So there is going to be an election, I don’t have much to say on the matter.
But get to know your candidates and vote for the person you think would do best for your area.
But what I would like to say is that right now, the UK is broken, schools are falling apart due to dodgy concrete, the roads are full of potholes, rent is stupidly high, the cost of living is out of control and things are just broken.
So with that in mind, I think we need to make a choice on who we think is best placed to fix whats gone wrong over the past few years.
What I Am Modelling
I started out with a Mega Boss on Maw-Krusha to join my Ironjawz
I then painted up some Glaivewraith Stalkers I had sitting in a box, they were in a weird state, a bit of disreppair, no idea how I came into ownership of them, but I didn’t build them, so there was a bit of work involved, but they give me a chance to try out some new rust techniques.
I had an Amazon voucher from a redund, so I grabbed Bayonetta 3 for the Switch, just need to hunt down a copy of the second game without being ripped off now!
Its been a tough few weeks, we have had a death in the family and some other stuff that’s caused some challenges
I have been feeling my depression quite deep and its really doing a number on my life, I am really finding it very hard to even leave the house.
I know I need to try harder, so I am going to try and have a better month in April now that the worst is behind us, I mean that is all I can do right, just keep going and try to be better.
I had a particularly bad instance of doing my normal rushing ahead last week, and it hurt some of my friends, so I need to watch myself and keep an eye on my tendency to just rush ahead and not stop to check things are sound.
I am organising a Heresy event as part of my getting back on top of things, and tickets sold out right away, gonna try and have my Zone Mortalis table finished by then so I can set it up and try and convince someone to come play on it with me whilst I EO.
I finally finished sorting out all the metadata on the Audio Book Shelf server, and oh my word, that was a lot of stuff to deal with!
I still have to sort out the authors and series, but we will get there!
I am currently uploading my BBC Doctor Who audio books, which is a sizable pile, still need to buy The Church on Ruby Road by Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson, which is the latest release, might spend my next Audible token on it!
What I Am Modelling
Its been a bit of a weird period of time, but I have painted up two squads of Vigilors for my Celestial Vindicators.
I also listened to Lazarus: Enmity’s Edge by Gary Kloster which was pretty good, but I kinda expected the bad guy to turn out to be a Fallen, but it wasn’t and that was still cool. It actually humanised the Dark Angels quite a bit.
What Video Games I Am Playing
Finished up with Yakuza 0, and I have to admit, the story was phenomenal, really good.
I also sold my old iPhone 12 and was able to afford to buy the Solar Auxilia Battlegroup as a result, which you would have seen the unboxing for video earlier.
I then started on Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster, I have never played any of the first 6 games in the series as they were never released in Europe when I was a nipper, and even then they were on Nintendo consoles, which weren’t that common in the UK.
I returned to Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, its a great game and I want to finish it, then play it again!!!
What I Am Creating
The first Warhammer 40k Combat Patrol Battle Report has been published, this one was between the Blood Ravens Space Marines Chapter and the Necrons of the Sautekh Dynasty.
We are brining back the tradition of having breakfast together on a Sunday morning, and I cooked the first one, which was croissants with ham, cheese and egg!
I have gotten a new headset, but not by buying it, my friend gave me a broken headset and said it was mine if I could fix it, turned out the dongle was borked, so after asking Logitech if I can buy replacement, they told me it was still in warranty and replaced the whole thing, which my friend was cool with as theirs had already been replaced.
Hope you all had a good Christmas, mine was fine, but I was ill for most of it and for one point over 72 hours was awake for less than 10 of them!
But other than that, it was good, we went to my sister in laws for the dinner, which was nice, and we had a great time with Megan’s family.
Me and Lindsay kept up our tradition of a Chinese takeaway for Christmas Eve and a movie, this year it was Super Mario Bros. And Christmas morning it was turkey bacon stotties with mushrooms, and the egg that Lindsay has been adding recently and Tymbark Apple & Cherry juice.
We didn’t do much in the way of gifts, we limited ourselves to £25 each, so I got Megan a book and a rainbow Stich controller holder. Lindsay got a book as well, plus a bunch of Steam games, as she has decided that she wants a Steam Deck in 2024.
My favourite present was a Moopsy toy that Karen made for me, its adorable, I just need to find a place to put it in the studio!
New Years was quiet, me and the otters went to Pauls for a few hours, then returned home and they went to bed, whilst I had a chicken wrap and chips and played the last of Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered.
Hopefully 2024 is gonna be a better year, because 2023 has been challenging.
What I Am Modelling
I started off with a big batch of Ultramarines, starting with a squad of Aggressors
And then I finished off Silver Linings just as the bell struck midnight, which I was happy with, great game, but the DLC felt disjointed because of the episodic nature.
I won a voucher from Maltesers which I combined with a voucher from some market research I did for KFC in order to buy a copy of Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, which made me very happy, as everyone knows I am a massive fan of the series.
Really happy with how this turned out, and it looks super cool.
What we have on it, are:-
Playstation Controller (USB)
DualShock 3
NES Controller
SNES Controller
Tribute 64
Gamecube Controller
Gamecube Wavebird
Mega Drive Controller (USB)
Mega Drive 6 Button Controller (USB)
Saturn Controller Model 2 (USB)
8BitDo SN30 Pro
Hyperkin Duke
PC Engine Turbo Pad (USB)
A500 Controller
USB-C Cable
Micro USB Cable
8BitDo Neo Geo CD Controller
Shelf with some adaptors
Hyperkin Xenon
DualSense
Switch Pro
Xbox Series X
Amazon Echo Dot
Google Stadia
Amazon Luna
Steam Controller
NVIDIA Shield
So yeah really happy with how its turned out, expensive but worth it!
And I also mounted the Xbox Series S under the desk, just to keep the desk top clearer, becuase it was in a funny situation with no where to be because the place it was, was no longer an option as the new monitor was in the way.
I imagine the next few weeks will be more of the same, just getting stuff better and more tidy, I still may wall mount the PS5 and/or Switch, but lets wait and see.
What I Am Modelling
I started by finishing some Chaplins for the Ultramarines, and a Judicar.
I have started listening to The Fall of Cadia by Robert Rath and that’s pretty good so far, very surprised that they had yet to do this story!
What Tabletop Games I Am Playing
Got a game of Horus Heresy in at club on Friday myself and Russell started a campaign, and well I wiped the floor with him, but I did have 3250 points to his 2500 so it was an unfair match up!
This is a big update, life has been a bit all over the place and its taken this long to sort out putting out a new blog post, sorry
My dad turned 60 earlier this month so we buggered off to Suffolk for a birthday meal, we were in the county for less than 24 hours which felt too brief as I was unable to get any quality time.
Would have liked to have spent more time with the nibblings, but it was nice nonetheless.
It was a Sunday dinner at the pub and I had lamb, cause I love lamb and so rarely get to have it.
I turned 41 as well, which was fine, but my birthday plans failed and it’s left me somewhat deflated.
I am on the verge of giving up any attempt at celebrating it from now.
I did get a pair of AirPod Pros for my birthday, mostly cause I needed the ANC
This weekend I went to Stirling for a Horus Heresy event runs by some friends of ours, an event with lots of Conpany of Legends DNA, which is really cool cause we never get to play in our own event!
That’s not me saying they ripped us off, we love that they have taken our concept and turned it into their own thing, it’s absolutely brilliant, although we did provide them with Chris’s scoring/pairing spreadsheet.
I am gonna put up a vide with my list next week.
It’s been a really fun event, my first game was against Matts Whit Scars, a beautiful army that I was able to really push and give it a hard time.
The game went rather well for me, I did lose in the end, but it largely came down to a mixture of great tactics by Matt, poor decision making on my part and of course rolling double 1s on Plasma Pistol Chainfire on my Moritat resulting in him dying in his first turn out of the Rhino!
The second game on Saturday was against Chris’s Custodes, and yeah at 3.5k points, Custodes really get to shine as they can take a lot of the nicer toys that 3k kind of stops them taking
I got hammered in this game, my list just struggled to handle the sheer amount of 2+ Armour
Wonderful guy as well and a beautifully painted army, makes me want to get my Custodes out the box!
On Sunday I faced Mark and his Ultramarines, in a very challenging game, for a good part of the game, I was dominant on one flank, distracting him with stuff on the other, but once he had taken care of those units, he quickly wiped out my whole army!
A great weekend and the lads put on an amazing event, really good, absolutely loved my time there.
Insullationgate
Not my name, but it seems apt, on my return Stirling, we were having some insulation work done by the landlord, the contractors said, it was all external, but when they arrived, we were told its actually all internal!
As a result of the insulation, I found a DOOM box of abandoned Warhammer projects and decided to finish as many of them as I could, starting with a resin Big Mek with Shokk Attack Gun, who mostly just needed a few bits and bobs finishing
Then I finished up some Marines that Chris gave me ages ago to supplement my Word Bearers who needed a couple of Marines per Squad to allow me to take them as Tactical Squads instead of Veteran Squads and allow me to build some non Pride of the Legion lists
I also had a couple of bits printed up for my controller board, some black hooks to hang cables and a shelf, to hold a few little bits.
I also finally bought a new monitor for the studio, I just really needed some more screen real-estate for editing Edge of Empire podcasts, cause the setup I had was a bit weird in composition.
Its a Cooler Master GA271 and is really good for the £130 I paid for it, and I mean, really good, far better than it has any right to be, with some HDR and FreeSync too.
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!
Stuff is getting better and I feel a lot more in control the past couple of weeks, but there is still more to do.
I need to be a bit more forthright about asking Lindsay and Megan for help and assistance.
Currently waiting on some work being done on the house and this is sort of creating a limbo situation for me, so a few bits are on hold, but I think I might be able to end this year feeling a lot better.
But lets keep up the progress and see what happens.
What I Am Modelling
I started with Evander Garrius for the Imperial Fists
I also bought for myself as a birthday treat, the Hyperkin Xenon controller, which so far has been amazing to use, feels so much like playing games in 2005 again!
And after a bit of hunting I found some nice cables to use for my controllers, these nice chunky rubber ones are just right, very dieselpunk and feel really substantial, I love them!
My Edge of Empire co-host Chris got married this past weekend so myself, Megan and Lindsay travelled to Brighton for it!
We started with a stop at Warhammer World where me and Megan played a game of Combat Patrol.
And then we hit Suffolk and stayed over at my parents.
We then travelled to Brighton so Lindsay and Megan could visit a bad tea shop, so I wandered around and visited CEX looking for some DVDs Megan wants added to PLEX.
We had a Wendys which was really nice, really nice and I really want them to expand to the north, and soon!
After that we went to our AirBnB which is actually really nice and very comfortable.
We watched Spin Me Round, which was funny and a bit irrelevant, which I enjoy!
The next day was Chris’s wedding which was beautiful and amazing and we are all so happy for Chris and Ani!
The next day was a long 8 hour drive back home, made worse by the bank holiday traffic, but we got to Megan’s mum and dads and had a very nice tea, and then made our way home.
A short trip, but very fun and enjoyable.
What I Am Modelling
I finished off the Ultramaines Victix Honour Guard
The Raspberry Pi I have been running my server on for the last 2 years has basically become insufficient to handle what I am asking it to do, getting a few failures and slowdowns.
So Paul has lent me Mary’s old HP All-In-One PC so we can transition the server to an X64 system until my plan to build a dedicated server that can also do transcoding can be realised.
The transfer went well, well 69 audiobooks somehow got lost, but I had local backups, so restoration of them was easy enough.
At first I was quite worried as it turned out the system was struggling to run AudioBookShelf as well, but it just took a bit of time for the new installs to verify the files and rebuild some of the metadata.
The machine only has 8GB of memory, 2GB which has been pinched by the integrated GPU, but alas it only has a single SODIMM slot, so when I upgrade the RAM it will have to be a replacement of the existing SODIMM.
So far it’s running pretty well, I am away in Brighton right now and watching a movie that’s streaming from my studio!
What I Am Modelling
I started the week by finishing Illuminor Szeras for my Necrons, which completes the army for now.