Whatever – Musk's Miniatures

Watched my first game of 10th Edition

Well I watched part of a game, I probably could have gotten in a game myself if I was more organized…

Well I watched part of a game, I probably could have gotten in a game myself if I was more organized and less tired. A kid even asked me to play, he must have been desperate, but I only biked down to the FLGS, I didn’t bring a single miniature but I did get to see the mechanics in action and started thinking about how I want to remake the Diseased Sons for Warhammer 40,000 tenth edition.

I’m going to stick with Death Guard for a year or so more. I may mix in some Nurgle Daemons particularly my long dreamed of field of Nurglings, but alas we are starting with 1000 points and that is only so many models. I’ll need to remember to use Nurgle’s Gift and to take advantage of our ability to abandon objectives after infesting them. Luckily I already have four painted infested objectives, I’ll have to finish the fifth.

The Tallyman will be purchased shortly as that is a way to get more command points, I even joked I would buy him today at the Sentry Box but my immediate plan is to paint models I’ve already purchased, especially the Lord of Virulence. I was going to base my army around him last edition and did not have time, this edition I definitely will build and paint him, but first I’ll have to do my campaign badges and yet more base enhancements then I’ll likely change up some kneepads.

I’m not sure the optimal plague marine squad but apparently seven special guns are now possible in a single squad so I will do that. However, the plague bolter has lethal hits, that and devastating wounds will become mainstays of most Death Guard strategies. I’m looking forward to painting at least two more cultists to max out on their special weapons. I don’t know how many plague marines I truly need so I’ll probably do 2-3 armed to the teeth squads then just do kneepad updates as I have so many painted already, easily enough for seven squads of ten, probably enough for nine squads of ten.

The Nurgling Partymobile will likely get a havoc launcher, that was an idea I had last edition, maybe I’ll finally cut the one off Blastmarker Billy. I think Hellbrutes are cool but with the Lord of Virulence I will definitely paint my Plagueburst Crawler and I think two and a Predator Annihilator may become my new firebase, but I may try a Landraider at some point, but the Blastmarker Billy pattern may see a lot of play however I think I’ll do one with a fist so I can have a heavy flamer, but I like many of the other options too.

Beasts and Spawn being smaller units is a disappointment, I already have several painted but now you can’t do the wall of tentacles maybe there will be an alternate list when codices actually start getting released that lets you do something like that.

I didn’t do any statistical analysis but in 9th Edition I think I did better when I had Blightlords so that is the first or second or third unit that is going to get optimized for tenth edition. I already have ten or so painted, but too many of them have powerfists and chainfists so one day they’ll be Nurgle Terminators in a CSM army, but I have three old metal reapers, but I’ll do another plague spewer as well as one or two flails. But honestly I plan to make a shooty Death Guard army, Blightlords and Plague Marines can hold on quite a long time in H2H they just need a leader or two, so ultimately I’ll do up a new Daemon Prince and rebase my old one. I’ll probably use Deadly Pathogen a lot.

Today, I finally got around to transferring some paint out of failing pots, even spilled some tentacle pink on my floor, just a drop carrying the funnel to the kitchen to rinse out, but still unnecessary. I actually have a lot of paint I haven’t even tried yet some of the new Vallejo Game Colors. So I’ll be doing yet another stand of Nurglings to test out all the new puss and bile colours. Today was a good day for painting but instead I decided to update my blog again, we’ll see how much energy I have after work and after the gym tomorrow.

If you have thoughts on tenth edition and big plans for updating your army you can leave a comment below.

The Siege of Vanitros’s Bastion is at an end.

Several more games were played including two by the Diseased Sons but I just got too busy to type up the battle reports and now the 10th Edition of Warhammer 40,000 is coming out shortly…

Several more games were played including two by the Diseased Sons but I just got too busy to type up the battle reports and now the 10th Edition of Warhammer 40,000 is coming out shortly. I’ve been too busy to keep up with the rumours, the leaks, and the live streams. However I have seen people complaining in the Death Guard Facebook group. I’ll go on record as saying I don’t think the sky is in fact falling.

I do think Games Workshop may have read some of my blog posts as things I complained about to Bill such as the complication and the requirement to bring up to four books to field my “chaos” army seem to have been targeted by GW or the Studio as things to fix. So this may be more like 3rd Edition or 4th Edition.

Ninth Edition was actually the edition I played the most in years. It certainly is the one I typed up the most battle reports for. I don’t have any big 10th Edition plans other than to not buy many new models, but of course I pre-ordered the Death Guard Heroes re-issue. I plan to rebase my existing models and move models around into different squad configurations.

I also plan to paint campaign badges so even if a model got into a single game of 9th as part of the Siege of Vanitros’s Bastion campaign they’ll get a badge. We got so busy at work and then I started playing video games again (Sid Meier’s Civilization VI Leader’s Pass) but I think sacrifices have to be made. So we are pledging to work less this coming quarter, I even will take some days off, but the heat is not conducive to painting. I don’t know how I used to find so much time and energy for miniature painting and blogging.

You can’t have a miniature painting blog for twenty years unless you actually paint so I will try to get a few new models done. I actually think some models may have appeared on Instagram that never made it to this blog or Flickr because I just didn’t want to deal with the record keeping and my terrible notes. Maybe I’ll type notes and bring my iPad to games. It can take pictures too, thought I don’t know if I’ve ever used that feature.

I really wanted to get in a token BLOG update, but I don’t have any insight into 10th Edition other than I’ll need to paint more special weapons to fill out my Plaguemarine squads. I’ll also get around to some daemon engines and I’ll probably run a lot of Blightlords and of course finally get my Lord of Virulence on the field to lead them. If you have thoughts on 10th Edition or whether Maceo the Maligned should get a campaign badge, you can leave a comment below.

20 Year Hobby Blogging Anniversary

While collecting my list of recommended hobby blogs, I noticed a number did year in review and anniversary posts. I did a year in the blogosphere retrospective but I don’t think I’ve ever done a blog anniversary post for Musk’s Miniatures…

Musk’s Miniatures started as a spinoff from the original Muskblog, so I could join the From the Warp blog network if memory serves me correct. But even before Muskblog there was Muschamp.ca and before even that I had a homepage, in fact it was because UVic were going to take down my old content that I finally registered and paid for my own domain. And despite everything I’ve kept too much content online, which has to give me one of the oldest continually maintained Warhammer 40,000 fan pages.

So inspired by Rob Hawkins and others I decided since my hobby blogging exploits have hit the big two oh, even if every post isn’t in one single blog, most are in WordPress or on a webpage I’ve carefully maintained and coded, I’m declaring victory over the Internet and the haters and took the time to type up a retrospective of my time spent in the hobby.

Back in the Day

In the beginning, there was no blogosphere, no Twitterverse and certainly no Facebook. There was however email, eventually the world wide web and in between that the usenet. I remember rec.miniatures but what really took up a lot of my time online in the 90s was the 40K mailing list, the Primarchs themselves were even subscribed. It was there that the Diseased Sons started to take off. Originally I was known more as an ork player, because I was forced to be by Owen, Paul, Thor etc.

One piece of content that was typed up while a UVic student was an origin story for the Diseased Sons. I should probably give it a fresh edit as it has changed little since the 1990s even if the rest of the Warhammer 40,000 lore and fluff has. Search engines however reward new content, but every now and then something old will become popular again.

Also played during the 90s was Necromunda in Yellowknife no less. I actually played in Duncan, Victoria and maybe even Ottawa. I used to be reasonably good at Necromunda and Bloodbowl. I like the skirmish scale games.

While running a campaign in Yellowknife I started a “Necromunda Times”. I also wrote some house rules which were ultimately published in the Citadel Journal. They never even fixed the typos. I never did get my promised free copy, so Owen gave me one, after he spotted my name in print. It must be at my mom’s place somewhere.

I looked through an archive of Citadel Journals I found online, but couldn’t find my name, saw some other familiar names from the mailing list like Dave “Squid Brain” Handy and Tim Huckleberry, but Owen spotted my name so it had to be an issue in 1998 or 1999.

Update: I may have been published in Gang War

Sometime after publishing this post I decided to spend money on a new laptop, partially so it would play my favourite computer game series better, Sid Meier’s Civilization. I took some ribbing from the gaming group, right up until I pointed out they spend $1000s of dollars to play Warhammer 40,000, but of course that is different. Anyway this morning when I fired up Mail, it imported messages I thought were long lost, including one from Warwick Kinrade:

Hello

I'm the current compiler/ editor of Games Workshops irregular Necromunda magazine Gang War. I was surfing for interesting Necromunda articles when I came across your scenario on Gary James Necromunda website. 

Would it be Ok for us to us the scenario in a future issue of Gang War? 

For this you'd get a freebie copy of the magazine. 

I realise this is old stuff, but we still like it, and Necromunda seems to be still going strong with players, so Fanatic Press are looking to continue supporting the game.

Thanks a lot

So I may have not been published in the Citadel Journal, instead I was published in a different magazine put out by Fanatic Press. And I never did get a free copy from them, but Owen did find it and give it to me, and they did leave in the typos and the physical copy should be in my mom’s storage room, I’ll try to dig it out next time I visit.

Here is an excerpt from my version of the Necromunda Times which used to be online, I still haven’t finished painting my Escher gang, but I have painted at least one test model.

Gargantuan Gwenivere Captured

The leader of the D-Cup Debutantes along with two of the gangs best fighters, turned up missing after the fight for the Archeotech horde. A juve named Mammoth Mary swore she saw the unconscious forms of the three Eschers being dragged from the battlefield by an Orrus Spryer! The girls have vowed revenge and are now hiring underhive scum to mount a rescue attempt.
The Necromunda Times

Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a powerful force in the miniature wargaming hobby, why else keep re-fighting the Battle of Agincourt or Gettysburg? Older hobbiest are perhaps trying to recover their lost youth or they finally have time and money to afford a large army of painted miniatures. I was actually in and out of the hobby several times due to school and work but also other stuff. However I always kept my content online, so after double checking that it had actually been twenty years I started planning this post.

A few posts back I used an old photo as a header image. That was the true impetus for this post. The digital photograph was taken over twenty years ago, the models and paint jobs in the picture were even older. Before 2002 I didn’t have a digital camera so what you had to do was take a photo on film and scan it or even just scan your miniatures directly on the flatbed scanner. The other option was to get someone who did have a digital camera to take pictures of your miniatures. I think Dean took some for me while I was living in Ottawa in 1997.

I still have most of my old models, such at the Rat Ogre pictured to the right. I think my snotlings disappeared in the 90s under mysterious circumstances and I may have lost models during various moves, perhaps some orks or other old unpainted models, plus my INWO cards seem to be missing. I can’t rule out someone walking off with something, I know I’ve lent people things only to never have them returned. Maybe some things will turn up when I finally get all my stuff out of my mom’s house, I know my collection of old White Dwarfs and other old gaming books and magazines is in her attic.

Having convinced someone at UVic to let me login one last time, I have my entire old webpage including the old miniature photos I posted online, such as the one to the right. Since 2002 I probably have every photo of a miniature I’ve ever taken and every now and then I dig back through Apple Photos for an image, such as the Escher ganger above. I also have a better photography setup now for taking photos of miniatures, though critics still criticize, despite that I’ve posted lots of old miniatures to Instagram for #ThrowbackThursday.

So with a final hat tip to Rob Hawkins I’ll try to find a single post and picture from 2002 until 2022 to highlight for all the new readers and old. Unlike George Santos I actually dug up proof that 2002 was when I started to take hobby blogging more seriously, so look on my works ye mighty and despair!

2002: Calgary Grand Tournament

The big focus of 2002 and likely the reason I finally started posting more hobby content online was I registered and attended my first Grand Tournament in Calgary of all places. Previously I’d attended local 40K tournaments in Victoria and even one in Ottawa, but I’d never done a diary or a journal for a Warhammer 40,000 campaign until 2002.

You can read how I did and I should have pictures from that event and of the army I took. First time I ever flew with a miniature case, previously I shipped my army across Canada on a Greyhound bus in a gun case as seen in the header image.

2003: Vancouver Grand Tournament

The next year Games Workshop expanded their tournament circuit even further and they came to where I was actually living at the time, Vancity. There was a new Chaos Codex with entirely new options so I painted a lot trying to improve my painting and overall score from the previous year.

Once again I journaled or blogged as the kids would say now-a-days, so you can read both how I did and all about the models I converted and built. I believe I finished third in painting losing to Bryce and Kelly Kim if memory serves me. A picture of my army commander appeared on the Games Workshop webpage. I saved the exact photo, but I don’t remember Dirty Steve taking it but it should have vintage 2003 metadata.

2004: Japanese Plague Marines

In 2004 I actually lived in Japan. I was invited to play Warhammer 40,000 on a US Military Base but I never did. There was a Yahoo group that I joined and when I came home for Christmas I took back some unpainted miniatures and a limited palette of paint back to Japan. I did a really good job painting some blue plaguebearers and the most infamous of purple plague marines.

I remember going to web cafes to update my website. I didn’t have a computer with me in Japan. The Wayback machine remembers what my webpage looked like back then, it has not changed much. When I got back to my mom’s house I put up a gallery of Plague Marines.

Also when I got back from Japan is when I started playing games against Rob as apparently the 40K mailing list was still going in 2004. He apparently has a blog too now, maybe more than one. It was also while in Japan that I joined Flickr and I’ve been posting pictures including of my miniatures to that website since.

2005: Maceo the Maligned

In 2005 I went back to school to do my ill-fated MBA. I did not end up playing in Conflict Vancouver but I did attend, Bill played in the Warhammer Fantasy Battle tournament I believe. I was living in a dorm at UBC and I think I may have painted two models alone in my room, including the now infamous Maceo the Maligned.

It was also in 2005 that I first installed WordPress and officially started Muskblog. It was encouraged by my MBA program to do so. But I was still mainly posting about my hobby stuff on my hand coded webpage. It appears I painted a couple notable models while at my mom’s house over the Christmas break or I started painting them. Metadata don’t lie.

From 2006 until 2010 I would post erratically before starting this dedicated miniature painting blog.

2006: The Phantom of the Rock Opera

In 2006 I apparently resumed painting goblins, it’s a lifetime commitment. It was also apparently Paul Taylor’s fault. I also painted a number of models that would eventually be fielded in a major tournament but that was still a year away. So although it rarely sees the tabletop, it is still in my possession, so I’ll go with a famous Noisemarine conversion I did in 2006.

2007: West Coast Mayhem

This was the event that replaced Conflict Vancouver after GW decided to stop running the Conflict events. I knew some of the organizers so of course I attended. This was where my third grand tournament army ended up. Bryce was there, I think he took home some prizes. Of course I typed up an event summary and I have plenty of photos to choose from, so here is a shot of my army in a portable display I make from an Ikea breakfast tray.

2008: Astronomi-con Vancouver

That is right in 2008, several old 40K mailing list members brought their event to Vancouver. It started in Winnipeg then expanded to Toronto and I think it was even run in Austin Texas at one point, so of course I attended the first one in Vancouver. There is of course another campaign journal and an event summary.

Rob was there, so was Malcolm, so was some of my terrain. I think Rob might still have some of my terrain. The trend continued of me finishing in the top three in painting but not winning. I didn’t have time to paint that many new models, but I did find a shot of my army. I never managed to finish a squad I dubbed the Longed Four, this would be the first of several Astonomi-con Vancouvers I attended.

2009: The Diseased Sons are Finished?

In 2009 I went to both Astronomi-con and West Coast Mayhem. I don’t remember winning much, but I did win a door price at Astronomi-con one year. This year I seem to have painted quite a few plague marines but also some Chaos Space Marine Havocs and Chaos Chosen as I must have thought I was finally done painting Nurgle models.

I was wrong. But here is my non-Nurgle Chaos paint scheme, which I have dubbed the Nefarious Fire. It is the same scheme I use on my Night Goblins because purple flames are cool.

2010: A new beginning

As mentioned many paragraphs ago, I must have been pretty serious in 2010 as I spun off my miniature painting exploits from my own domain to this dedicated blog. So now I can do things more in the style of Rob Hawkins, but I kept maintaining my other webpage and I of course posted to social media occasionally.

2010 also marked the last major tournament I attended. I remember staying up very late the night before painting. Maybe that resulted in my best painting score maybe it didn’t, but some people may remember that I posted a 2AM painting update.

Now I should be able to look through the old photos on this blog instead of my computer, but I think things are organized better on my computer than on WordPress dot com. In 2010 if you won first overall at Astronomi-con you got to go to Las Vegas for the championship, I think a lot of people on the West Coast tried extra hard to win tournaments that year. I chose to field a Khorne Terminator Lord I converted from a Forgeworld model to lead my army.

2011: Lead Painters League

In 2011, I entered the Lead Painters League or LPL. I didn’t win. I’m just not a fast or efficient painter. But I did try, and I admire more efficient painters than me. I also attended Trumpeter Salute in Burnaby, running a game of Silent Death as well as playing in a one day Warhammer 40,000 tournament.

So I was still trying to do hobby stuff even if it wasn’t the most successful year for me. I was also using a wet palette some during this period and possibly still working on my modular trench table. But the best thing I may have painted and timely in February 2022 was some OOP Khorne Bezerkers.

2012: Miniature Painting News

I was unemployed and Ron from FTW seemed to want one so I built a miniature painting news aggregator. It has since stopped working, but I can probably fix it if I ever have more time and energy. I didn’t paint or blog much in fact a lengthy hiatus from painting and gaming was soon to commence. It wasn’t until I moved to Calgary in 2019 that I got my paints out of storage.

I did however take and post the picture below.

2013: Nothing was painted

It was obviously a dark few years. I kept everything online but it wasn’t until the next year that I found time and energy for hobby content. Maintenance counts for a lot though if you’re going to keep a hobby website online for twenty years, especially one with custom PHP and JavaScript which I’ll have to update someday.

I built a lot of stuff with PHP while unemployed but it never made me any money, now all I seem to code in is SQL.

2014: A brief return to painting and gaming

My basically finished stand of Nurglings

I have some friends who have worked for GW on and off over the years. I also know some people who have opened their own gaming shops. It was while visiting some old friends that I was talked into painting a model or two in-store to prove I could still paint. I even played a game of Warhammer 40,000 this year, taking part in a megabattle at GW Highgate, I believe that is the only time my Khorne Bezerkers have ever been fielded, I let some kids run a lot of my army, very few things were broken. Fun was had by all, I think Warhammer stores have become more like daycares as I’ve gotten older.

2015: Moved back to China

That is correct, I moved to China for a second time! I didn’t take my models or my paints, but it turns out there are Games Workshop or Warhammer stores now in Shanghai. There was even less hobby content produced by me than in 2013. However it was the ten year anniversary of Muskblog, so I wrote a blogiversary post. I can’t say I particularly recommend reading it, but over the years I have given some thought to what is important when self publishing and creating content online, in a word, passion.

2016: A little Hobby Blogging

I was still living in China so I blogged mostly about that. I also blogged about studying, I spent a lot of time studying while in China and I can’t even speak much Chinese, but I did write one post highlighting all the Nurgle content I’d posted over the years.

2017: Shanghai Comic Con

In 2017, I still had little time for hobbies, but I managed to fit in a visit to the third ever Comic Con in Shanghai. There was actually quite a few painted miniatures at this convention. So I did take some pictures of miniatures, just not ones I personally painted.

2018: Another year devoid of hobbies

I was still in China, but I’d basically been convinced to leave as I just wasn’t getting anywhere no matter how many exams I took. I did keep everything online and still produced content as the kids say, for instance if you ever want to know where to go for beer in Shanghai.

2019: Back to Calgary, Back to the Hobby

I’d actually lived in Calgary twice before during the 90s. So I had painted models here while a co-op student. I was familiar with the Sentry Box, I had even flown to Calgary to participate in a Warhammer 40,000 tournament. But in 2019 I again moved for work and it turns out I knew someone who painted miniatures and played games.

So in order to give Bill fresh victims and to once again prove I retained some modicum of skill I returned to the hobby. Bill was also big on me producing content, I think he even wanted me to do a podcast and video tutorials, but I stuck with blogging though I also post pictures to Instagram and sometimes even Twitter.

During all the time I was away from participating fully in the hobby I still likely followed some other people who were active in the hobby. I bought books, I had the first Death Guard Codex when I moved to Calgary having bought it in Shanghai. I had hoped we’d play Kill Team but Bill wanted to play Warcry, so it was back to painting goblins for me.

A new edition of Kill Team has since come out which I bought but haven’t played, also purchased but not played the latest version of Necromunda.

2020: Warcry Campaign

My biggest hobby accomplishment of the year was finishing a Gloomspite Gitz Warcry gang. It was almost all vintage goblins and night goblins I had unpainted since Warhammer 4th Edition. I think I bought one box of new goblins and have since bought another but our Warcry campaign ended due to Covid.

2021: A return to Warhammer 40,000

In 2021, I finally got to play another game of Warhammer 40,000. This might have been between Covid lockdowns in Calgary. It was against Bill and his Ultramarines, Bill also once played orks, he’s never fully kicked the habit apparently.

2022: The Siege of Vanithros’s Bastion

This was a big year in the hobby with perhaps the most ever words typed by me about the hobby in a single year. 2022 was probably not the most models painted in a single year, I don’t have a perfect record of such things and I didn’t always photograph and post everything I painted like kids do now-a-days. I did paint a lot of models and rebased even more. Bill and I, plus eventually others started a narrative campaign of 9th edition Warhammer 40,000. Many games were played and over twenty battle reports were typed up by me. I also summarized the entire year long campaign of the Diseased Sons.

The Future

The start of this year has been very busy, but not necessarily with the hobby, but the narrative campaign continues, now with even more orks. I will try and get in a game this weekend or at least paint. I spent the last three months rebasing and touching up three models that I originally painted back in the 1990s. I even found an old picture of Sluggie before he was spruced up.

Games Workshop is running the Arks of Omen campaign right now so we’ll probably take part. The rumour is 10th edition will also be released this year so we’ll likely switch to that, probably restarting our campaign, rumour has it there will be simple rules and more complicated rules, given my memory and time available to the hobby, I may lobby for the simple rules. I’ve been too busy to keep up with all the rumours but hopefully there is time in 2023 for the hobby. I have more unpainted models than I’ll ever paint but I hope to paint a few more yet.

Hopefully you enjoyed this trip back in time, I have one last gallery of miniatures to recommend, both before and after I repainted them which seems an apt link to conclude with. If you have thoughts on the various miniatures I’ve painted and repainted over the years or hobby blogging in general you can leave a comment below.

More Recommended Hobby Blogs

During the dark days, I lost touch with the hobby and the blogosphere and I think my RSS feed reader stopped working and being supported…

During the dark days, I lost touch with the hobby and the blogosphere and I think my RSS feed reader stopped working and being supported, so I had to dust off some computer science skills and parse some weird format to get the list of blogs I used to follow. I had previously cleaned up my sidebar on Musk’s Miniatures but I never shared the blogs I was digging on like I did before.

Some blogs went dormant longer than mine and then came back like mine, others were started while I was basically out of the hobby. I was always going to do a post like this, but now that I got the feeds into Reader I wasn’t sure how I’d get them out, then I fell behind reading the feeds and I have a pretty good set of unread hobby blogs that I like so I thought I’d share it.

The header may be the 39th digital photo I took with my Nikon Coolpix 2500 back on June 9th 2002, so over twenty years ago. The models in the picture were painted even before that and I note a distinct lack of tiny lines, so I suspect some were painted in the late 90s, there is one RBT01 that I rescued before rescuing models from other hobbyists was cool. They all have bolt pistols so they were painted back when that was an option for Plague Marines. There are no campaign badges so this is before the Calgary Grand Tournament.

Plague Gardening is the other major all Death Guard all the time blog on WordPress. I reserve the right to stop painting Death Guard or Nurgle at some point but it looks like the first half of 2023 will again be all Death Guard all the time. We both seem to be typing up a lot of battle reports.

Realms of Chaos is old school, there ain’t no school like the old school and I follow a lot of Oldhammer or Rogue Trader afficiando blogs. This blogger paints a lot of old school World Eaters of which I have a small collection thanks to Jim Bell that I’ll get back to someday.

Oldenhammer in Toronto should also be mentioned. They seem to have been a GW fanboy in the colonies longer than most. They stopped updating for a while, but that is the way it is with the blogosphere and RSS, you have to subscribe and wait for the spice to flow.

Leadplague has also been keeping it old school. Sometimes I forget the name of the blogs as they go silent for months or years like mine, but with a name like Leadplague I can remember that.

Magpie and Old Lead, is also about old and most likely metal aka lead miniatures. Maybe all blogs with lead in the title are inherently good. There is something satisfying about my old heavy metal dreadnoughts. I’ve been running mine in our narrative campaign.

The Old School Workshop sometimes paints new models just like me, but he definitely keeps it old school on the regular. I tend to prefer the more niche and personal blogs rather than the big loud ad filled monstrosities.

Warphammer is trying to be the Chaos blog or the blog for being good at playing Chaos rather than being bad at playing Chaos like me. I just don’t want to run special characters and flavour of the month armies, plus it takes me months to finish a single model and I try to keep the vow of only painted models hit the table, but I like to support my faction and someday I will enter a Grand Tournament and/or attend a major convention again.

The Corvus Cluster has been running a Warhammer 40,000 narrative campaign longer than Bill and I. They do battle reports and tutorials and I’ve tried to follow along to see if I could learn anything, alas I still am nowhere near the 40K player I used to be, I just have limited time, but I did play a lot of games in 2022, maybe my most ever in a single year.

The Sentry Box’s blog gets a shoutout as we are playing most of our games there. I think some staff talked about playing in our campaign and some actually are, but I don’t think we are an official campaign unlike their Necromunda one. Maybe I’ll play in the next Necromunda one, but one campaign is enough for me at a time and this is what Bill wanted to do after Warcry came to an end due to Covid.

Sprocket’s Small World is just another miniature painting blog which often seems to feature Nurgle miniatures and oh yeah he’s won FIVE Slayer Swords!

A Tabletop Gamer’s Diary has lots and lots of painted and converted models. I’m not sure how he finds all the time and energy but since I’m giving out shoutouts to start the year, this blog definitely deserves one.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever met any of the Fawcett Avenue Conscripts, but I do know a number of Warhammer 40,000 players in Winnipeg even though I’ve never been there from back in the 40K list days and of course Astronomi-con which I last participated in back in 2010 in Vancouver.

I know very little about Captain Cook’s Funky Wenis Rodeo. I only discovered it recently I think through a Facebook group of which we are both members. It has lots of painted OOP models from the Rogue Trader Era. Sometimes I find new blogs by looking at the blogroll of other blogs, so I think I’m checking out his blogroll right now. We seem to like a lot of the same blogs.

Another blogger I have followed for a long long time is Rob Hawkins. I believe he lives just up the road or used to live in Edmonton. I have been to Edmonton but not in a long long time. People have threatened to come down from Edmonton to play against me in Warhammer 40,000.

My final shoutout and link because I have yet another battle report to type up is for Brandon Palmer. You may know him from Grey Matter Musings or as GMM Studios. You’ve probably seen his work. He paints professionally and often does huge armies for Adepticon.

Update October 2023

So I’m extremely glad I wrote this blog post, because I updated my Mac’s operating system which broke my RSS feed reader. So I updated, a paid upgrade to my RSS feed reader and it didn’t auotmatically import my old feeds from the previous version, nor could I seem to get them out of the previous version, as it crashes on startup since I upgraded MacOS.

I had an old OPML file from 2018 when this last happened to me, yes RSS feed readers on MacOS seem to become abandonware so maybe paying for one will prevent this. Anyway not only have I gotten no support despite contacting the developer, version five couldn’t import the OPML feed filer version one could. So I’ve basically had to rebuild my RSS feed list from two blog posts I’ve written.

I do have the old OPML file, so I can add one feed at a time from that file but honestly a lot of blogs get abandoned, so I’ll likely add some more blogs, but basically I’m starting over from scratch so if you have a blog to recommend you can leave a comment below. I even remembered to add them from my blogroll, but that too contained some blogs that haven’t updated in years so they got pruned.

Big Plans in 2022?

As this year comes to a close, I find myself in a familiar spot, at my mother’s kitchen table editing old blog posts. My paints and minis are back at my place in Calgary and I’m not sure how much I’ll accomplish but I’ve definitely made miniature painting plans for 2022.

I’m not sure how much gaming I’ll get in. We are in the middle of a big project at work and we were basically forced to take time off for the holidays as few vacation requests will be approved in Q1. But the biggest detriment to Bill and I’s gaming plans is the resurgence of Covid-19. Several Canadian cities and provinces have been setting new records for most new cases in a day as we are in the midst of the fourth wave of the pandemic.

Yoast will assure me that content maintenance is not a waste of time, but I fear too many years have passed, whatever readership and popularity I had online is long gone. There are of course reasons why I went something like five years without posting to this particular blog, but it wasn’t because I completely gave up blogging, though I probably should have.

My original blog, the one known as “Muskblog” may be the most popular thing I maintain online now, but it wasn’t always so. The original home of my gaming and miniature painting efforts used to be much more popular, then there was the years I spent studying, the blog of study materials I gave away used to be hugely popular, but in 2021 I’ve ran most of my web properties into the ground through neglect and focusing on other things than my follower count.

Now everyone uses social media and actually sitting down and typing let alone organizing your thoughts first is so passé, why not just speak into your phone whatever rambling diatribe comes to mind and stream it live while you storm the US Capitol building? I doubt I’ll start a vlog or a podcast, but in 2022 I’m going to get back to painting regularly and will post quick work-in-progress photos to Instagram.

I also plan to use the light box I bought and my camera to photograph old models better. I’ll probably take part in #ThrowbackThursday but I’ll also upload higher resolution photos to Flickr maybe even build something new and cool, it all depends on how much of a drain work is. I don’t want to spend my entire life in one little room, I plan to resume going to the gym when Covid allows.

While doing my content maintenance I wrote out a list of ten hobby priorities for 2022 which I can repeat below:

Paint more Plague Marines
Paint a Necromunda Gang
Rebase Old Models for New Rules
Paint Chaos Cultists
Paint Night Goblins aka Gloomspite Gitz
Employ simple but effective miniature painting techniques
Paint Chaos Spawn
Paint More Nurglings
Paint Non-Nurgle Chaos Space Marines
Paint some Orks or Orcs or however GW spells it

Loyal readers of this website will note I’ve already done most of this. I’ve never painted an official Chaos Spawn model, but I have painted several Beasts of Nurgle and sometimes the rules for those are interchangeable. Number ten will be a real stretch, but I might try and paint some orks for Kill Team since I own an Ork Kill Team.

Now I should probably carefully choose ten links where you can see my previous work:

Yoast’s article also prompted me to look at Google’s search console for the first time in a long time. I can’t use that tool on this blog, but my main blog ranks well for obscure iTunes error messages. The website devoted to the Diseased Sons actually ranks worse than Muskblog, but it ranks for better terms such as:

nurgle
old plague marines
plague marines paint scheme
nurgle marines
plague marine conversion
nurgle chaos space marines
painting plague marines
nurgle space marine
nurgle chaos marines
plague marine conversions

As you can see some people use the plural in their search and some people don’t. So as an early Christmas present to all fans of Nurgle, I’ll dig up five more links to old content, because I’ve definitely painted all the old plague marines.

Category: Whatever