Still alive!

Hey everybody!
It’s been a while, hasn’t it?! I don’t think there has ever been such a long break here on the blog as has just been experienced – nearly two months! Shameful. The reason, of course, is that the baby bomb went off, and my firstborn has now, well, been born. Phoebe is an utter delight – though she’d be even more delightful if she slept during the night, instead of the day! She’s only three weeks old, though, so I suppose there is plenty of time to get her into a routine that will restore sanity to both my wife and myself. It’s all been a bit of a blur, however, and what has only felt like a couple of weeks at most, has been over seven weeks’ absence from the blog here!

Having a baby has been an incredible experience, as every parent will doubtless agree, but along with all of the loveliness comes the sleep-deprivation, the sudden need to learn to do everything one-handed while supporting a growing baby, and an endless cycle of feeding and pooping. Consequently, I’ve had very little time for anything else, but as the little one seems to be remarkably settled this evening (it can’t last!) I thought I’d come here and catch up with the world.

During September, I started playing with Tyranids, which was really quite an experience, as it was the first time I was ever experiencing the Psychic phase during my own turn! Having a fairly big game (I think we were around 1250 points) for my introduction to the army was perhaps a little unwise, as there was a lot to get to grips with. In addition to having four Psykers on the table, I also had a whole boat-load of close combat bugs, so my Shooting phases were disproportionately short compared with what I was used to!

I’ve had a couple of games with them now, and I do think they’re a lot of fun. I’ve gone for Hive Fleet Gorgon, so a green skin and cream carapace, and so far I’m quite pleased with my limited results!

There is still a very long way to go, though – a couple of years ago, I was thinking about getting into Tyranids with a Big Bugs list, but that seems to have gone by the wayside somewhat!

The Autumn is a time redolent with 40k for me, though, as it was around September time that I fell hard into the grim darkness of the far future, at a time when Tyranids were getting new models during the early months of 7th edition. As such, it felt really on-point to be getting the bugs on the table. This is definitely an army that I will be exploring further!

I’ve not had a fantastic amount of time to do anything in terms of my hobby, except read through old campaign books and codexes, in particular the old Shield of Baal and the last Black Crusade books. I’ve already talked about Tyranids being a big part of my September, and all of my most recent games have been against my buddy JP’s Chaos Space Marines, which has almost inevitably led me to looking at my own journey down the dark path.

However, the common theme that runs through both of those campaigns from 7th edition is, of course, Blood Angels, and after having had a (very) abortive start to that army a number of years ago now, I’ve decided to make the Sons of Sanguinius my choice for a Marines army.

Everybody should have a Space Marines force, don’t you think? I’ve been through a number of ideas, mainly thinking about them in terms of the colour scheme, but after thinking about it for a number of weeks, and having done some investigations online, I’ve finally settled on building up some Blood Angels, giving me an outlet for some of the old “mini marines” models that I still have hanging about – Assault Squads, and Devastator Squads, among others. I like the fact that the Blood Angels have so many unique units – Death Company being top of the list here, but also the fact they have their own unique Tactical Squad kit. It made sense to me, therefore, to stay away from the Primaris for the time being, and take the opportunity to go old school, to some degree!

This is a very slow project though, as I have so little time now for the hobby. I’ve built up the Devastator and Assault Squads, and also a Sternguard Veterans squad, and have kinda kitbashed a Lieutenant using a Vanguard Veteran as the base. So it’s just going to be a matter of time for me to keep going here!