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!
Its consistently hot, I am spending most of my time sweating hard!
In my studio its really hard due to being in an attic with a ton of tech and the weather keeps raining hard, so I can’t even have the window open to relive myself with some fresh air and have to have two fans on all the time!
I can’t wait for the coolness of autumn!
What I Am Modelling
I started off with a Big Mek with Shokk Attack Gun for my Ork, really lovely model to stand beside my resin one.
Ultramarines Sternguard Veterans x 5 & Victrix Honour Guard x 4
T’au Fire Warriors x 10
Termagants with Spine Fists x 20
Stormstrike Charriot
Blood Ravens Terminators x 5 & Terminator Captain
Mandrakes x 5
Ultramarines Ballistus Dreadnought
What I Am Reading
I finished The Martyrs Tomb by Marc Collins, which was a fun story, felt a bit disconnected from the rest of the series, but still good.
I then listened to Spare Parts by Marc Platt, a fantastic Doctor Who audio drama about the genesis of the Cybermen, and is one the best stories that Big Finish have done.
I am slowly making my way through Secrets in Scarlet, slowly but surely.
What Tabletop Games I Am Playing
I played Blood Bowl on Saturday, against Black Orcs, and yeah, I lost, and lost a couple of players 🙁
A few more games were added to the library, starting with Bully, cause it was 99p, plus I got Quake Live and Crumble in a £1 mystery bundle on Fanatical!
I got a couple of bundles, first off Humble Choice, which got me
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.
Ok this has been a long update, my health and metal capabilities have been in the damn toilet, but better later thane never!
It was a really fun weekend and I spent it demoing games on the Star Wars games, moving between being a stand greeter, Shatterpoint, Legion, X-Wing and the Deck Building game, all of which are a hell of a lot of fun.
Myself, Lindsay and Sean came down by car on the Thursday night, and got to Birmingham, around 9:30ish and we got a Dominos and hung out.
The hotel is fine, its not the best hotel, but it was okay, the biggest gripe was breakfast which had zero diabetes friendly option, but I was able to remedy that by buying some Wheetbix of my own.
It was a really fun if exhausting weekend, and once I get paid at the end of July, I am hoping to buy a Steam Deck, depending if its even in stock, cause that’s been a huge issue in the past few months 4.
I actually came away with the belief that this was the best UK Games Expo I have been to since before the plague, yes a few minor niggles, but actually really positive, probably helped by having an awesome stand manager and an absolutely brilliant team to work with.
Cannot wait for next year!
What I Am Modelling
I started off by finishing my scenery for the Imperium table, first up was the Haemotrope Reactor.
I also listened to Blightslayer by Richard Strachan, which is rather good, I had feared the loss of Maleneth but Amara isn’t a bad character, but I am still sad at losing the Witch Aelf.
Blitzer x 2
Gutter Runner x 2
Rat Ogre
Skaven Clanrat Linemanx 5
Thrower
Re-Roll x 3
What Video Games I Am Playing
Bit more time on The Witcher 3 as I start on the DLC.
I also started playing Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun on stream, and that’s a lot of fun!
Also played a bit of Control on Stream too.
What I Am Creating
The second battle report of 2023 is out, and its Dropfleet Commander!!!
The new 40K podcast from the Edge of Empire team is here, its currently lacking a title, but here is our first episode!
What I Am Winning
Its been a minute, but I won these Govee gaming lights back in March, and they arrived this week, and will be getting installed on Megan’s desk in the next few days!
I finally got my hands on Kâhl Yôht Grendok, he took a bit to get made, but he is here now and I quite like him, cannot wait to get him built and painted!
I was having a few issues with OBS, seems to have been the last version update that was the issue, so I rolled back to 29.0.2 and that resolved the issues I was having.
What I Am Winning
Won a competition on Twitter for a copy of Star Wars Rouge Squadron 3D and Shadows of the Empire on Steam to celebrate the Star Wars Celebrationz
Played these games a lot as a nipper so will be nice to play it as an adult on a much better system!
What I Am Spending
I bought myself the Star Wars Deckbuilding Game at Star Wars Celebration, and got with it Star Wars Storycubes, the GameGenic sleeves, and a pin for Fennec Shand.
I also had a second Fennec Shand pin, that I swapped with Forbidden Planet for Chopper!
And although I didn’t spend the money, I did get a poster for the “Strike Me Down” promo along with a shiny promo card for Shatterpoint from Atomic Mass Games.
Also the Nvidia Shield Controller I was potentially getting was sorted and arrived, all I had to do was pay postage!
So all that’s left on my to buy list of controllers is a Luna and the Hyperkin Xeneon and the collection I am after is completed for now, although I must say a DualShock 4 is tempting!
Given that most of the ships, are in face tall sailing ships, the plan is to build a community of players and paint up our ships, displaying them in June publicly!
The T’au Objective markers I ordered also finally arrived, and will look great when used with that army!
Well, Christmas is almost with us, and this year we are doing a quiet one.
With the loss of Mary, having loved house and money being tight due to stupidly high energy bills, it’s going to be a lot more restrained.
The girls are just getting a book and a donation to a local cat rescue, and I expect the same in return.
The biggest thing I think I have been involved in really is three Secret Santas, one for my game demonstrator friends, which was capped at £5, another for Board Game Geek, which was £35 and a third for Video Game Geek which was £15.
I got my GDN Santee a poster of retro game controllers through the years, my BGG one got a Back to the Future dice game, and my VGG target got Horizon Zero Dawn and Nickelodeon All Star Brawl.
I have gotten my BGG gift which was a copy of Arkham Horror, as I posted the other week, but have yet to hear back about the other two yet.
I have reported the issues and hopefully will get a replacement set of books in the new year.
What I Am Cooking
I did manage to cook something for the first time in forever, a batch of my Kansas City BBQ Rocket Sauce, which has been distilled into bottles to give away as Christmas presents to friends and family.
I also bought a pack of UCM Destroyers for Dropfleet Commander, which I plan to build as Vancouver’s I think, the Launch capacity could be rather helpful.
Another serious issue we have had in the house is Wi-Fi coverage, so we bit the bullet and invested in a mesh Wi-Fi system, the heating system is dependent on Wi-Fi and it just so happens that the boiler is in the part of the house with the weakest Wi-Fi.
So we bought this TP-Link Deco S7 system to replace to replace the Wi-Fi network on the Virgin Media provided router which is to be perfectly honest, pretty dreadful.
And yeah it seems to be fixed now and working wonderfully, it also helped that Virgin Media finally replaced the faulty router we have had to put up with for so long, and combined this has made a huge difference.
So Covid had lasted a while in this house, me and Megan are now testing negative and Lindsay is too, but swears she sees a very faint line in her test.
The law says we didn’t have to isolate, but we chose to until we tested negative, why, because it was the right thing to do.
My first bout of the disease utterly destroyed my lungs, the second bout has messed up my sleep and left me very fatigued.
Inflicting this virus on others, just cause I fancy a pizza is unacceptable, and I did crave a pizza all week.
We have to be responsible, I know most of us have been sensible and gotten vaccinated, but many have not done so, some of those because they medically cannot.
I think that from this point forward we all should be more responsible for health and keeping others well. So when you feel a bit crummy and under the weather, reach for a face mask and wear it when out, because it’s not just Covid that can kill, but things like the flu as well.
What I Am Modelling
Started the week by painting the Weirdnob Shaman for my Orruk Warclans.
I am currently watching a few auctions of some Stadia controllers on eBay, whilst it’s not exactly a controller that is particularly associated with any game, I am reliably told that at least two publishers use this when developing some AAA games, which has me curious as to see if those games actually feel better with a Stadia controller.
I also managed to finally get Neo Geo games running in Retroarch, which I am super happy about!
I published the latest episode of Edge of Empire on Wednesday.
On Wednesday night I published the 25th Imperium Battle Report.
On Saturday I filmed and published the issue 26 battle report.
The Wednesday report is also in the can and ready to publish too.
What I Am Spending
I bought myself a new controller, you know for the emulation joy, this time it’s a Neo-Geo controller, well not the amazing joystick from the AES console but the one from the Neo Geo CD, which is still a great controller.
Of course cause it’s a USB-C controller I had to grab some USB-C female to USB-A male adaptors, which is fine, I guess it’s probably something I should have lying around for future use as USB-C becomes more prevalent.
I also grabbed a couple of USB-A to USB-C cables to make sure I could plug in my Elite controllers charging dock permanently and still have one spare to charge the mouse when needed.
And finally, finally, my Hyperkin Duke arrived, I ordered this months ago and it’s taken this long for it to come!
So happy to have this as it’s a controller I remember very fondly!
And I did buy Lindsay a new keyboard, simply because the sound of her current keyboard, something that her work got that costs according to Amazon £7.99!
The sound just hurts the ears and she goes through keyboard so quickly because she just wears down the print on the keys in a few months, so I also grabbed her some pink double shot PBT pudding keycaps.
Oh and I won an auction on eBay for a Stadia controller and it’s only cost me £7!
I also got asked to do some game play testing for which the publisher wants me to use a DualSense alongside the Xbox controller, so they sent me one today.
Paint the Primaris Ultramarines to 2000 Points – 25% Complete
The first 500 points are painted, we now have a combat patrol led by Uriel Ventris, and consisting of an Intercessor Squad, Redemptor Dreadnought and a Suppressor Squad.
