I guess it's all my own fault, but my hope that 2023 would be a big wargaming year has pretty much turned out to be a false hope.

Nevertheless, a couple of weeks back we got the chance to play our first proper wargames of the year.

Up first were two games of the new 40K 10th edition, which were released for free a little while back in the form of basic rulebook and indexes.

In the first game, Gareth got to pull out his own models for the first time, as he's been collecting some Space Wolves. He went up against Scoob's new Tyranids that came from the Leviathan starter set.

There was no use of point values, and two armies that looked roughly equal were chosen. There was also no worrying about proper scenarios or objectives or any of that stuff. We all agreed that we just wanted to see the basic rules in action, to allow the two generals to get into the shooting, chopping and munching as quickly as possible.

At the end of the day, most of the basic troops on both sides had been dealt with, but Gareth conceded that he had little left to deal with the two bigger bugs after losing his Dreadnoughts, so it seemed the Nids had won this first little skirmish.

The day after, I challenged Scoob's Nids with my own Hive Fleet Odium bugs. Though we used the same board, this time we added objectives, and decided we would count up points at the end of each turn depending on how many objectives we held. Then we both promptly ignored this and charged headlong at each other. It just didn't seem right for Nidz to sit there holding objectives.

After just a few turns, I barely had anything left on the board. If I remember right, it was just a single Ravener and a few Termagants. Yeah, it was clear Scoob had taken this one.

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A few days after our first foray into 40K 10th territory, it was the turn of the game I was most looking forward to getting back to, in the form of Epic-S.

It's hard to believe that it had been a whole year since we last played this, so its time was certainly due.

Scoob and I had loads of options to try out. The Eldar and Squats had now got full rules, while the Nidz had been buffed after last time, and the Androids were now fully painted and very much ready for the tabletop.

In the end we decided to try an Eldar vs Nidz showdown. With Scoob on a Nid kick at the minute, he went for the forces of the Hive Mind, while I took command of the pointy ears.

Unfortunately for the bugs, they seemed a little doomed to fail from fairly early on. Even though their psychic powers had been buffed, we continually forgot the psychic phase, denying them this resource.

In addition, this was without any shadow of doubt, the best game I can remember ever having in terms of dice rolling. After an embarrassing first turn shooting attempt from the Phantom Titan, that saw it hit just one of ten 5+ attacks, my luck completely changed. Case in point, on the second turn, the Titan's next attack saw it hit eight of those same attacks, which caused massive damage to the Hierophant Titan scuttling towards it.

From this point on, Scoob had poor to average rolls, while mine were nearly all ridiculously good.

The 6000pt game ended after three turns, with the score 4212 to 2649 in my favour.

Though it seems the Tyranids are still underpowered, it's hard to take any real data from this battle considering what happened throughout.

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So, well over a year since I started renovating my old "Hilly Rocks", I've actually taken another slight step towards their completion.

While all of the terrain was out for our recent games, I managed to get around to drybrushing all of the rock walls. They will need another round of washing and drybrushing to get the look I want, but at least a little bit has been done.

While I was doing this, I noticed one of the pieces had warped, and the edge section was bending up off of the tabletop. Sigh. Something else that I will need to fix, I guess.

Earlier this year I got stuck in the hellscape that is home renovation. Unfortunately, while this means my available gaming space is now neater and easier to move around in, it does mean I've been left with far less storage space for "stuff". So now I'm having to try and be more economic with the space I do have. And it also means in the near future I'm going to have to be ruthless with some of my gaming belongings and probably get rid of some things.

It also probably means a lot of the terrain plans I had will have to be shelved, as there will be simply nowhere to put anything I create.

Up first, to save some shelf space, I thought I'd finally get rid of the old toolbox I'd been keeping my paints in for the last twenty or so years.

So I got hold of some small, simple acrylic shelves, and mounted them to some MDF that I painted black, and screwed the whole thing to the wall. It's not fancy, but it does the job.

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The space saving ideas continued when I bought some new boxes for all of my Epic scale infantry. These are wide and not very tall, meaning I can fit a lot in each box without the models climbing all over each other. All it needed was a bit of support made out of some foam board, and the boxes can now all be stacked on top of each other, saving me a great deal of space.

All I need now is some new solution to all of the metal Epic models and I'll be sorted.

I'm supposed to be getting through my list of games this year, but after a good start I've not touched one since The Somnium Files. Instead, I've been taken over by a little bit of a painting frenzy.

Up first, I pushed on with the 6mm Androids and finally managed to get them finished. I tried something different this time and sealed over the top of the flock with thinned PVA to try and protect it a little more. This seems to have worked, except the other type of flock that I mixed in at different points ended up going really dark. It was cheap stuff, but I wasn't expecting it to do that. Kinda ruins the look. But oh well.

As I was in the mood, I decided to bite the bullet and pick up a bunch of new paints from Vallejo's range. They arrived too late for the Androids, which is a shame as there are a lot of metallics in there. But it looks like there are a bunch of good colours for the Blood Axes and Slaanesh forces I've got to get around to at some point.

After that, I finished the Stompas I started a year ago. Then I decided that the models I need to paint first are the models that can't be used until they're painted, as they can't be glued together beforehand. This means there's lots of disassembled Epic scale cavalry and bikes to get to next. After rattling off some Evil Sunz Bikeboyz, I'm now part way through the Imperial Guard Rough Riders, which shouldn't take too long to finish. This is the first time I've painted 6mm Guard since 2010.

Because I'm a bit of a saddo, I recently counted up how many wargaming models I've got and how far through painting them I am. The results are not encouraging.

I own over 2600 models, and this does not include everything from Super Dungeon as I currently have no plans to paint those.
Of these 2600, over 760 are painted. Nearly 400 others are painted, but they were done years ago, and I am no longer happy with them. This means they will need to be revisited at some point.
All in all, I calculate I'm about 40% through all the painting I need to do.
If there's any good news to come out of this at all, then it's the fact that most of this painting has come in the last few years. So if I keep this up, I may actually get through this monumental task.

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So here it is. The 6mm Android army I was hoping to finish in 6 days before Christmas has actually taken another two months. Which is very typical of my painting speed.