I had holidays for the last week of October and the first week of November. While I did not get anything painted, I did assemble my Blood Bowl Gnome Treeman, and the Goblin team. Then I primed both of them. I also assembled the rest of my Black Site Studios/Don’t Look Back figures and was able to get them primed as well. This way I am ready to paint when I can make the time.
I finally caved and picked up the Star Trek Away Missions game, and have ordered more of the team sets. They are a bit larger scale, and are very small teams (4- 6 figures) so I hope to be likely to get them moved up the queue.
Bought
Star Trek Away Missions - 10
Painted
Oct total – figures bought 10, figures painted 0
Running total 2025 – figures bought 96, figures painted 2
Crime Lords is a stand-alone Illuminati variant. As the original Illuminati is one of my top ten favorite games, I am hopeful about this one. I haven’t played it yet, but I added it to my grail list when I found out about it.
I finally picked up a copy for $12 US, plus double that for shipping.
It was supposed to be complete, and it is. In fact, the 2 sheets of counters, and 2 sheets of money are all unpunched.
With the reprint of Illuminati, I kept hoping that they would reprint this as well, but they haven’t yet. Now that I finally have one, I expect they will.
We did a road trip in August to Vancouver Island and back for my niece’s wedding. We drove straight there but took our time on the road back.
While coming back through Calgary, we made sure to stop in at The Sentry Box – a very large game store. Their prices may not be low, but their selection is unmatched. They often have a deep selection of older products that are still in stock.
It is not complete. I wasn’t able to fill everything from my want list, but I did find a lot that I have not been able to get. They did not have the Lion Rampant expansions The Crusader States, and A Viking in the (not published by Osprey but rather the University of Edinburgh). I did get The Last Samurai Rebellion expansion for the Men Who Would be Kings.
They had a bunch of forces for Silver Bayonet. I was very tempted, but ended up spending my budget elsewhere. I also looked at the Hairfoot Jousting figures and, if they had had all six from either faction, or even all twelve from both, I probably would have bought them.
They had no Dust Tactics, Batman Miniatures, or DC Universe figures. These were a long shot though. I did not find any model kits in the time I had to look. While they did have some older video game systems, they did not have any Intellivision at all. I also did not find any of the Fallout Factions sets, else that would have probably made my stack.
I was hoping to pick up a bunch of older codices for Warhammer 40,000. I did find the eighth edition Ork codex for $20, as well as five books in the Psychic Awakening campaign for $10 each. Out of the nine books in the campaign, I previously only had the first book. The remining three books I have since picked up online.
This has given me a bit of a boost towards filling in some gaps in my 40K editions. I have picked up the Chapter Approved 2018, and 2019 editions, as well as the eighth and ninth editions of the Tyranid codex from Facebook Marketplace. I will keep an eye out locally and try to fill in more gaps, especially as the new edition drops next year.
I bought the Goblins team for Blood Bowl. This has been scarce to find. With the Orc team on my painting table, I figured that the Goblins could be painted concurrently. I grabbed the new Gnome Treeman as well. I am tempted by the idea of putting together the stunty teams for a league, if I can out together the time.
I finished up with the Warriors 2 and Wizards 2 sets for Frostgrave. These are the female characters in very multipart sets. No one locally carries them and they are tough to find online.
All together I spent just a bit over $300 dollars in a bit over two hours. It made a very happy little game stack.
Black Site Studios had a bit of a sale so I picked up some figures. I was hoping to get Horror Pack D but it was out of stock when I ordered. The shipping is currently quite high, so I only got the following two sets. I will see what is available when then do their Thanksgivingday sale and might get more.
I started painting my Blood Bowl Orcs, but did not make enough headway to finish them. I want to assemble the Blood Bowl Goblins and paint them up at the same time since they use a lot of the same colors. I have a bit of holidays at the end of October and beginning of November so I hope to get some painting done before the snow falls.
I have picked up some of the 40K codices for the eighth through tenth editions. This gets me thinking about assembling and painting a few of the Combat Patrols from the last three edition starter sets. We’ll see if I can convert that from ambition to actually getting stuff painted.
Bought
BSS – Horror Pack E – 3 (Badabook?, Aztec/Eqyptian, miner)
DLB – The Dead Return – 4 (zombies)
Painted
Sept total – figures bought 7, figures painted 0
Running total 2025 – figures bought 86, figures painted 2
We are at the end of summer, and are heading into fall.
If my friends are looking for some cozy books in the urban fantasy genre, I have a recommendation,
I’ve recently gotten into the Blood Trails series by rock-tumbling gamer, Jennifer Blackstream. It follows Shade Renard, a village witch turned private eye. Each book has been a contained case so far, with a some overall arcs weaved through the series. The characters act believably, and the mysteries seem fair.
Think of it as a cross between Supernatural and Murder She Wrote. (Or MSW and Granny Weatherwax, or Tucker’s Witch depending on your age.)
I am five books into the series and have not been disappointed yet. Shannon is four books ahead of me, and tells me I have nothing to worry about.
If you are intrigued, but don’t trust me enough to commit, or are just younger than I, you can also sign up for her newsletter at www.jenniferblackstream.com and, after the first couple intro emails that you get over the next few days, you will be provided with a code for a story (Temptation) that leads into the first book (Deadline). I would tell you more about it but we haven’t yet figured out how to download it.
If you a fan of e-readers, and you like her writing, you can get them right from her site. She even has bundle deals available. If, like me, prefer a more dead-tree version of the story, you can also order the books online.
But wait you say, I’m a fast reader. I don’t want to get into another series with an author who takes forever to write the next book. Not to worry. Jennifer is pretty prolific. This series is already 19 books long. Plus she has two other series (Blood Realm, and Blood Prince) that are 5 and 5+ books each respectively. These are more or a paranormal romance genre. We haven’t read those though but again, there are links to samples in her newsletter.
While on our way back from Vancouver, we stopped in to the Sentry Box. I was very tempted by the Silver Bayonet forces, and the Hairfoot Jousting minis. I did manage to get an older Blood Bowl team, as well as some Frostgrave figures.
I had picked up the Model-in-a-month figure from Warhammer, and had built, primed, and base coated it before we left. I stayed up late when we got back on the Fridayand finished it in time to take it in for August 30.
Bought
Blood Bowl – Scarcrag Snivellers – 12
Blood Bowl – Gnome Treeman – 1
Unmatched – Battle of Legends – Volume 3 – 4
40K – Primarus Marine - Space Wolf Bloodclaw – 1 (model of the month)
Frostgrave – Soldiers II – 20
Frostgrave – Wizards II – 8
Painted
40K – Primarus Marine – Infernus – 1 (model in a month)
40K – Model in a Month – Space Wolf Bloodclaw – 1 (model in a month)
Aug total – figures bought 46, figures painted 2
Running total 2025 – figures bought 79, figures painted 2
