October 2026 review

Welcome to November!

In brief, I was on vacation in October, and as my birthday was late in September, I only got around to using some of my presents last month. One of them was a toolbox by Allit, which I wanted to use as a miniature case for Gaslands. And to my delight, it came prefilled with some snacks and drinks, thanks to my in-laws. As you can see, it has already been put to use, and I have to say it has a practical side effect: as I come across Matchbox cars on sale more often than I need them, this is a physical limit. If there is no more room for more cars, I can't buy more (or I have to find a discreet solution with my son to make room for more...).

Reviews

In October we had time to publish some of the reviews, among them the Graal Miniatures Kickstarter for the Legends of Rome, which was funded successfully, as well as the new second edition of Oathmark by Osprey. We will cover more Osprey books in the future: next week I'll publish the review of the latest Stargrave supplement Acceptable Losses, and I'm on the final steps of the Silver Bayonet review series.

As I'm currently preparing for Lützensommern, my lead time for reviews has shrunk a bit, but I'm working on the Warlord Games items and will cover Warhammer 40k Munchkin as soon as possible.

Vacation

As mentioned above, I had a few days off and had time to get into the board games I was given for my birthday, Wingspan and Azul. Azul is great fun, while with Wingspan I found the turn structure a bit hard to get into, but I guess we have to give it another go to properly grasp the rules.

Last year we spent the autumn holidays southwest of Munich. This year we went southeast, to the greater area of the Chiemsee and the Chiemgau Alps. What can I say, the mountains are calling me. We had a blast, were lucky with the weather and simply took in the sights.

As my energy was quite low before the vacation, I only packed a few things to build, not the whole mobile paint setup. I grabbed two of the Warlord Titan kits I had lying around from the reviews, and cleaned and assembled them. And what a view! The box I used was the one from the Warhammer Open Maastricht, which fittingly had a Titan cutting mat inside. Very handy.

Usually I sneak a hobby stop or two into my trips, but there is not really much going on in that area. On our trip to Rosenheim, I stopped at a local fantasy store, but the selection on display was modest, to say the least.

But Rosenheim had a different treat for us: we went to the Bob Brickman & Brickstory museum. I'll post a visit report on here as well, I just haven't had the time to edit the pictures yet.

And of course, as this weekend is Samhain, All Hallows' Eve or Día de Todos los Santos, and the kids were already very excited, we carved two jack-o'-lanterns. Very happy with the result!

Horus Heresy

I didn't only build the Warlord Titans, but also made some progress with the audiobooks. I finished Slaves to Darkness, covering Lorgar's coup d'état, an interesting story I wasn't aware of beforehand. I don't know that much about the whole build-up to the Siege of Terra, so I'm quite excited about these stories.

I'm now listening to Heralds of the Siege, which is an amazing book with a lot of great stories. I'm not through yet, but I've enjoyed a lot of them, especially Myriad about Titans, Ember Wolves about Legio Audax, Exocytosis about Typhon becoming Typhus, Grey Raven about one of the Raven Guard becoming a Grey Knight / Knight Errant, and Duty Waits about the Imperial Fists' everyday business while waiting for the Siege of Terra to begin. Only Now Peals Midnight, Dreams of Unity and The Board is Set are left, and then two more books until the Siege of Terra begins.

What's coming in November?

First of all, the Crisis next weekend! Really looking forward to our trip to Belgium. Unfortunately it's on the same weekend as Table-Topia, otherwise I would have been in Aschaffenburg as well.

The second event in November is the Paint Meeting in Lützensommern, and I've made a decision on what to prepare:

• [_] 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
• [X] Legion of the Damned
• [X] Imperial Fists Characters for the Retro Project

Beyond that, I treated myself to the new Build, Paint and Play gift with purchase from Lego, a set I simply had to have. And I took part in the Warriors of Athena Nickstarter, but ordered through Miniaturicum, as they support the EU / German market. Along with those, I also ordered the new Bohemian Knights by Northstar from Miniaturicum, which I want to review on here.

As I really enjoyed the article about Necromunda and its focus on Inquisitor, I want to pick up another theme for an article series soon: the Badab War. So stay tuned!