepool on 16 December 1914, when German warships engaged the coastal batteries and shelled the town. It is recognised as the UK’s only First World War battlefield.
So yeah.
I’ve lived here for four years.
I’ve been fascinated by the First World War for most of my life.
And I’ve still never been since I moved here!
I really need to rectify that.
What I Am Modelling
I started out with a Kübelwagen, to give my officers a transport
After that I listed to Ghosts of Cadia by Rob Young, which was a really good book, nice follow up to the previous book
Then I listened to The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers, a book I first read as a child and I enjoy this one a lot, lots of foreshadowing about World War I a good 12 years prior.
And finally I listened to I.D. by Eddie Robson, and well, the first story is very poor, but the second one is very good
What Tabletop Games I Am Playing
Not much, but we did have a game of Forbidden Desert which we won!
Cause servicing the printers is a pain with Allen Keys, I bought a cheap metric hex screw set, I will eventually grab the very good quality on from LTT Store, but for now I am using this
Also topped up my superglue supply, I really like these small tubes, it feels wasteful, but the big bottle just always go bad quickly and I spend more money on them
Currently I am working on developing a table for me and Graham to be playing Bolt Action on, so far it’s mostly 3D printing, and soon I will start the job of painting
But what have we got this far
First off we have 4 large intact houses, one of these has a fully modelled interior and is from Printable Scenery, the others are empty apart form a floor
Then we have a couple of small houses, modelled with interior floors
A few destroyed buildings, including some commercial ones
A couple of barns, on intact and one ruined one with a damaged tractor in in from Eskice
We also have some sheds, but on one the roof does’t sit right, so I am probably gonna glue the roof in place.
I thought a windmill will add some character, so I printed one of these
Most of the stuff there is very civilian so i thought we would add some some more military stuff starting with a bunker, and a dig in position for a panzer, which I got painted at the weekend
Had a cool game of 40k with Brian on Friday, though I admit my head wasn’t in it, we have had a rough few weeks, and I am only really just getting back on my feet
Clash of Eagles has been delivered, the Franco-Prussian War is one whose outcomes reverberated for over a century, so might be interesting to play some games within it
The MakerBot 2.0 project was funded and the files even delivered, which was super quick, that’s probably a project for next year mind!
The German Paratroopers Fallschirmjäger – Crete 1941. Part 1 has fully funded, and I am really looking forward to that for some early war Fallschirmjäger, and when part 2 goes up, there will be some Gebirgsjäger in there for me!
I am now backing The QuesTable, me and Megan think this looks awesome, as well as the Modular Hobby Plate, still searching for a proper solution for paint storage expansion
Last year I got a new sever for the house, well, it’s an auld office one but for my needs perfect
When I first set it up, I went with a ZFS setup for the two 3TB drives I got with it, but that was a major mistake and the thing kept giving me headaches before deciding it was going to go offline and refuse to ever allow me to access it
Never figured out why it went so bad, but the end result was that the whole system ended up refusing to boot again, so I had to scrap the install and start again
And I was pretty disheartened by it, and basically just brought online the bare minimum
But the past few weeks I have been slowly doing stuff that’s gonna make it work better, slowly but surely I am restoring functionality and adding new stuff
Firstly the system originally used CasaOS as a front end GUI, and that’s turned out to be a mistake as the developers abandoned it and are trying to move everyone onto a paid version that has fewer features, so screw that
The first thing I got running properly was Kavita, a book server, which is a great piece of software, I use Calbre to add the metadata, then save it to the servers book folder
But why use this instead of Calibre, simple, this will allow me to download books or PDFs to my phone, which can be helpful, but more helpful, it will email books directly to my Kindle, as well as Lindsay and Megan’s kindles too when they log into their accounts
The second service to fully get working was the media services, this revolves around PLEX for which we have a PLEXPass, I hated paying for it, but JellyFin just isn’t there yet in terms of access.
PLEX is really good, we ripped all my families DVDs/BRDs as well as Linux ISOs and now everyone gets access to our combined library without having to physically lend people the media
For media requests we have Overseer, where people can tell me something they would like to watch, and then I will go to CEX or eBay and acquire the physical media to rip and upload. Sonarr and Radarr are also installed, just saying!
When media is uploaded, another service called Bazarr then hunts out subtitles, downloads and adds them to the programs folder for use on PLEX
Which is just great because as a neurodivergent person, I can tell you that subtitles can be a godsend
AudioBookShelf, has alson been getting a few upgrades, mostly in setting my Audible account to auto download to it, which means all my old books needing to be downloaded and sent to the server, but thats ok, most of whats left to got on there is histroy book!
We also have a CCTV system running now, which is great, its recording motion outside the front of the house and retaining the footage for 7 days.
We don’t exactly live in a crime free area, but its not too bad, but when stuff does happen its a pain in the arse!
And yeah the notice board is great too, that’s running out of Home Assistant and whilst its not 100% there its almost there
We got a CCTV camera for the font of the house, there have been a few incidents down the years, and we think it would be handy to have a camera to help deal with that.
On Friday night we had a midnight release for Warhammer 40,000 Armageddon!
I have played more of 10th edition than I ever did 9th or even 8th, maybe not as much as 7th.
That said, 10th has been my least favourite edition of the game, simply because it feels like the Editon in which I have struggled most to get a win, and there were way too many gotcha moments.
11th looks to be on the one hand more of the same, but at the same time, things like unit coherency meaning a unit must be in 9” of each other is very useful as it stops the Poxwalker conga line, which is just so frustrating.
I still feel like the rules overly cater to the competitive scene and casual narrative players get very little, but let’s see how it develops.
I do hope when the new Space Marine codex drops they lose Oath of Moment cause that’s just way too powerful when combined with some of the detachments.
But let’s see how it does.
Paint-A-Thon
My annual Paint-A-Thon returns after a one year hiatus, and I am going to paint the Space Marines Combat Patrol from Armageddon over tow 12 hour sittings on the weekend of 26th and 27th July, I am hoping to raise £150 for the Willow Foundation, in memory of one of my closest friends, Lee Dunford.
Someone has challenged me to change it up and make it a 24 hour Play-A-Thon and have me play as many games of whatever system or even several in 24 hours, but that’s something I would need to sit down figure out and find a suitable venue, but it’s a possibility at some point.
I did want to paint an infantry squad for the French but I ran out of a couple of main colours I am using for them so that’s gonna wait until I can restock them next week
After that I painted up a Sd. kfz 222 in late war dunkelgelb
I finished listening to Fist of the Imperium by Andy Clark and I have to say it seemed super familiar, not sure if I have previously read it or it’s just very samey, it was fine, not the best, but not the worst.
After that I listened to The Gathering by Jospeh Lidster, and it’s really a very awkward book, not at all that great, the plot was stretched out and the sound mix was just dreadful, kinda sad cause Tegan was great in it and the story was a disservice to her.
After that I listened to The Romanov Project by Niel Bushnell, and it was ok, not the best written but ok, there were a few weaknesses and it was kinda middling
What Tabletop Games I Am Playing
We had a day of Horus Heresy at Durham Raiders, and due to illness and just life my advertising of it was terrible so we only had a few people, but it was nonetheless quite fun.
I bought a new monitor, this year I was gonna upgrade my PC platform from AM4 to AM5 and get a 7800X3D, but fucking Sam Altman the prick and the other AI bastards put paid to that.
Literally the only upgrade I could really do was to my monitor, and I got this one on an Amazon Warehouse deal for £310 which is so much better than I could have hoped for.
Originally I was looking at a decent Alienware one, but the cost of this on the deal plus a new monitor arm came in quite a bit cheaper!
Also got Megan a new monitor arm too as she inherited my old main monitor and now is enjoying my old CPU, GPU and Monitor now!
Humble Choice also happened and I got this out of it
I’ve come to the conclusion that I really dislike the very idea of Konflikt ’47, not just mildly, but viscerally.
That probably needs an immediate caveat: I’m not here to judge anyone who enjoys it. Plenty of people do, and that’s completely fine. We can like different things for different reasons without it needing to become a moral argument.
But for me, Konflikt ’47 just feels… wrong.
I love playing Bolt Action. It’s one of my favourite wargames. However, World War II gaming is already a serious subject. It isn’t just a neutral backdrop for cool tanks and infantry, it represents real human suffering on an unimaginable scale. It carries historical weight, and that weight never really disappears, even in a game.
That’s where my discomfort starts.
Konflikt ’47 takes that same historical foundation and adds zombie soldiers, mechs, occult experiments, and super-science. On paper, it’s alternate history pulp. But in practice, it turns something already rooted in real tragedy into something closer to spectacle.
Enhanced SS units, dieselpunk weapons, and “Nazis with lasers” sit uneasily with me. Not because I think people who enjoy it are endorsing anything, but because the aesthetic draws directly from regimes responsible for very real atrocities. It feels, to me, like it risks turning that history into something stylised, almost consumable, and that’s where it becomes uncomfortable. At times it even feels commercially exploitative, like the imagery is being used because it’s provocative rather than because it’s being meaningfully reframed.
I don’t think anyone who enjoys the game is a bad person, or thinking about it in the wrong way. I just find I can’t reconcile the mix of pulp spectacle with real-world tragedy. Or maybe it’s the idea of extending such a regime into “what if” scenarios that linger too long over history’s worst parts. Either way, it doesn’t sit right with me.
But then there’s the contrast: I really like Trench Crusade.
I’ve thought quite a bit about why that is.
The key difference, for me, is that Trench Crusade isn’t trying to be WWI with a technological twist. It isn’t asking “what if Verdun had mechs?” Instead, it’s a mythic, theological alternate universe where history has already diverged into something fundamentally different.
Yes, there are trenches. Yes, there is war. But it’s not anchored to specific real-world battles or regimes. It’s a gothic horror setting, a fantasy abstraction rather than a reimagining of identifiable history.
In that space, humanity is fighting literal demons of Hell alongside crusader-inspired factions drawn from Abrahamic religious imagery. It’s not alternate history in the traditional sense; it’s religious and mythic horror. That abstraction creates distance, and that distance changes how it feels.
The result is that it doesn’t trigger the same sense of proximity to real-world events. It feels like symbolism rather than substitution.
They just land differently emotionally.
That said, I do have some reservations about Trench Crusade as well. It’s intensely grimdark, almost relentlessly so. Compared to something like Warhammer, it lacks much of the satire or levity that helps break up the tone. I once summed it up in a Bluesky conversation as: “there are no Orks.”
But even with that, it doesn’t produce the same discomfort. It feels like a fully fictional mythos built to explore horror, rather than a stylised extension of real-world catastrophe.
And that, I think, is the distinction that matters most to me.
In the end, this is just my personal reaction to tone, framing, and proximity to history. I don’t think it’s something universal, and I don’t think it should be. People are going to respond differently to the same ideas, and that’s fine.
If anything, it’s a reminder that in games like this, tone matters just as much as theme. What a setting is doing emotionally is often more important than what it is doing structurally.
And for me, that’s where the difference lies.
What I Am Modelling
I started out with a squad of Pioneers for my Early War Germans
I also painted this Panzer III, but it’s a pretty crap model, the details are bad and the print isn’t great, I ended up scrapping the idea of it being for my early war Germans and painted it in dunkelgelb with the idea of giving it to a couple of my nephews as a toy
I also painted some test models for a French army, I am kinda fancying doing to face off against my Germans, and I am quite happy with how it turned out
His detachment negated most of my tough weapons, so stuff that should have been wounding him on 2 was now doing so on a 3 and that made a huge world of difference
Plus the oath of moment rerolls are so very powerful, but it was an excellent list and his played it very well
What I Am Creating
We published the latest epsiode of Edge of Empire
What I am Backing
I have backed the Worlds Beyond Brawl campaign by One Page Rules with a friend, it’s an interesting concept and we fancy a few of the models so why not!
And this Wednesday I managed to make sure to grab two issues of 90 to allow me to make myself a Forgefiend and Maulerfiend for the True Sons Warband of Chaos Space Marines.
He went off his food a little, something that was very unusual for him, but as it was hot and two of the others went off their food at the same time, we thought not too much of it, but a couple of days later and he was eating less and less
Initially we believed he had something up with his teeth as his breath was rather smelly, so away he went to the vets
After an initial examination followed by an ultrasound they discovered that his kidneys were failing, pretty badly and his bloods were really bad
They advised that the kindest thing would be to let him go, and that’s what we had to do, we were devestated
There were options for us, but the vet said these wouldn’t be great for his quality of life, especially given his spiciness when it came to medication
He was a beautiful boy, and we miss him so much, the house is very quiet without him as he was a huge personality
Barrington, Bonnie and Mango all seem a bit down without him around, but are slowly getting used to his absence
We aren’t getting another cat to succeed him, we are going to stick with three cats for the foreseeable future simply because we are just way too sad right now
I miss his cuddles, when he would randomly come to the studio, demand a cuddle and snackies, my nights have been very quiet without his presence
Good night sweet boy
Storage
We have now rented a storage space, annoyingly the only place we could find an affordable one was in Harrogate, which is an hours drive away, which is a ball ache, but we are paying a month, half of what most places wanted a week near us.
What is being stored in there right now is my Warhammer Scenery, 14.5 tables worth, with a couple more boxes going to join it soon, the Edge of Empire PA system and a bunch of Paul’s theatre gear.
This is great for all of us, because we have been struggling with long term storage of some stuff, my terrain has been stored in my in-laws attic, which will be replaced with some armies to clear space in my studio, but they will take up a lot less space.
What I Am Modelling
I started out by painting some bits for my Germans, starting with an officer and escort, these being from the Meuse to Volga project
At one point my Panzerbefehlswagen and Panzer 38 (t) shot all three of their machine guns at his anti-tank gun, and all 12 shots missed!
But still, it’s nice to get a win, although that rules me out for the wooden spoon!
What I Am Backing
We now have everything for Meuse to the Volga, with the delivery of the Sd. Kfz 251 pack, Panzer crew and the terrain.
I backed the German What-If (Prototype) Vehicles of World War II, it will have no value for game play for me, but could be interesting to model, or perhaps for Konflikt ’47, that delivered hella quick and I now have all the STLs.
The models are cool, as I said, more for modelling or for Konflilt ‘47 usage, where the Panther II will fit
Over There Part 2 continues to deliver and the fella who made it is a really cool guy, he is thinking of setting up a Patreon, which I will join!
For the planned DnD digital tabletop, me and Megan bought an old 32” TV which we are going to encase in wood and use for playing RPGs on using a digital tabletop, probably Foundry
I finally got myself the LinusTechTips Screwdriver and I have to say it’s pretty sweet, certainly the best consumer screwdriver I have handled in a long time
I also got the Shaft Extension, a set of Phillips head screwbits, plus a bit of PTM7950, not sure if I will put that in my current PC of hold it back for the next one!
Also got the Precision Screwdriver EndCap set which had to ship separately due to a checkout error
I don’t remember exactly when it happened, but somewhere along the way I stopped getting excited about new codexes for Warhammer 40,000 and started getting excited about the Napoleonic Wars.
These days I’m just as likely to be reading something like French Tanks of World War II by Steven J. Zaloga as I am flicking through Warhammer content, and when I look at new projects, I’m browsing Napoleonics as well as the latest Games Workshop release.
Which led to a slightly uncomfortable realisation:
“wait… am I a grognard?”
The word “grognard” actually goes back to the Napoleonic Wars, where it was used to describe Napoleon’s veteran troops, the grizzled soldiers who had seen enough to justify a bit of grumbling and bitterness.
In modern wargaming, it’s become shorthand for the kind of player who cares about historical accuracy, rules, and whether your unit really should have that equipment. A player who is less about the sci-fi settings of Warhammer 40,000, or the low fantasy of Warhammer: The Old World, and more about systems, structure, and coherence. The kind of person who can open a drawer and have multiple tiny-scale Napoleonics ready to go, with different forces representing different eras of a war.
In other words… the sort of person I may be slowly turning into.
I’ve always been a WYSIWYG player for myself, and yes, I’ll admit it—I sometimes silently judge those who aren’t. Not in a serious way, more in a “hmm… interesting choice” kind of way. Definitely not gatekeeping. Probably.
For example, my Heresy Death Guard don’t really do fragile or complicated weaponry. Very little plasma, no volkite at all. They’re bolters, flamers, meltas, and lascannons. They footslog rather than bounce around with jump packs, and when it comes to vehicles, it’s tracks and wheels only—nothing overly exotic or suspiciously floaty like grav tech.
Even when options were available in earlier editions, I tended to keep things grounded. In 2.0, they all carried chainswords when that was an option, because lore-wise it just made sense: standard kit, used sensibly, no unnecessary faffing about.
That said, I don’t expect anyone else to play like that. That’s important to me. I don’t gatekeep—I just quietly assume my way is correct and move on with my life. (Joking. Mostly.)
It’s the same with painting. Because I have the time, I insist on fully painted armies for myself. I won’t put unpainted models on the table. But I’m not about to enforce that on anyone else. People have jobs, families, studies, and significantly more important things to do than debating whether that shade of grey technically counts as “battle ready”.
What’s slightly concerning is that the same instinct that makes me design sci-fi armies like miniature historical organisations is now pulling me further towards actual historical wargaming.
Bolt Action in particular has started enabling this behaviour. Instead of building lists that are remotely efficient, I’ve found myself constructing early-war Germans as if I’m curating a museum exhibit, very specifically 1940 to 1942, carefully avoiding “just taking the good stuff” and instead focusing on what feels appropriate for the period. Which is a very normal and well-adjusted way to approach a wargame, obviously.
And I am already planning the next army: a French force to counter it, built around artillery, inexperienced conscripts, tough but flawed tanks, and hastily reactivated WWI Renault FTs.
Even outside the tabletop, it’s spilling over. I played Assassin’s Creed: Unity, told myself I was just enjoying the setting, and then suddenly I’m reading about the French Revolution and Napoleon like I’ve got a dissertation due.
So now the hobby doesn’t feel like separate systems anymore. It feels like different ways of scratching the same itch: structure, narrative, and making toy soldiers behave like they belong in a coherent universe rather than a random pile of statistics.
And I think that’s the shift. Not away from sci-fi or fantasy—but towards becoming the sort of person who says things like “coherent force structure” without irony.
As for Napoleonics, I’ve acquired some STLs and I’m just trying to figure out a system to use. Black Powder is tempting, but my friend Ken highly recommends Sharp Practice. Either way, I’m going to be that basic bitch, which, let’s be fair, I am, and play the Grande Armée.
But I am not leaving behind the Games Workshop stuff. The Horus Heresy remains my favourite setting, and the 3.0 ruleset is my favourite yet (although the missions are not great and are really holding the game back).
I like narrative-focused games, which, with the current way Warhammer Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000 are played, is increasingly difficult. Standard terrain layouts make it hard to run asymmetrical, story-driven games rather than simply racking up points.
These games are very meta-driven, and that’s just not me. I want thematic armies, scenario-driven play, and less obsession with having the perfect list.
But these games do allow for a lot of freedom, exaggeration, and creativity, while historicals give me constraint, realism, and interpretation. I’ve realised I don’t have to choose one philosophy of gaming—the hobby, for me, has always been a spectrum, and I’m just expanding it. It doesn’t need to be binary.
I think this is how I’m going to approach things from now on. I want a choice of armies I can use for different systems, and that means focusing on one or two “main” armies per system and putting the rest into long-term storage.
So I need to go through what I have at home, compare it to what’s in storage, and decide what becomes my core collections, then store the rest. That doesn’t mean I won’t add to them, I probably will, because I love having variety to paint.
I’m going to keep Combat Patrols available because that’s such a fun format, but I’ll have one, perhaps two armies (so Megan and I can play together) for each system:
Warhammer 40,000
Warhammer Age of Sigmar
The Horus Heresy
Bolt Action/Achtung Panzer
Some form of Napolionics
Probably something for Sage
Legions Imperialis
Trench Crusade/WWI
Something fantasy, probably The Old World
This will give me some much-needed space and allow me to develop historicals in a way that represents different eras and theatres. For my Germans, I want a collection that covers early war, Afrika Korps, and eventually Normandy/D-Day, giving me a range of matchups. Meanwhile, my sci-fi and fantasy collections can remain more fluid and constantly evolving.
Terrain-wise, I’ve already sorted my fantasy setup, and I think that will work for Age of Sigmar, The Old World, and D&D. My home 40K terrain is probably going to shift in a new direction, I’m thinking a trench-focused set with two building styles: one sci-fi and one more real world. That way it can cover both world wars and Trench Crusade. One larger box of 3D-printed trenches, and two smaller sets of buildings.
So yeah, I’m not leaving behind fantasy and sci-fi, just expanding the hobby and making things at home a bit more organised.
I still love the grimdark of Warhammer 40,000, and I always will. But I’ve also found myself increasingly drawn to the structure, detail, and reality of the Napoleonic Wars and the World Wars.
So maybe the question was never “am I becoming a grognard?”
Maybe it’s simply that I’ve realised the hobby was always big enough for both.
What I Am Modelling
I painted up a Panzer I for my Germans, thinking of doing another one cause it seems like it’s gonna be good at supporting the infantry in Bolt Action
After that I painted up an Sd.Kfz 265 which I need for my Bolt Action escalation list, turns out that my idea of taking a Panzer I as a command tank doesn’t work as it can only be taken in this form as the Panzerbefehlswagen
The game was a loss for my, by a lot, but my army scored a lot more kills than normal, the Demolisher cannons proved their worth and my Malcadors were the MVP of the game
The major problem was that the intelligence of my Solar Auxilia is just not good enough to compete in a Relic mission with the Mechanicum, but the mission was great and I throughly reccomend them
On Thursday we started the Bolt Action escalation campaign and I am starting with this list
Rifle Platoon
Oberleutnant - Regular SMG
Heer Infantry Squad x 7, Regular, LMG, NCO with SMG
Heer Infantry Squad x 7, Regular, LMG, NCO with SMG
Sniper Team - Regular
Light Mortar Team - Regular
Armoured Patoon
Panzerbefehlswagen - Sd. Kfz 265
Panzer 38 (t)
I was playing Ken’s Soviet Workers Milita and it was a really nice army he had painted up
It was a pretty good game, but the game turned when Ken’s Ampulomet took out a squad of Heer, and my other squad attempted to run up the flank, but were wiped out by a combination of a machine gun team and a mortar shot!
I played a second game of Heresy against Russell, I took the list Inplayed against Graham with, just added a Stormhammer as we played 3500 points
The game was just the basic kill the other team scenario, and it was really a lot of fun, but my dice rolling was attribute and I went 2 1/2 rounds without rolling a 7 and thus didn’t hit anyone and I really think that hampered my results
It ended up being a loss of 31-17, which was fine, it was first game and I have learnt a lot, I just took a starter list suggested by one of the fan sites
Learnt an awful lot, and really had a good time!
What Video Games I Am Playing
I played Verdun for the first time, that was kinda cool
More of the From Meuse to Volga, 1940-1942 was delivered, including the vehicles, the pioneers and a bunch of stretch goals, including the PAK 36, which I have printed two of
I fancied watching They Were Not Divided, but couldn’t find it anywhere on a streaming service, so bought it on DVD cheap from eBay to add to the PLEX server
A couple of Sundays ago, myself and Megan played in a doubles tournament at Games-at-Hart, and it was for Megan their first time playing against someone other than me
We took this list, the rules were two armies of 1000pts so we took this list. With me playing the Guard and Megan the Blood Angels
Our first game was against a very serious pair playing Orks and Death Guard with both Mortarian and a Gorkanaught
It was a hard game and I felt I had to be a bit strict with the pair as they tried to control the game in ways that were not friendly such as picking our cards in the app for us, something which is a real faux par and extremely rude
I could not have imagined a worst game for Megan to start with and was a very much we went through the motions to just get through it
The second game was much better, sadly Megan fell ill and had to leave 🙁
Another excellent game and at the end we were 3 losses down, but that’s fine with me as fun was had
The event was brilliant, but there was a degree of the issue I dislike about 10th edition, and that is the problem of armies being built around the best most destructive units with the lists not resembling an army you would see in “reality”
Hopefully something that changes in 11th
What I Am Modelling
I started out with an Anointed with an Anti-Material Gun for the Heretic Legions to use in Trench Crusade
My army was mostly wiped out in turn 2, and at the end of the game, all of Dave’s Dark Angels had been destroyed, and all I had left were ten Lasriflemen, a Line Command Squad and a Legatine Command Squad who were hiding to maintain that LD10 with the Vox Interlinks
I ended up taking a nap in the car after the game cause I was utterly shattered, whilst the others played some more
After we arrived back at the AirBnB, we had a Chinese and played some Dungeons and Dragons together for the first time in person after 3 years of playing together
It’s was a lot of fun, but by midnight we were all utterly shattered and had to go to bed!
The next day after a McDonalds breakfast we headed back to Warhammer World where we did a tour of the Hall of Miniatures, which has changed a lot since last time I was there, I failed to find the Assassin yet again!
I finished listening to Angron: The Red Angel by David Guymer which was ok, but felt a bit of a let down as Angron barely featured at all. Lots of good concepts but also so much missed potential.
After that I listened to Something Inside by Trevor Baxendale, which was ok, but the 8th Doctor getting amnesia is kind getting a bit dull now, I am Paul McGann can really act that very well, but it’s just too used
What Video Games I Am Playing
Not played that much which is disappointing but will try better next week!
Lindsay also backed the Cube Mod Carrier project by Txarli for me, I mentioned it looked cool, and couldn’t afford it and she backed it for me to pay her back later
What I Am Spending
At Warhammer World I bought myself a Leman Russ Strike Tank, some glue, another three painting handles and some pots of paint..
The tank is going to be built as a Demolisher, cause I like Demolisher cannons and they have proven quite useful in both 40K and 30k.
As for the painting handles, well I have a fair few of them already, but I want to get to 25 cause I am far too regularly painting 25 models at a time, this one gives me 24
I grabbed the latest issue of Combat Patrol to hopefully add a couple more Field Ordnance Batteries to the Astra Militarium
