September 2026 Review

Alright, here we go, the real home stretch for this year, because we've hit Q4!

September had a pretty good run of events. Holger and I went to the Rhein Main Multiversum and the Bitbox 2026. Both trips were well worth it. It felt good to see everyone again, even though we just missed Flo, so that reunion will have to wait for Antwerp or Lützensommern.

I still need to process the haul, i.e. strip the paint and sort everything into the relevant projects.

42 – the answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything

I'm 42 now. Full stop. No, I don't feel the need for a sports car, I'm not going to get myself an espresso machine with a portafilter, and no outdoor kitchen either (although an Ooni pizza oven would be a nice thing to have). I also don't think that, as a hobbyist, you need a midlife crisis to become aware of your own mortality. The Pile of Shame makes that clear enough, and if you divide your monthly painting output by the size of your own miniature stash, you get a figure that even life-extending measures / becoming a Vulcan etc. probably couldn't get you through. For some people, the rumor is that number comes out at around 270 years.

42 also means that I've now been in this hobby for 30 years - and I don't regret a minute of it. Over that time I've met some genuinely wonderful people, had great events and gaming sessions with them, and I'm glad that, despite plenty of private and work commitments, I still find the time to reconnect with them.

Holger and I started with Warhammer together back in 1996; he moved back to the area last year, and it's fantastic that we've been able to pick things up again, with the trips we've already made this year and the ones still on the list. That's also still my main motivation for focusing on the things that I actually enjoy and that do me good, which also means scaling back or fully letting go of the odd project, because otherwise it just becomes mental load I'm dragging around, and thanks to this tabletop diary it's become pretty clear to me what's really only been carried along through two or three house moves without ever being touched.

That's also why none of my birthday wishes were a new project. What was left was a more demanding topic. For space reasons I also didn't want any Lego, tools for the hobby at most. In the end it turned into a few things off my wishlist; for example, I'd actually wanted the Imperial Fists Breacher from JoyToy, but that's been sold out forever, or is simply too pricey for me at 60 EUR plus 15+ EUR shipping. So it ended up being a Mk III Legionary instead, which can now join the Funko Pop and the McFarlane Marine.

There were also two board games, Wingspan and Azul.

More loot in September

Dawn of War - Onslaught finally arrived from Thalia. I'd ordered the set back in early May and kept getting fobbed off with delays. Is it worth it? Well, it's the character sprue from the 9th Edition Warhammer 40,000 starter box. The very same sprue is sold by Games Workshop directly via mail order as Honoured of the Chapter for 139 EUR. For reference: the core box cost 155 EUR all in. And I'm not entirely sure this sprue hasn't also shown up before as a repack for considerably less. Either way, the 29.90 EUR for the Dawn of War repack, which throws in a board game on top, is a bargain.

Pegasus Spiele has released the Munchkin Warhammer 40k Super-Mega-Set, since the last three expansions, Rank and Vile, Storming the Warp, and Grudges and Gore, hadn't been released in German so far. There'll be a review of that here too!

Great Escape Games also sent over a little teaser for a review last Saturday, the standing horses for Dead Man's Hand. We'll be featuring those too.

Back in the roughly two-month gap between finishing my apprenticeship and starting university, I'd bought the Lord of the Rings Extended Edition, set the laptop up next to the hobby desk, and binged the behind-the-scenes/making-of material while working. I wanted to do the same with the Hobbit behind-the-scenes features this time, but actually playing them turned into a problem, since my Blu-ray player had given up the ghost and those things are genuinely a niche format these days. I didn't really want to set up a PlayStation or anything like that, so I picked up a cheap one from techPulse instead. One thing worth knowing: make sure your USB ports are putting out enough power, or playback simply won't work. The creative process Weta Workshop shows off in that material is exactly the kind of thing that gets me fired up about the hobby too, so it's great for second-screen watching and a lot less demanding than the Horus Heresy audiobooks.

Fair warning, throwback to 2008!

Getting ready for Lützensommern

There are only about 7 weeks left until the next painting meetup, and I'm already really looking forward to it. The big challenge right now is actually using the time well. I'll be there for a good 48 hours, and I don't want to open up a bunch of fronts and then drive home with a pile of models sitting at 50-70% done that I then just keep pushing ahead of me. I actually want to get something finished while I'm there.

So I'm currently prepping things so I can bring them to a stage where I can actually finish them on-site. Right now these are the options on the table:

• [_] High Elf Blood Bowl team, the Caledor Dragons
• [_] Adeptus Titanicus Legio Astraman
• [_] Imperial Fists Terminators for Space Hulk
• [_] 40k 2nd Edition retro Necrons
• [_] A Necromunda gang

Horus Heresy

The Horus Heresy read-through has also kept moving. I've finished Born of Flame and I'm now on Slaves to Darkness. The book picks up directly from Wolfsbane and deals with the wounded Horus. It could probably make that connection a bit clearer up front, though. Depending on how much time has passed between books for you, especially since Born of Flame is a short-story collection that spreads the plot out in several directions again, you're kind of missing a "previously on…" recap, or at least a note that this wounding of Horus goes back to the fight between him and Leman Russ. I'm apparently not the only one who found that a bit confusing.

Born of Flame does give some fresh ideas for Blackshields or "Traitor" projects for loyalists, though. That leaves me only 3 books away from Siege of Terra, and with Titandeath as Book 53 coming up, it should also put me in the right mood for some Titanicus.

What's coming in October?

Mid-October I'm off on holiday first. I'm really looking forward to that already. No hobby stops on the agenda this time, just a lot of slowing down in southern Germany (a follow-up to last autumn break). So no gaming for me during that, but come November things continue with Crisis and Lützensommern.

After covering the Scouts as a retro article recently, I'll be putting together a few posts on the Legion of the Damned, since the unit is due an update soon, and that seems like a good moment to look back at the unit's origins.

For reviews, I'll be featuring the Munchkin Super-Mega-Set, I'll show off some bits from Bolt Action and Konflikt '47, and beyond that it depends on what arrives here (on time) by then, since I'd also love to show you both the Warriors of Athena and the Bohemian Knights. I also managed to pick up a bit more OOP Forge World from the seller at the Bitbox, which I'll be showing off piece by piece here, much like I did with the Chaos temple or the Imperial terrain piece.

I also managed to source a few bits for my Space Hulk project, so that's moving forward again too, and hopefully I'll get some more terrain work done as well.