11th October 2026: The Finest Dice Chucker In The West. Or Not.

My awesome wargaming skills have again been on display over the last few months, as I've been continuing to scrap it out using our own 40K-S ruleset.

Up first, Gareth got his first taste of these rules after playing the Epic-S rules a few times.

He brought his new Space Wolf force to the table to face my Marines with their Battle Sister allies in a 3000pt game.

The first turn started with G having some terrible rolls, especially the Aggressors as they shot a hail of bullets at the Scouts and only killed two.

But on turn 2, Bjorn started his rampage, which consisted of him smashing up a Land Raider, a Rhino and most of a full Tactical Squad. I got him down to 3 wounds but couldn't finish him off.

I had also deployed my Devastators in a terrible position and they had little to do all game.

Probably the funniest part of the battle was when the Iron Priest met the Techmarine in combat, and they killed each other using their Servo Arms.

The Battle Sisters provided little but a distraction, as they were smashed to pieces by the deep striking Wolf Guard Terminators.

This ended after 4 turns with a comfortable Space Wolf win, 2413 to 1706.

The Aggressors stomp forward

The Storm Tigers rally to try and handle Bjorn

The Space Wolves press their advantage

A few weeks later, I met these Space Wolves on the battlefield again, though this time taking pretty much all of my Eldar in a 2400pt game.

As I have little long range with my Eldar, one of my Guardian Squads and the Dire Avengers were wasted taking up position on the fortification. I guess I thought more of G's units would move into range over the course of the game, but that didn't really happen.

Once again, I had trouble getting rid of the Wolf Guard Terminators. In order to do any real damage, the Fire Dragons had to get in close. The first group was already weakened, but the 4 survivors took out three Terminators. As the other, unharmed squad of 6 closed in, I was hoping they would do just as well, if not better, but yet they could only kill off two of the tough Marines. As you may then expect, the Space Wolf revenge was swift and bloody.

The bridges in the middle of the board became a blood bath, when they Banshees who were fighting the Grey Hunters were also attacked by the Terminators. Nearby, the Rune Priest smited the damaged Wave Serpent, which exploded and killed four Grey Hunters.

At the end of the third turn, Gareth had just snook over the victory point target with 1637, while I had 1292. Another poor showing from my Eldar, but a much better effort than when they last stretched their legs against Scoob's Tyranids and got absolutely smashed off the table.

The Blood Claw Bikes line up a strafing run on the Guardians

The armies close in

Battle rages across the bridge of doom

Most recently, I again clashed with Scoob, who had also prepared a mostly Space Wolf force.

This time, I finally did something I'd been planning to do since all they way back in 5th Edition 40K, and put together a combined force of Tau and Eldar. I just wanted to see if the Tau's long range weapons could mitigate the huge weaknesses in my Eldar army.

Well, other than a couple of surprising events, this one went about as well as you would expect, and I struggled immensely to damage all of his vehicles and tougher infantry.

The thing that helped me most was on turn 2, after Scoob had dropped three scary looking units using the deep strike rules. This time, in contrast to the usual, I managed to get the initiative, so I could scupper his plans. My Wraithlord charged the Skyclaws to stop them getting their charge off, and the Wave Serpent carrying the Fire Dragons was able to escape Arjac and his accompanying Terminators.

Most surprising was that my five Scorpions and Karandras charged in against the other Terminators and managed to clean them off the table as Scoob rolled a plethora of ones on his saving throws.

Despite these minor setbacks, Scoob regained control, as the Wraithlord got hacked to pieces, and Arjac and his group got sweet payback on the Striking Scorpions.

One by one my units got taken out, with the exception of the Broadside battlesuits, who tanked a ton of damage. The last Fire Warrior also put up a fight, and must have made his save at least ten times against a hail of Storm Bolter bullets, before he finally fell.

As we added up the points each turn, it was clear I never really had much hope in this one, but we played it out until the point target was hit, with Scoob grabbing the easy win with 2349 to my 1454. I'm thinking I need to stop using these Eldar, at least until I've helped them with some reinforcements.

Or I could just be a better player I suppose.

The armies set up ready for a scrap

I attempt to counter Scoob's deep strikes

The Avatar wrecks the Land Raider before being swamped and defeated

6th September 2026: Cyber Renovations Β

As it's been pretty much a year now since I started my feeble attempts at renewing my old Transformers, I'd say it's about time for a little update.

And "little" is definitely the key word.

Show / hide more renovations

Prepping

Just after my first foray into this topic last year, I got a hold of some new boxes to stash everything in. But even the three new ones weren't quite enough, and I've still had to use a cardboard box for the few that remain homeless.

Then, during my 3D printing marathon a few months back, I'd found myself up against a few minor stumbling blocks that needed dealing with.

I certainly needed a proper way of curing things, so I ordered a small UV light with a solar powered turntable to handle this task. I then used some offcuts of wooden decking to make a frame to mount it on, as well as cutting some angled wood to stick some mirror-esque material to. These little assistants can now be positioned to rebound the light back at the models from the other direction.
Since the images below, I've also fixed some mirror material to the inside of the little frame, so now light will be bouncing around all over the place in there.

So, after all of the models I'd printed had had their turn under the UV light, I noticed many of them still had sticky patches. This meant I must not have washed them properly back in June. With a sigh, I plopped them all in some new IPA and gave them another good swill.

Thankfully, this time it looks like they've all come up good. And another lesson has been learned.

Boxing clever

Build me a curer worthy of printing

Let the curing commence

Cleaning that skank

Airing it out to dry

Seacons

Back when I was making that terrible webcomic, I struggled to get a hold of all the toys that I wanted to show up in it. This led to me doing some dodgy things like buying cheap knockoffs.

The worst of the ones I bought were definitely the Seacons. I'd managed to grab a few original G1s, but I was impatient and really wanted a Piranacon. I definitely made a mistake buying these, which were made from some of the poorest, softest plastic I've ever seen. Tentakil's tentacles snapped off immediately. Overbite's fin won't stay in, and his claws are loose. And when trying to use them for the comic, Nautilator's connecting joint snapped off inside my G1 Snaptrap's shoulder socket.

For whatever reason, I decided to pin and glue it back on.

Though I should highly doubt that those shitty Seacons will ever see the light of day again. That is because I eventually found a full Piranacon on eBay back in 2014. And while it's not an original G1, and is instead a reissue with inferior colours and a slightly damaged box, it still looks damn cool, and has pride of place on my small display shelf.

Only cost me £30 back then as well. That was cheaper than some of the G1 combiners I'd bought over 10 years earlier, like Defensor and Bruticus.

Some original G1 Seacons

Crappy knockoff Seacons are crappy

Pinning a pin

Commemorate this

Seekers

Behind the combiners, it is the Decepticon jets that are my next favourite figures. My much newer Starscream and Skywarp have little things I want to do to them, but it's my original 80s Thundercracker and Dirge that need a bucket load of attention.

They were still bodged together to form a usable figure for the comic, so the first order of the day was to re-assemble them back into their original forms.

What I'd got was a Thundercracker with missing wings, a damaged nose cone, a snapped clip at the top of his arm, a snapped left tail fin, a missing rear wing/stabiliser, and missing inserts into his weapons.

And then there was Dirge, who had missing a screw, missing his weapons, and had opposite orientation of the stickers on his wings, as one had been a replacement from eBay.

And then between them, there was only one set of fists and one landing gear. Either they were gonna have to learn to share, or something needed to be done.

I first printed some new wings, which looked really good back in June, but have since slightly warped in the heat of the loft in these intervening months. The first replacement tail fin I printed had a pin that was too small, and so kept flopping back. This has led to me finding and printing a different type, and these work a lot better.
The new rear wings I've printed however, will either need some filing doing, or a reprint after some tinkering in Blender, as the pins are too big for the holes they need to go in.

I've tried printing a new landing gear, but its pin is too small for the hole and easily falls out. However, it is technically usable, so I'm not sure whether to reprint this or not.

I also tried printing a new fist as a test, but this time it's too big and just falls straight off the arm it's supposed to be on. I can easily shrink this and try again, or get it into Blender and add some little bumps on the inside like the original fists have.

Two old Seekers in need of assistance

Take your starting positions

That 1st new tail fin is a bit floppy

Current status: robot mode

Current status: jet mode

Magnus Prime? Optimus Ultra?

My poor old original G1 Optimus is basically a deceased bit of kit. There are just so many broken and missing pieces on it that it could not ordinarily be restored without some serious effort.

My old Ultra Magnus is not quite that bad, and was in fact usable for the webcomic provided I borrowed some parts from the Optimus figure.

But now I want to put them back to their original selves and fix them up as best I can. In order to help me do this, I grabbed a fairly crappy Optimus knockoff. The idea here is that I can hopefully borrow bits from it to renew the original if needed. Shame the delivery man mushed up the box, as I can't really use that as a display box any more, as it's otherwise quite decent.

There'll have to be a hell of a lot of work to get these two back up to scratch, and I think I'll have to follow a plan much like this one:

Completely disassemble the figures.
Clean all of the plastic parts and remove old crappy stickers.
Look at the joints. Grease or tighten depending on how they've degraded. New screws or fixings may be needed.
Fully strip the battered die-cast parts and repaint.
Repaint the chrome sections.
Replace missing/damaged parts with parts from the bootleg.
3D print anything else that is missing, if possible.

This is going to be a massive task, among many massive tasks that I have ongoing. So it may be unlikely to happen any time soon. It would just be real nice to get old Optimus looking spiffing again.

At least the new gun I found for Magnus printed well. In fact, I like it so much I printed it again so he can dual wield.

Trucking hell. What a mess.

Can a cheap knockoff save the day?

Not having much luck with these boxes

Magnus shows us his guns

Others

I've also tried to print a few other random things that don't need any prior tinkering in a 3D modelling program.

As I've got a lot of Headmasters who have literally lost their heads, I've tried printing one out for Skullcruncher. I think it's going to work when it's all put together, but it does not look like the figure will stay together and still be transformable.
I think I will have to print another, and glue one together in head form, and the other in robot form.

I have also tried to print a new tail/sword for this guy, but like the jet wings, it has warped in the heat before I've glued it together, and now looks unusable. Maybe I can warm it up, correct the damage, and glue it in place all in one motion. Or maybe I'll just print it again.

And after an enormous print failure that was featured on this blog a few months back, Blitzwing now has a new turret for his tank form. If I could find some replacement hands for this guy that would be swell, as I still have his old sword, but he currently has no way of brandishing it.

Trying out a new head

I'm sure Blitzwing will appreciate being able to shoot things again

30th August 2026: 10 + 25

Over the last few weeks, I've been putting every spare shred of free time into actually getting another computer game ticked off the list.

This time, due to the fact that the game is now 25 years old, it was Final Fantasy X's time to be in the spotlight.

Other than a couple of very short, sub 1 hour efforts at this game back in the PS2 era, I'd never actually played it. So in a way, it's been the first "new to me" classic FF since FF6 back in 2014.

Not gonna lie, after starting this one again, I quickly learned why I didn't stick with it back in the day. The first few hours of this game are super rough. Things are just so slapdash, and all over the place. You (as Tidus) get dragged from pillar to post, between lots of different locations, and not only do you meet a few different groups of people, you also end up spending a lot of time alone. I just had no idea what was going on.

A lot of time is also spent underwater. This is true at small parts throughout the rest of the game, but in the opening sections, you are underwater a lot. Seriously, do these people not need to breathe?

And then there were the technical difficulties. Not only did some cutscenes not display, instead just slapping a solid green screen in my face, at several times the game also just dipped out entirely and sent me back to the desktop.
Nice.

Luckily, the 4GB patch turned out to be the solution, and so I was able to get these issues to go away and bother me no more.

Getting roughed up by some machina-lovin' hoodlums

Scoring with 2 seconds left

Alright, it's not that funny

Tidus twonks

I can't say I'd been enjoying the game that much, and things were about to get even worse when I arrived at the mandatory Blitzball game.
Oh boy.

Even after watching three different guides on Youtube, it was not until my 6th attempt that I actually managed to win. And yes I was well aware that I didn't need to win in order to continue the story, but something just made me feel like I needed to smash those big-headed idiots.

The game where I finally won was a really weird one, too. It was 0-0 at half time, and it was the only game I played where Tidus had his Jecht Shot blocked, because there were so many defenders in front of him. I managed to get another shot off right before Wakka came in, but the cutscene interrupted the shot, so I did not think I'd scored. I thoroughly panicked for the rest of the game, until I managed to score with Wakka with just 2 seconds left. It was only in the cutscene, when the scoreboard ticked over to 2-0, that I realised it must have registered the first goal. Very weird.

I also found it strange that, immediately after the game, a load of enemies attack and Tidus has his sword. Where was he keeping that?

Thankfully, after those first few pretty terrible hours, I found myself enjoying the game a lot more.

While there were a few drawbacks with it, the best thing about the game is undoubtedly the combat. I really like that you can switch characters in and out of the active party on the fly, though I found myself wishing that unused characters would still level up like they do in other FF games.

Put that Chocobo down this instant!

Kimahri not smart

This place was a chore

Shiva kicking Bahamut in the shin

Speaking of levelling up, I wasn't a huge fan of this either. I'd been led to believe that the sphere grid was a good way of doing character stat development, but I found it very annoying and limiting. For example, if I wanted someone to have a cure spell, or a haste spell, I would have to find a way to get them over to that section of the sphere grid, or use very rare items to unlock those abilities. Just didn't seem like the best way of doing things in my opinion.

It also sucks that this game started the trend of having very linear world design. It's essentially just corridor after corridor, with no explorable world map. Nowhere was this more evident than when, after fighting the Spherimorph, it was recommended that I run all the way back to the start of the game to find all the Jecht Spheres. Very boring level design indeed. It's really not what I want from a classic Final Fantasy game.

While the story and characters are not my favourites from the series, they are certainly far from the worst, and I was quite onboard with the majority of the game in these regards.

And I know this was the first voice acted Final Fantasy, but sheesh some of the acting was very cringey. The worst offender was definitely Seymour, and I'm not sure why anyone would think that voice was a good idea.

So after a few very long and gruelling efforts to beat the final boss, I'm finally done with just my third completed game this year. I can't say that I'll ever want to play this again, but as I've also recently bought both FF12 and FF15, and still have lots of FF7 action to look forward too, there'll still be a lot of Final Fantasy on my itinerary going forward.

It's a shame that I probably won't be able to get to 12 and 15 this year, as both games also have anniversaries at 20 and 10 years old respectively.

Oh well. I'll get there.