March 2026 review

The Grim Dark and the Wild West

Posts on the blog have been slow lately, but that is mostly due to internal projects. As I told you, I am working on an Imperial Fists army for the 2nd edition of Warhammer 40k. I made solid progress this month, but still have some work in front of me. One missing piece to prepare is the Whirlwind, which is part of my extension to push them from 1.250 to 1.500 points.

We received another shipment by Great Escape Games for Dead Man's Hand. We will cover the US Cavalry / Buffalo Soliders as well as the Mounted US Cavalry from the Kickstarter. Just give us a bit of time to catch up with the current running projects.

New Equipment

I found this LED Light Pad at LIDL and I want to use it to enhace the sprue pictures in my reviews. Probably the first one to benefit from this, will be the ones meantioned above about the wild west range by Great Escape Games. I came across this during my weekly groceries shopping and it was like 15 EUR for the A3 pad, so worth a shot.

And I was able to give it a test run and that one went great! I usually take the pictures of the sprues against white paper with two light sources from above. I did the same but placed the sprues on the LED Light pad instead, and just look at the side-by-side comparison. That is such an upgrade! As mentioned above, the first review to benefit from this will be the US Cavalry miniatures.

Another item that I bought was the Fanttik F2 Master, a cordless handheld rotary tool. Squidmar Miniatures had a code for it for it, if you want a discount. I used this one already with my 40k project, drilling barrels, thinning out parts and taking care of mould lines. Came in handy.

After the upgrade from the 750D to the R8, I gave my camera setup another lense. I went with the RF100-400 to give myself more range. This isn't necessarily something for the hobby, but more for my travels. Quite impressed by the zoom, the 400mm roughly translated into 10x optical.

I find shopping for camera equipment quite exhausting, as the discussions tend to be unhinged. I get that people shouldn't buy the 75-300mm, as it is not good quality, but when you're looking for the 100-400m, suggesting the 100-500mm, which is 4x the price is out of proportion. Especially if you do not use it professionally. It tends to very often come to "Hey, I'm looking for something reasonable and reliable for my 20 km commute" and a lot of people feels like "I wouldn't waste my money on anything below a Mercedes S-Class" is the right answer...

Imperial Assault Campaign

We had another session in March. The first one was a side quest for my main character, High Moon, and due to leaning too much into the personality of Jyn Odan, I caused a wipe out in that mission. Usually you have time pressure in these missions, so you have to ignore certain aspects and push for the main objective. This wasn't the best idea for this one, was we had all the time. We have played Aftermath, Brushfire and Under Siege before and are currently at a 2:2 of wins - quite balanced.

Horus Heresy series

I didn't give an update on the Horus Heresy audiobooks since June 2025. I finished the last of the currently available audiobooks in German, with Praetorian of Dorn, and had to switch to the English ones in order to continue and not having to wait until they catch up. In addition to Spotify being pain to navigate, changing their audiobook subscription and so on.

It wasn't easy, not due to the language, but I am very comfortable with the translation and very used to the voice of Tom Jacobs, who does a stellar job. And that is so present that I even had my issues with The Primarchs series, as it is not read by him, but Matthias Christian Rehrl. Corax (important that it is Nevermore and not Corax: Lord of Shadows, as part of the Primarchs series) was another Anthology, combined multiple stories in one volume. The Master of Mankind was interesting, especially as we didn't get that much insight into the Custodes as well as the Emperor himself so far. And now I started with Garro, which is not really an anthology, but something similar, as from my understand it is a re-worked collection of individual stories but meshed into a larger story arc with extended parts to be one big volume.

Bochum and Bremen

I am currently on vacation. It began on saturday, with a short weekend trip, just my wife and I to Bochum. We visited Starlight Express and spent some time in the city right in the heart of Germanys Ruhrgebiet. I made a stop at the local Warhammer Store as well as the famous Highlander Games, where I spotted this classic Terminator Sergeant.

And now were in the North of Germany, visiting Bremen, while I have my miniatures with me to not lose more days until I have to get them finished.

While in Bremen, I stopped at the local Warhammer store and met the legend Idilio Santos. He's been with Games Workshop since 1998 and is well-known veteran of the hobby.