August 2026 review

Let's head into the last third of 2026!

Star Wars

With the summer school holidays behind us, we were able to set up the next dates for our board game meetup and we continued our Imperial Assault campaign. Our latest scenario was the mission Incoming; unfortunately for us, we lost near the end as all of our rebels got injured by the bombardment. A close scenario with high tension until the end.

But Imperial Assault wasn't the only Star Wars content this month. We covered the Mandalorian Army Box in the Special Edition with an unboxing, as well as the Mandalorian Warriors and Mandalorian Leaders with reviews of their own.

New Gear and application of AI

As I swapped from APS-C to full frame last year, I can not use a lot of the accessories from my "old" collection. I got myself an RF/EF adapter last year, to use some of the old lenses I own (and maybe pick up a used EF lens on the cheap).

I added a few filters to my camera gear. CPL and ND filters for outdoor shooting, mostly on vacation. Yet the CPL is handy when some of the boxes are a bit too glossy and reflect a lot. I grabbed some generic UV filters, not pictured, simply as a protector for my lenses, so I don't have to worry about dust getting on my gear at events like Wheels & Tracks.

Beyond that I am tempted to add further lenses to my gear, as I currently have RF 24-105mm F4-7.1 IS STM, RF 16mm F2.8 STM and RF 100-400mm F5.6-8 IS USM. The 100-400mm did a great job at the Cabarceno, and I don't use it enough to honestly justify the 100-500mm, as it is 4x the price. I am just glad that I didn't go for the 75-300mm, as it has horrible reviews and you usually buy twice if you buy cheap. Similar issue with the RF 24-105mm, replacing the F4-7.1 with the F4 costs almost as much as I paid for the body incl. the lens, and the F2.8 is completely out of budget. Yet, I am very tempted by the RF 28-70mm F2.8.

Remember, I'm doing this blog for fun with my private hobby budget, so I can't really claim it back on my tax return. And beyond that, I'm running this site as a hobby project of mine, not as some professional production. You could do a lot of the things on here with a modern middle class smartphone (as I did on some occasions, like spontaneous event reports), so there are even fewer arguments for going the whole nine yards on gear (rather spending a reasonable amount of money every 3 to 4 years on a new smartphone).

AI is a topic that keeps growing in usage. I've been using DeepL since the end of 2022, as it made translations and running the blog in English and German much quicker. Beyond that I use AI assistants for research and in some cases generative AI for mock-ups or inspiration (I had Nano Banana paint up terrain for me, to decide which paint scheme to go with). While the EU AI Act does not apply to this blog, I am still going to voluntarily add a note to such content, unsolicited, for full transparency. I do not endorse AI-slop, but I see the time-saving advantage of using some of these tools.

Events

In August we had a blast at Wheels & Tracks (especially thanks to Ancient Tracks!), and had a great time with all these impressive military vehicles. To be honest, it didn't help my decision to narrow down my historical miniature collection.

We are currently planning the remaining events for this year. In September we will be at Rhein Main Multiversum and Bitbox; in October we will be on our autumn holidays (thus skipping SPIEL); and in November the next Paint Meeting in Lützensommern is fixed, with us coordinating the final plans on Crisis.

Scouts / Dead Earth Miniatures

In our latest retro-article we covered the Space Marine Scouts, and one of the things that I didn't cover was the sculpts by Dead Earth Miniatures (Stephan May), and that was for a reason. While they are absolutely stunning, the entire Kickstarter and Patreon topic is problematic enough, from my point of view, that I can not promote that kind of product in good faith. For more context I'd recommend reading these threads on Reddit - A Cautionary Tale and Product Delivery Issues.

Horus Heresy Audiobooks

I finished Wolfsbane! The next book, Born of Flame, is another collection of various (short) stories and mostly focused on Vulkan or the Salamanders, with some side-stories covering the Iron Hands. It is not as much of a drag as others, but it feels a bit like filler content, since we've already had extensive coverage of the Scattered Legions.

Scorched Earth is about 4 hours long and due to some kind of bug in Android Auto, it takes a bit longer than expected. Sometimes Android Auto restarts the current title at 00:00, which is rather annoying on an audiobook that is simply a single, roughly 4-hour file, and I do not remember where I was in terms of time code ... yay.

Nevertheless, we're en route to the Solar War and the final steps of the Horus Heresy. The main series "ends" with book 54 The Buried Dagger, continues with the Siege of Terra (book 55 to 64) and then moves on to the Scouring, of which the first book, Ashes of the Imperium, is already released. I'll have to see if I pick up some of the side-stories, as all of the above are "only" the main books. There are a further 17 novels about the Primarchs (excl. Horus), character novels, collections, short stories and so on.

But I did not just listen to the Horus Heresy, but had the great opportunity to cover the latest additions to the Legions Imperialis and Adeptus Titanicus range as reviews here. Two new Warlord Titan weapon loadouts and one new Reaver Titan loadout, all covered in full reviews:

• Warlord Titan with Volkite Destructor and Macro-Gatling Blaster
• Warlord Titan with Quake Cannon and Conversion Beam Extirpator
• Reaver Titan with Graviton Obliterator and Volkite Annihilator

What is coming in September?

To conclude our recap of August, I want to give you a brief intro on what to expect this month.

As mentioned above the two events with Bitbox and Rhein Main Multiversum, and you'll find an event report on here as well as on Instagram.

Thanks to Flo/Celebration Parallax, we can cover a StarCraft unboxing, as he gave me the chance to take pictures of his pre-orders.

I had some books arrive in August that I might cover as brief reviews here as well. It depends a bit on my time management.

As you can see, a lot has happened and a lot will happen, so stay tuned!