With it being the Black Friday sale on Bambu Labs, Megan and Lindsay decided to pay for an upgrade to the printer with an AMS Lite.
The AMS Lite is a system that allows the A1 to print with up to 4 different reels of filament, so this can be either the same filament so you don’t need to reload when you run out, or four different colours for multi-colour printing.
Given the space constraints, we opted to mount it above the printer, which meant I had to first print the materials for that. I do find it cool that instead of selling you the top mount with moulded plastics, they just sell you the screws and give you the STL to print it yourself, we opted for white to match the printers overall look
The AMS arrived on Thursday, we also ordered a cool plate for better adhesion when printing PLA, which is the material we most commonly print with, and a stick of glue to give that a try.
Until now I have had a Krieg force and a Scions force both with a different basing scheme, but now I have merged the armies together and the Scions basing has been changed to match the Krieg
I am making garlic roast potatoes (been asked to change these to bigger potatoes from my preferred new potatoes), spiced roast carrot, parsnip, onion and leeks, honey glazed red cabbage (normally I would add sultanas but the family hate them, to be fair so do I), and buttered sprouts with chestnuts and almonds
Thankfully it all went down a treat, although I am being strong-armed into serving broccoli and Yorkshire Puddings !
What I Am Spending
I picked up this pot of Vallejo Thick Mud European Mud to try and replace Stirland Battlemire/Mud, it’s not a great match.
Grey Knights Terminator Librarian & Brotherhood Terminators x 5
Heretic Legion Warband
Imperial Fiats Macharius
Dark Angels Eradicators x 3
Ardboyz x 10
Tzzangors x 20
Guardian Defenders x 10
Lord Vigilant on Gryph-Stalker
What I am Reading
I finished Manflayer by Josh Reynolds which was quite good, but I get the feeling that he had more places to go with the series, shame he no longer works with Black Library.
Last Sunday I played a couple of games with Megan, first up Pandemic: Hot Zone – North America, which was a game that went very well as we got it sorted pretty simply and won
I haven’t been posting for a while, alas a lot of it comes down to going through my usual summer slump and a bit of depression I have been battling, but I am trying to turn myself around.
Giving myself some projects to do, and things to try and keep me occupied, I really think I am missing Company of Legends, it gave me something to focus on, something to look forward to and these last couple of years without it, well I have been doing a bit badly.
But let’s crack on and update you on my last few months, so let’s get into it!
Heresy Camp
This other weekend, I attended Heresy Camp, run by some amazing friends of mine, and how did a not “Company of Legends” weekender go?
On Friday I met up with James at Gamers-at-Hart and we played a warm up game with our armies, my Solar Auxilia and his Sisters of Silence
Aethon Heavy Sentinel Squadron [200 Pts]: • 3x Aethon Heavy Sentinel [65 Pts]: Aethon Missile Battery, Multi-Laser
Malcador Heavy Tank Squadron [350 Pts]: • 1x Malcador Heavy Tank [350 Pts]: Searchlights, Smoke Launchers, Vanquisher Battle Cannon, Demolisher Cannon, Hull (Left) & Hull (Right) Mounted Lascannon, Pintle Mounted Multi-Laser, Dozer Blade, Flare Shield
Malcador Heavy Tank Squadron [350 Pts]: • 1x Malcador Heavy Tank [350 Pts]: Searchlights, Smoke Launchers, Vanquisher Battle Cannon, Demolisher Cannon, Hull (Left) & Hull (Right) Mounted Lascannon, Pintle Mounted Multi-Laser, Dozer Blade, Flare Shield
## Lords of War [300 Pts]
Macharius Heavy Tank Squadron [300 Pts]: Macharius Vanquisher Cannon • 1x Macharius Heavy Tank [280 Pts]: Two Sponson Mounted heavy stubbers, Hull (Front) Mounted twin-linked heavy stubber, Smoke Launchers
After the game myself and James made our way to Moorhouse Adventure Centre where we hung out for a bit, I was going to play Zone Mortalis, but decided to come home that night cause I wanted us to pick up Graham the next morning, but there were some great games being played
The missions and environment rules were fairly punishing with vehicles and dreadnoughts moving within 3” of terrain having to fire on the nearest United friend or foe, which saw me destroy one of own Carnadons and Nick wipe out a Recon Squad of his
Deamon Fulgrim is a beast and basically ate two squads of Lasmen and my Command squad, in the end I lost by a lot!
Game 2 was on table 3 vs Johns Death Guard, which was a mostly infantry list, but damn Death Guard are tough
Combination of Mortaion, who kept healing the wounds I put on him, and a trio of Dreadnoughts just ripped apart my tanks and I was tabled again
Game 3 was against Chris’s World Eaters on Table 4 and I wasn’t tabled, which was a bonus, but his fast troops, and awesome advanced reaction made short work of my tanks.
After the game I had my tea, a lovely Chinese takeaway of chips and fried rice in curry sauce and salt and pepper chicken, after which we had a Heresy Quiz, which I did respectably in.
The next day I played Matthew and his traitor White Scars, which was tough game, the rules were a bit complicated and I was forced to keep my men out of their transports to carry the objective.
Then I painted up a test piece for a new terrain project, this one is going to be for a no man’s land board for Trench Crusade, but is also going to be generic enough that it won’t look out of place in Bolt Action or Warhammer Fantasy Battle
This year I want to finally play some Legions Imperialis, so I painted up the bases to make my Aeronautica models usable, went for a sandstone type scheme
And finally, myself and Graham had an intro game of Bolt Action in which I played the Germans (because I already have a German army) and Graham the British, I think he won, but really we were just figuring the game out
I originally bought it on GOG a few days after release, despite my system at the time only having a 1660 Ti, which wouldn’t have run it well, but I got it for under a tenner due to the very poor reviews of the state it was in at launch.
But my experience with GOG Galaxy and its cloud saves ended up having me buy it on Steam in a sale earlier this year, alongside Phantom Liberty.
I even bought Phantom Liberty on GOG, but losing all my saves in Control when GOG Galaxy crashed, has put me off GOG for anything I really want to invest time in.
So the reason I am only now just playing it now is cause with these kinds of games, I tend to wait until all the expansion are out, and then have a massive big playthough then, and well it took a bit for Phantom Liberty to come out and I was busy with other stuff.
I have still been playing some Hell Let Loose most Mondays at least and often a game on Wednesday nights as well, and the other week we had this score which was incredible!
I have started a new YouTube painting series Just About Tabletop Standard, in which I am going to paint a Marine from each of the 18 Legions from Horus Heresy.
We started out with an episode on the Dark Angels, followed by an episode on the Emperor’s Children
What I Am Spending
The grown up purchase the past few months was a new vacuum cleaner, we ended up getting a GTech AirRam Mk2 K9, and Lindsay is very happy with it, she always gets excited for new vacuum cleaners!
Our new car was also delivered, we got a Renault Mégane E-Tech which is a really nice car, quite a bit more range than our last and a few extra niceties as well, like a pair of USB-C sockets in the back and dual zone air-con
I managed to get all of the issues of Combat Oatrol I wanted, issues 37, 38, 39 and 40, to get me a Helbrute, some Chaos Terminators and some Wraithguard
Whilst at UK Games Expo, I did pick up the Battletech Beginner Box, I really want to play some of this game again, played it as a teenager, and want to relive my youth!
I have finally gotten around to sorting out a new server for the house.
Gone for a Fujitsu TX1310-M1 with a Xenon E3-1226V3 with 32GB Ram and even comes with a 512gb SSD and a pair of 3TB HDDs.
Got it for £130 which I don’t think is a terrible price, but when they went to ship it to me, they found they had lost the side panel and they contacted me to offer a discount of £26, which is accepted, I can always pop a Perspex cover on it.
It came on the Thursday and was delivered by DHL, coming at lunchtime.
So the planning started as soon as I hit buy on as to how best implement this and get it up and running and that started with the decision to run Proxmox on bare metal.
So that was installed and I created a ZFS pool with the two 3TB drives.
The first container I set up was for Casa OS, which would be hosting most of the media stuff, starting with the basics of PLEX and AudioBookShelf.
Once that was setup, I started setting stuff up, but I soon realised that I had a fatal issue, my hard drives with the media on were formatted in NTFS which docker doesn’t play nice with 😭
So I had to transfer data to drives that were being formatted in EXT4 or the ZFS pool, starting with the movies library, and then the slow process of the TV shows which would take some time annoyingly.
In the meantime I set up a second VM running Foundry VTT that me and Chris are going to play around with to see if it will prove a decent replacement for Roll20.
The data transfer took a good long while, there was a lot to transfer.
But alas, in my attempts to be clever I managed to delete the audiobooks and movies meaning I have to restore them from the offsite backups, and that could take at least a month to do that and sort out the metadata properly
But now it’s in place in what’s its permanent home, it takes up a lot less space and is significantly more powerful that what it replaced, I am quite happy with it and in the next few weeks we are going to set up Mealie
What I Am Painting
I spent the weekend at my sister in law’s and painted up the terrain that came in the £75 pack from Combat Patrol
I played a game of Heresy with Graham at Durham Raiders, where I tried out Artillery with the Solar Auxilia, it did not go well, my positioning was terrible and his summoned Daemons ripped me apart
I then played Dave at Hartlepool Gamers, where I lost, badly, but I could have won in turn 2 when all his reserves failed to arrive, but I am lot a dick so didn’t do that
When his reserves did arrive, the Gal Vorbak tore my ranks apart panel by panel
And again at Durham Raiders, I played a simple doubles game with Andrew where we took on Paul’s Iron Warriors and thanks to Andrew’s nasty plasma guns we won!
It’s now been 3 years since we moved to Hartlepool and since then we have had Virgin Media, which has been extremely reliable and much better than what we used to have in Pelton.
But with our current deal coming to an end, we were being offered a price of £78, which is much higher than the £36 we have been paying for the same deal, which got up 1Gbps.
We thought we had sorted out a new deal with them, but Virgin never bothered sending us any confirmation of the deal, so we handed in our notice, and decided to move to Grain, an altnet, who had installed their infrastructure on our street last year.
We are paying £34, which is getting us 900mbps both up and down, which is perfect for the server, which is running PLEX and AudioBookShelf.
The router is wall mounted, and it’s quite interesting, does WiFi 6
And we also have a static IP address which is very handy and will hopefully let me sort out a proper web address for my AudioBookShelf server
So far, really happy with the service and it’s been amazing being able to upload videos to YouTube so quickly!
What I Am Modelling
I started off by doing some weathering to my 3D printed artillery carriages using some Contrast paints, and I am rather happy with how that turned out.
I did a lot of damage to his army, but failure to secure some objectives and Battle Tactics early on, cost me the game!
What Video Games I Am Playing
I have started playing the Final Fantasy III Pixel Remaster, I am a couple of hours in and it’s quite different to the previous two with managing my magic being quite difficult so far
So a few years ago when the Saudi takeover was first rumoured I said if it happened I would eat my hat!
Well it happened and Graham and Chris who both said they would hold me to it, let me off, and well I am wondering if I should now.
Under the dark ages of Mike Ashley’s reign, I always said that the only expectations I desired from Newcastle United, were that we have a decent cup run, and we challenge for a place in Europe.
That’s it, I never wanted anything more than that, because in these days of billionaires bankrolling teams, the UKs other clubs don’t get a look in.
And realistically I think that’s all any football fan should want, winning the league should never be guaranteed, I want a competitive league, something that we haven’t had for a long time.
Anyway, let’s be honest, the past three seasons, we have had that, last season was a little bit less, but we were hampered by injuries, which happens.
But yeah, in three years , we have consistently challenged for a place in Europe, and had decent cup runs, it’s not been doom and gloom and I am happy with that.
Winning the League Cup might seem like noting to some people, but for us, it was a first domestic honour in nearly 70 years, and for a club the size of Newcastle that’s a big deal. In my lifetime we have ever been the bridesmaid and never the bride.
I am not expecting this to begin constant cup wins, I don’t ever want to be a jaded fan like this of Man City and Liverpool, for whom another trophy is not a big deal.
But I hope that this win is the beginning of Newcastle returning to a point where it’s not a question of if we can win something again, but when we win something again.
So should I eat my hat?
What I Am Modelling
I started out with some more bits for my Iron Sultanate warband for Trench Crusade
I painted up the Yüzbaşı Captain to lead the warband
The Chaos Knights recently got a Combat Patrol and so I printed up a couple of War Dogs to make that, and painted them up to belong to House Herpetrax.
The Ancestors’ Wrath Einhyr Champion & Kâhl Yôht Grendok
Kellermorph & Neophyte Hybrids x 10
Ogryn Charonite Squad x 3
Dankhold Trogboss
Phallax Warders x 10
What I Am Reading
Been a while since I updated this, but I have been slowly making my way through Straight Silver in The Saint by Dan Abnett
I also listened to Verminslayer by David Guymer, which was very cool, I liked the new companion for Gotrex, but I hope we get a short about his falling out with the last one.
And I listened to Hell’s Last by Justin Hill which was really good, but then I did Stan Minka Lesk!
What Tabletop Games I Am Playing
Played another game of Warhammer Age of Sigmar the other week, this time against Alex with the Idoenth Deepkin and we increased the points to 1000
I took this list
Big Waaagh! (990 points) - General's Handbook 2024-25
I managed to grab the only copy of Combat Patrol Issue 26, I felt terrible as there was another fella behind me who wanted a copy, but I was there first and patiently waited for it
I also grabbed myself another box of Tempestus Scions, to build myself the rest of the Combat Patrol, these guys are going to be a Tempestor, three Command Squad guys with Hotshot Lasguns and a Tempestor Prime with a Bolt Pistol
I am also a big Minka Lesk Stan, so of course I had to grab Hells Last to get her command squad, ok as they are, they are only for use in Legends, but I am sure I can do something with them
This means I now have three Minka Lesk models, one as a Sgt, one as a Lieutenant and now a Captain too
I got a few bits and bobs in for other hobby stuff, starting with these NFT tags, they get used to link to Google Docs of whats in my army boxes to allow for easier figuring out of what I have
I did need a new external caddy, so I got a dependable Ugreen one, that I have used before without any issue, which was handy as I had a 1TB drive I could pop in to expand our TV library to 9TB.
As part of the long term move from console to PC, there are certain games I want to still have in my collection, and as the Assassin’s Creed series is my favourite, I intend to add the whole series to Steam over the next year or so.
The first prints washed and cured are markedly better than with the old system, that’s not the say what I had was pants, but this, is so so much better!
I printed some Ogryns for my Solar Auxilia, and yeah, they are a lot smoother and easier to get clean with the new system.
Malcador Heavy Tank Squadron [350 Pts]: • 1x Malcador Heavy Tank [350 Pts]: Searchlights, Smoke Launchers, Vanquisher Battle Cannon, Demolisher Cannon, Hull (Left) & Hull (Right) Mounted Lascannon, Pintle Mounted Multi-Laser, Dozer Blade, Flare Shield
Malcador Heavy Tank Squadron [350 Pts]: • 1x Malcador Heavy Tank [350 Pts]: Searchlights, Smoke Launchers, Vanquisher Battle Cannon, Demolisher Cannon, Hull (Left) & Hull (Right) Mounted Lascannon, Pintle Mounted Multi-Laser, Dozer Blade, Flare Shield
## Lords of War [300 Pts]
Macharius Heavy Tank Squadron [300 Pts]: Macharius Vanquisher Cannon • 1x Macharius Heavy Tank [280 Pts]: Two Sponson Mounted heavy stubbers, Hull (Front) Mounted twin-linked heavy stubber, Smoke Launchers
Imperial Fists - ++ Allied Detachment +
## Rite of War Rite of War: The Stone Gauntlet (IF)
## HQ [175 Pts]
Fafnir Rann [175 Pts]: Artificer Armour, Boarding Shield, Bolt Pistol, Frag Grenades, Iron Halo, Krak Grenades, Master of the Legion, 2x The Headsman and The Hunter
It was my first time paying an all tank army and it’s a bit of a learning curve and I made a fair few tactical mistakes
Let’s be perfectly honest, the Malcadors and Macharius are such a worse choice compared to the Leman Russ Vanquisher, but I hate the idea of just taking the most efficient unit
The biggest mistake I made was moving forward, what I should have done was stay back and fire from distance, and concentrate on the Contemprors with Multi-Meltas.
I also played a game of Age of Sigmar with Keith at Hartlepool Friday Night games and yeah I was tabled by end of turn 2.
Anyway, turned out with the Artillery counting as infantry (I know right) and the rest of the list being Armoured Fist, I cannot take the Earthshaker Cannons 🙁
So I will now be taking this list, and thank goodness I printed and painted the Macharius last week!
LI - Solar Auxilia - Solar For Camp - [2998Pts]
# ++ Crusade Force Organisation Chart ++ [2698Pts] ## Expanded Army Lists Expanded Army List Profiles: Exemplary Units On, Legacy Units On
## Heavy Support [900Pts] Aethon Heavy Sentinel Squadron [200Pts]: • 3x Aethon Heavy Sentinel [65Pts]: Aethon Missile Battery, Multi-Laser
Malcador Heavy Tank Squadron [350Pts]: • 1x Malcador Heavy Tank [350Pts]: Searchlights, Smoke Launchers, Vanquisher Battle Cannon, Demolisher Cannon, Hull (Left) & Hull (Right) Mounted Lascannon, Pintle Mounted Multi-Laser, Dozer Blade, Flare Shield
Malcador Heavy Tank Squadron [350Pts]: • 1x Malcador Heavy Tank [350Pts]: Searchlights, Smoke Launchers, Vanquisher Battle Cannon, Demolisher Cannon, Hull (Left) & Hull (Right) Mounted Lascannon, Pintle Mounted Multi-Laser, Dozer Blade, Flare Shield
## Lords of War [300Pts] Macharius Heavy Tank Squadron [300Pts]: Macharius Vanquisher Cannon • 1x Macharius Heavy Tank [280Pts]: Two Sponson Mounted heavy stubbers, Hull (Front) Mounted twin-linked heavy stubber, Smoke Launchers
So yeah the Artillery is dropped, along with the Melta Lances on the Aethon Heavy Sentinels, which get Multi-Lasers instead, and in goes a Macharius Vanquisher
So left to paint for the event are
Aethon Heavy Sentinel x 3
Malcador Heavy Tank
I started work on the Malcador today and will start on the Aethons next week.
Since I got the 3D printer in August, most of my prints have been infantry, with a few Rhino sized tanks
But this project is the biggest print so far, and required 3 full to the brim plates done!
It’s a proxy for the Macharius Heavy Tank called the Lupercal, and it’s a beautiful model.
The first plate which had on the turret, sponsons and part of the tracks, took just shy of 9 hours to print
The second which had on the sides and engine block was a chew on to print. The first attempt failed at 77% done, which was fine for the engine block, but the sides were partly completed. The printer appeared to have crashed, which was annoying.
The second attempt was just the sides, plus the Heavy Stubber Sponsons which I had forgotten was the only configuration the Solar Auxilia version could take, and that didn’t print at all.
Once it was all printed cleaned and cured, it was then time to put it together, as you can tell I decided to print the parts for all three weapons that can be swapped in and out,
Those being the standard Battlecannons, Vanquisher Cannons and a Rotary Bolt Cannon (used to be a Vulcan Mega Bolter and that was much cooler)
This has a base of Mechanicus Standard Grey (AP Deep Grey), then the camo pattern using Thunderhawk Blue and Abbadon Black, with a recess wash of Agrax Earthshade then a Dawnstone dry brush
When it was finished I coated the tracks in Stirland Mud and added some static grass for texture after which I drybrushed it with Gothor Brown and then Screaming Skull.
I am pretty happy with how this turned out and it’s adding a decent big tank to the Solar Auxilia even though it’s pretty pointless for its cost, and a Leman Russ Vanquisher is far more points efficient.
So what have I learned from this project, well if I want to tackle anything bigger, I will need a wash and cure station, a Stormhammer is something I want to do, but would have issues with the processing of it due to size
And to be honest, it’s given me a lot more confidence to run longer prints, which is something I have tried to avoid in the past cause I didn’t like being unable to monitor them.
But here is the thing when it comes to my 3D printing and Warhammer, I don’t want to be the guy who 3D prints everything. For the Solar Auxilia, so much stuff is still in very expensive resin, or just not in production, even in resin, that I found myself needing to 3D print a good ton of models.
I want to support my FLGSs, but at the same time, I enjoy the hobby of 3D printing, especially tanks, for my Krieg I want to print some Chimeras and Hellhounds for example.
I guess I am just trying to find that middle ground, where I am trying to 3D print some stuff but also making sure to buy actual plastic models for others.
It’s an interesting balancing act.
Website Update
I have added a new page to this website, its a list of the armies I own and a link to a Google Doc for each of them, listing what I have painted and ready to play with.
Its only partial, I am expanding it slowly as I catalogue what I have and get NFC tags attached to the boxes, which allows me to pull up the lists easily if I want to know what in the boxes.
What I Am Modelling
I started out with the Terminators for the Ultramarines Combat Patrol
It was a much closer match, but I struggled to score in the primary mission because the Necrons are quite slow, I think I really need some transports for them
And finally I went up against the Chaos Space Marines of Ian, and for the first couple of turns it was reasonably equal, and I thought I might stand a chance at a close loss
But losing a couple of my heavy hitters really turned the tide, as the much faster Chaos Space Marines utterly trounced me
So what have I learnt, well the biggest is that my Necrons need transport, so I think I need to invest in some Ghost Arks at some point soon, because I am finding they struggle to get Warriors on to objectives
But regardless of the outcome, I had fun and well, the wooden spoon is what I live for!
On Tuesday I played a game of Age of Sigmar for the start of a local escalation league, with the first games at 750pts
My first game was against Michaels Nighthaunt and oh it went badly, the buffs and rebuffs from his characters just really stopped my Ironjawz from getting enough attacks to hit home and as a result they crumpled pretty easily
Ah it is what it is, but it was none the less a fun game!
What Video Games I Am Playing
Still plodding away at Assassin’s Creed: Unity, starting off by concentrating on collectables and clearing stuff area by area
What I Am Spending
I got some Tempestus Scions to add some of the models I need to get myself to have the new Scions based Kill Team, I need some Tempestors and Scions with Grenade Launchers
Video game wise, I picked up Red Dead Redemption 2 on sale at its lowest ever price on Steam, and Rogue Trader too, based mostly on the recommendation of Graham
I also painted up a couple of artillery carriage batteries for the Solar Auxilia that I printed, with both Earthshaker and Medusa Cannons available to it with a simple swap
The issue 5 Combat Patrol battle report was published
And the issue 6 one is already done too, which goes live on the 31st!
I published a shortform video, the first of many I hope Edge of Empire will publish, this one was mostly to learn techniques, and I must emphasise that I love Graham, he is amazing and whilst he plays powerful lists, he is far far from a WAAC player
