40 for 40: December

 And so, we have come to the end of my 40 for 40 journey! Some goals I achieved, and some I didn’t, but I learned a lot a long the way so let’s have a look at the final scores:

Weight

Target weight loss: 210lbs. Current weight: 233lbs. Weight lost this month: -1lbs. Overall weight lost: 24lbs.

I’ve managed to lose 24lbs for the year. Was it the 40 I was hoping for? No. But by any measurable standard, it’s progress. The most I got my weight down to was 230lbs – that was back in July – and since then, I’ve managed to keep my weight somewhere between 230lbs and 235lbs. The big push, of course, was Lent – that was when I lost most of the weight; the six weeks or so I give myself to do that was a major factor, it always is. But this year, I did a much better job of keeping it off – by this point in the year I’ve put it all back on again.

I guess the main thing I’ve learned over the last year is that keeping a weekly record of my weight is no bad thing at all: It does a good job of letting me know when I’m slipping, and when I need to “reign it in,” so to speak. It’s a journey that I’m hoping to continue into next year, so we’ll see how that goes!

Board Games

This month: 1. Final total: 54

My brother received The Crew: The Quest for Planet 9 for Christmas, and on Boxing Day we opened it up and gave it a go. It’s a really interesting take on the trick-taking mechanics of games like Hearts, by making it into a co-op game with limited information. We played it with Kirsty and enjoyed it; I’d love to play the campaign through!

Of all the 40 for 40 goals, board games was the one that I had the most confidence I would succeed. There were two major factors in this: The UK Games Expo is, as ever, a fine place to try games we’d never even have thought of playing, and I managed quite a few over that weekend! Also, Kirsty has been organising fairly regular games nights with the usual crowd, which is where a lot of my games get played. In addition to this, as Jessie is getting older, her ability to find her way around slightly more complicated games is improving, so she’s able to participate more regularly as well!

What I’ve learned – and this isn’t necessarily relevant to 40 for 40, but anyway – is more of a developmental thing, really; I have a much clearer idea of what people like and enjoy with board games. I have become much better at reading the room, and understanding what people like and what they don’t. With that information, we can usually get a good session in with games that work for everyone!

Gigs

This month: 3. Final total: 33

Ooh, not quite!

The three gigs I played this month were all for work – a Christmas Concert at Stourbridge Town Hall, the Mayor’s Christmas Concert at Dudley Town Hall, and a live-streamed Carol service from Cable Plaza. I was, in some capacity or another, on bass for all three, and they’ve become as much a part of Christmas for me as putting up the tree!

To achieve this goal, I was going to have to go out and play open mics a lot more than I eventually did. Sadly, I’m not at the point in my life where I can go out and play an open mic whenever I feel like it; whether because I’m on my own with Jessie, or because many of the open mics are on Tuesdays which are extremely long days for me anyway, or because a lot of open mics are now monthly rather than weekly meaning that if I miss one, I miss it – ultimately I didn’t manage to go to as many of them as I’d have needed to in order to achieve this goal.

Of the gigs I have done, a lot more of them were pre-arranged – whether that was the assisted living centre I performed at for the first part of the year, the run of shows we did for Live Music in Dudley over the summer, the various concerts, and the few gigs a year I do with Sam Draisey and the Revolt. In order to get more gigs, I’m going to have to arrange some more, i.e., commit to them ahead of time. I’ve just joined Blanco Negra, and we’ve got a few gigs lined up for next year. I’m really enjoying that band at the moment – it’s playing original music and I have some influence on the development of the songs, which I don’t take for granted. For the first time in a long time, attempting to improve on music doesn’t feel like chasing a dream I should have given up on decades ago!

I’m also going to try some solo acoustic gigs around the area; I’ve bought a speaker for that purpose and putting those commitments in might mean I get a lot more gigs done next year.

Video Games

This month: 0. Final total: 19

I’ve barely managed to play any games over the last few weeks, much less beat them!

This goal was always going to be a tall order. As I said at the outset of all of this, many of the games I enjoy are long-form strategy games or role-playing games, which take a lot of time and commitment to beat! Looking back through the games I’ve beaten this year, I haven’t actually beaten a single game in either genre – I made some headway with certain games, but never quite reaching the end of them.

I started keeping track of games I was buying and beating in 2014 – the original No Game New Year, for those of you who remember. I beat 19 games this year: by far the largest number of games I’ve ever beaten in a year, and certainly the first time since 2014 I managed to beat more games than I bought. Granted, many of those games were from online subscription services, but I’ve enjoyed them – and that is important because video games are something that I ultimately play for my own enjoyment; I’m not expecting anybody else to be invested in which games I have or haven’t beaten!

Models Painted

This month: 0. Final total: 70

This seems to have ground to a halt over the last couple of months, but I achieved the goal long before that. I’ve had a fine old time painting a wide variety of models, and I’ve even started an Instagram page where I’m putting up pictures of models I’ve painted, past and present. I think what slows me down – and I really ought to have seen this coming – is attempting to paint too many models at once. Squads of ten or more models, entire Blood Bowl teams; I batch-paint my models so that they’re painted more quickly, and while that certainly gets more done than if I’d painted them one at a time, putting even one colour on my models is a big job which takes a fairly decent amount of time. Over the last few months, it’s time that I just don’t have.

I’ve got away with it in the past with the Tyranids as the bulk of my models are the same colour, which isn’t usual for Tyranids but I quite like it. I think in future, I’ll have to stick to 5-6 models at a time, even if it is a Blood-Bowl Team or Necromunda gang – I’m just not getting anywhere when I have to find hours at a time to commit to a single colour!

This all sounds quite negative but I’m pleased that I’ve achieved my goal, and then some. Wargaming is a hobby that has been a huge part of my life for most of the last 30 years, which includes many of the trappings that come with it, like a huge backlog of unbuilt / unpainted models and while I may never get to the end of my so-called “pile of shame,” it is always gratifying to at least make a dent in it.

This also brings the 40 for 40 updates to an end. Of course, I’m going to carry on with what I’ve started this year, but I won’t do weekly updates as I have been doing. All good things must come to an end! I have some goals in mind for next year, and these are more personal to me than arbitrarily designated numbers of things I must achieve based on my age, so I’ll have to think very carefully about how I document them, if at all.

But for my 40^th year specifically, I’m pleased with what I achieved. Whether I achieved the goal I set for myself or not, the point is: I did it.

40 for 40: November

Slowed down in November…

Weight

Target weight loss: 210lbs. Current weight: 232lbs. Weight lost this month: 0lbs.

My weight has actually gone up and down this month, but I’ve managed to keep it fairly consistent, which was something, I guess.

Board Games

This month: 1. Total so far: 53

I had a nice little impromptu board games night with my daughter at one point, which was lovely! The game we played that neither of us had played before was Squadro, an abstract game involving moving your pieces with limited moving and capturing powers from one side of the board to the other and back again. It works well enough, although I don’t know if there’s enough going on to warrant multiple plays. The best bit of the game for me was that Jessie noticed that the playing pieces bore a resemblance – tenuous, but there – to modern ships, and from that point on called them Titanics.

Gigs

This month: 1. Total so far: 30

Well, those open mics I was hoping to do last month didn’t happen, did they? To be fair, they tend to depend on my own availability and Kirsty’s working patterns, both of which are an inexact science at best, and I haven’t been very well for the last couple of weeks. The one I did manage to do was an open mic at Pennfields Bowling club; I was invited by my former[1] bandmate Rob from Cherrybomb. I played a few songs at a relatively quiet point in the afternoon, which were well-received, nonetheless.

Video Games

This month: 2. Total so far: 19

I beat a couple of games this month, and the first one was Super Mario Bros 2 on the Switch. I enjoyed going through this again, though once again I had to make use of the Switch’s rewind function to get through certain sections – some of the difficulty spikes are ridiculous to the point where I’d have stopped playing without the option to try again! I remember playing this game years ago and thinking it was odd, given what I expected from Mario games at that point – of course, by now, it’s common knowledge that the game most people in Western cultures knew as Super Mario Bros 2 was actually a re-skin of a Japanese game called Doki Doki Panic, but it also introduced enemies and abilities that were staples of the Super Mario franchise in years to come. What I didn’t know was that Doki Doki is a Japanese onomatopoeia for “heartbeat”!

The other game was Rage on the Xbox S. This was originally released on the 7^th gen consoles and the graphics are certainly of their time, but for all the negative coverage I’ve heard about it, I actually quite enjoyed it. Comparisons to Fallout 3 are obvious – similar plot, similar post-apocalyptic setting – but the game is far more of a shooter than an RPG and as a shooter, it’s actually very good. The distinct gangs of enemies fight you in different ways with different gimmicks, some more so than others, but there’s a sense of cohesion among them. I particularly enjoyed the way some enemies would limp off and go to ground further into the level after they’d been shot a few times; far more believable that people would do that than continue to fight through a hopeless situation! It runs out of steam towards the end – the payoff was never going to match what was set up – but it was a fun journey to get there.

Models Painted

This month: 0. Total so far: 70

Yeah, not much done this month. I started painting an Orc Blood Bowl team and that juddered to a halt. I think because I’m trying to paint the whole team at the same time, even putting one colour on takes a decent amount of time, and it’s time that, for a variety of reasons over the last month, I just don’t have.

---

[1] I suppose Rob’s technically a current bandmate; Cherrybomb never officially called it a day, and while we’ll struggle to put it back together in its original format given what the members are committed to now, nobody’s ruled it out, as far as I know.

40 for 40: October

Quite a bit of progress made in October!

Weight

Target weight loss: 210lbs. Current weight: 232lbs. Weight lost this month: -3lbs.

Thankfully, now, my weight seems to be going in the right direction. This is helped by Kirsty trying to lose weight as well; we’re all being a bit more careful what we’re eating, and eating more home-cooking than frozen food or takeaways. It seems to be making a difference to both of us, so let’s see how that continues into November.

Board Games

This month: 2. Total so far: 52

I’ve slowed down on the games this month, but last week I went around my brother’s house, and we had a go with Skull; a nice game about pushing your luck and betting your hand on a certain number of cards everybody else has, and Dead of Winter, a Zombie Survival game – essentially The Walking Dead in board game format, with the deliberation and planning to boot! It’s not usual for me to play a game that heavy (I like them, but I have to read my audience carefully and I don’t necessarily expect anybody else to like them as much!) and it was a pleasure to get my teeth into something with a quite involved gameplay loop.

Gigs

This month: 0. Total so far: 29

For the first time since I’ve started 40 for 40, I haven’t played any gigs in a month! I’ve got at least one lined up for the next, so that’s ok – but I’m going to try to play some more open mics before the end of next month. I’ve also bought a small speaker through which a guitar and microphone could be run, so I’m going to try to get some gigs around the area – I doubt many of them will happen this side of January, though.

Video Games

This month: 3. Total so far: 17

For the first time since I bought a version of the game 28 years ago, I managed to get to the end of the original Doom! I played this on the Xbox S and had a great time with it. I went with the middle difficulty: I had tried on the 4^th difficulty tier previously, but it was brutally hard. I’d got quite a way into the game on it before, but that was on my laptop where I was using keyboard and mouse controls; with a controller it’s a very different matter. The game is a little dated now, but – and it’s not the first time I’ve said it – all the bells and whistles in the world can’t be better than good level design and a solid core gameplay loop.

Elsewhere, I played through Portal on the Xbox 360, which from what I understand was almost an experimental, throwaway title Valve created while working on their physics engines and became one of the most influential puzzle games in contemporary gaming. Again, the design of the game is great, and doesn’t outstay its welcome – the bathwater is thrown out without losing a hair off the baby’s head.

I also got to the end Super Mario Bros – the Lost Levels, on the Super Mario Allstars pack on the Nintendo Switch. Oddly, I remember beating this when I was younger – though I can’t remember how, since some of those levels were brutally difficult and I only managed it this time by taking advantage of the re-wind function on the Switch!

So, I’ve been beating games at the pace I was always going to have to do to have a hope of beating 40 of the things. It’s unlikely that I’ll get that far, but I’ll do what I can.

Models Painted

This month: 15. Total so far: 70

I finally painted my Human Blood Bowl Team, in time for a whole bunch of people online to start complaining about how the imminent rules update is going to reduce the team’s effectiveness. I managed to get a game in with them as well, which was good fun! I also painted a unit of Tyranid Warriors, which means I’ve got a 3^rd edition compatible HQ choice; I’m going to try to get a game of 3^rd edition 40K in next month.

40 for 40: September

 This month, some things have ground to a halt – not surprising, given the new term and various birthday celebrations. Speaking of which:

Weight

Target weight loss: 210lbs. Current weight: 234lbs. Weight lost this month: -2lbs.

I cut myself some slack this month because of my birthday, which was always going to be punctuated with big meals and lots of cake. After all, I’m only having one 40^th birthday! But I’m back on the exercise now and eating a little better, so that should help.

Board Games

This month: 0. Total so far: 50

I received some games for my birthday this year, and we’ve played some of them – but they were Flip 7 and Alibis, both of which I’ve played before at various events in the year. Nonetheless, we had a good time with both, and I’m already past my goal for playing 40 board games in the year so it wasn’t a priority.

Gigs

This month: 3. Total so far: 29

The first two of three gigs I played this month were on the same day, and in the same place: Codfest 2025, where I was playing bass with Sam Draisey and the Revolt. This was an interesting gig; due to time constraints, we cut the first two songs we usually open the set with. It worked, and I think there is something to be said for the idea of managing without some of the things that afford stability. Still, I doubt the Play Doh song will ever be dropped, no matter how much we achieve! The other was an open mic at the same venue run by Mick Brigdale, and it’s always a pleasure to play for him. It’s stationed on the way to the festival as you’re going in, so we’re hardly the highlight of the day, but it’s great to give it a go.

I also played an open mic at the Chindit last Sunday; I’ve done this a few times now and it’s always a nice night. Unusually for an open mic, I had a slightly longer set than I expected, and when I was asked to carry on after I thought I’d finished, I got about halfway through announcing a comedy song when Kirsty – who, owing to her drama training, is a lot better at reading the room than I am – warned me off. It’s good to have those perspectives!

Video Games

This month: 2. Total so far: 14

I anticipated reaching the end of Samurai Warriors 5 quickly last month, and I managed it with little difficulty; it’s not a hard game. There are a few extra modes to beat if I want to give it a go, but by then, I was ready for the game to be over, so I was happy to move on.

The other game was Dragon’s Crown Pro. This was an unusual experience for me in that I was on a time limit; it was on PS+ until my birthday, funnily enough – I had until then to beat it. I managed it, it’s not particularly long and as a side-scrolling beat’em-up reminiscent of Golden Axe and Streets of Rage that I used to play, it’s really good. The art style is beautiful, if a little over-sexualised, the gameplay is slick, and there’s just enough plot to keep it interesting for the roughly 12 hours it takes to finish the main story mode – there is some post-game content, but unless it comes back to PS+, I won’t be experiencing that!

Models Painted

This month: 0. Total so far: 55

You may remember from last month I was struggling to get through a Blood Bowl Human Team. I’m still working on them. Slowly.

The problem is that I’m trying to paint all twelve players at once. It’s not impossible; I do this regularly with my Tyranids, but they rely on a rapid paint style that works for them and wouldn’t work with the Blood Bowl team. As it stands, putting even one layer of paint on them takes a decent amount of time, which for a variety of reasons, I just haven’t had. Still, I’m closer now than I was before, so let’s see where next month takes us.

40 for 40: August

There was progress this month, but also some setbacks…

Weight

Target weight loss: 210lbs. Current weight: 232lbs. Weight lost this month: -2lbs.

Hmm. Not massively surprising since I was on holiday, my exercise routines were disrupted and I was eating a lot less healthily than I normally would, but still not the news I wanted to be sharing with you. Let’s hope I can get things back on track in September, as I’m still aiming to lose 22lbs before the end of the year.

Board Games

This month: 6. Total so far: 50

In August – today, as it happens – I had the pleasure of visiting the Stafford Boardgame Bash group in Stafford. The people we met there were very friendly and introduced me and Kirsty to a few new games, including Board Royale, Castle Combo, and Alibis – the latter of which we loved, as it was a hysterical take on the Codenames engine which we already enjoy. Amongst family, we’ve been playing Sushi Go, Forbidden Island and Rhino Hero; old favourites but it’s the first time we’ve played them this year, so they definitely count!

We’ve also been spreading the joy of Dixit to our regular group, and it’s becoming a firm favourite of ours. It’s odd because it took me a long time to play my copy of it, but once I had, the regular gang loved it!

Gigs

This month: 4. Total so far: 26

I managed a few Open Mics this month, including two I’d never done before: One at the Bell Inn in Trysull, hosted by Rachel and Daz, and the other was at the Wharton Park Golf Club in Bewdley. The former went well, and the latter was a very different environment than I’m used to, so it was a refreshing challenge! Elsewhere, I took part in the Open Mic at the Round Oak in Wombourne, hosted by my old friend Rich Sadler, and participated in my first ever flash mob choir at the wedding of two of our best friends, Fran, and Phil!

Sadly, my regular show at the assisted living centre has come to an end, as my client is no longer with us. It was a nice run while it lasted, and I’ll always be grateful for the opportunity.

Video Games

This month: 1. Total so far: 12

I’ve been slowly getting through Samurai Warriors 5, and I’m quite close to beating the main campaign on the two different “paths,” at which point I will mark the game off as beaten – there are extra modes and another campaign to go through if I wish, but that’s something I may come back to later. The game I managed to beat was actually Final Fantasy: Pixel Remaster on the Switch, on the save file I started more than a year ago on a plane on the way to Florida. The lack of a journal system in the early RPGs meant I had to look up a guide to find out what I had to do in certain situations, but it was nice to come to the end of the game again.

It's becoming less and less likely that I’ll beat 40 games, though…

Models Painted

This month: 11. Total so far: 55

I painted some Tyranids this month; a brood of Hormaguants and a base of Rippers. This is by far the largest army I have ever collected in terms of pure numbers, and because I’ve gone for a fairly rapid paint scheme, it’s worked out quite well. Another old friend from my Games Workshop days expressed an interest in doing a 3^rd edition 40K campaign, I told him I was up for it and found myself with the unenviable task of trying to come up with a 3^rd edition-compatible army with a force that consists largely of 10^th edition models. I’ve ordered some new models to bring this plan to life, so hopefully you will see some of those painted over the next month.

For now, though, I began to paint a Human Blood Bowl team a few weeks ago, which for some reason seems to have ground to a halt. I’ll try and get back on that over the next few days.

40 for 40: July

 Finally, a chance to catch up with the gigs!

Weight

Target weight loss: 210lbs. Current weight: 230lbs. Weight lost this month: 4lbs.

That’s more like it! To be perfectly honest, I’m not entirely sure how this happened, as I haven’t done anything substantially different to what I’ve been doing in previous months, but it seems to be working a little better this time. I’m on course for the year, so let’s hope it continues into August!

Board Games

This month: 2. Total so far: 44

There hasn’t been as much time for board games this month as there was in the last, which is unfortunate but I’m past the 40-game goal now anyway so I’m not going to worry too much about it. We played Forbidden Skies at my brother’s house last week, which is part of the “Forbidden” series of games – enjoyable co-op games about surviving an increasingly hostile environment. Skies comes with having to build an electrical circuit before you either get struck by lighting too many times or blown off the edge of the field, and with all five of us playing, we lost – Mark and Liz beat it later though.

We also played Magic Laybrinth, which is a nice enough game to play, if a little frustrating in places. I used the harder map this time, as we’ve played this a few times before – not this year, but still…

Gigs

This month: 13. Total so far: 22

That was a more productive month than I’ve managed so far! Much of this was through work, and for safeguarding reasons I won’t be posting any details about that here. But I was very pleasantly surprised when someone I knew at school called Steve got in contact with me and asked me to play Halesowen Carnival! I was available on the afternoon and was happy to oblige. I also played an open mic at the Chindit in Wolverhampton the Black Country Music Festival with Sam Draisey and the Revolt, and the usual show at the Assisted Living centre.

Video Games

This month: 1. Total so far: 11

I thought I’d managed more this month, and I did make some progress on one or two long-form games I’ve been playing, but the only one I reached the end of was a game called Gris on the PS5. I’d heard about this indie-platformer from various online sources, and I found it to be quite a languid experience for the most part – but enjoyable in its own way. I reached the end of the game without having to look up the answers to any of the critical puzzles, which is always a plus, and I might go back and get all the collectables later – in which case I will count the game twice. My challenge, my rules, and if I’m sufficiently dedicated to a game to complete it 100%, that deserves recognition too.

Models Painted

This month: 6. Total so far: 44

My first project for this month was the Barbarian from the Heroquest set, as another old friend called Steve got in touch with me and asked if I’d like to join his DnD group – I like to at least have a mini for myself, even if I’ve borrowed it from another game. For this one, I made the deliberate decision to paint this entirely with layering, with a smattering of dry brushing when the raised details were needed. I wanted to see what I could achieve without washes and contrasts, and I think it came out pretty well.

The second one was the Stormcast Eternals from the Age of Sigmar Ultimate Starter Set. I think these ones are called the Liberators; all the Stormcast Units are called something like that with no sense of irony about them at all. This was my first real attempt at what has become known as “slapchop” painting, and I think it worked quite well; when painting white, it works best if it’s an off-white – start white is too much, and as I’ve painted these from blue, it looks a lot better than it might otherwise have done.

This brings my model painting goals to an end – but it feels like I’m just getting started…

40 for 40: June

Quite a bit to say this month!

Weight

Target weight loss: 210lbs. Current weight: 234lbs. Weight lost this month: 1lb.

Well, progress is progress, and taken as a whole, the month has been somewhat productive in losing weight. But it did come with a lapse and a slight gain at one point. I guess, if I keep going like this, I’ll get to where I need to be eventually – but if I’m going to lose another 24lbs by the end of the year, I’ll need to work harder on managing my diet. I’ve exercised for at least an hour and a half every day since early March – this tends to be quite light, usually walking, but it is improving my fitness and can’t be detrimental to weight loss, I guess!

Board Games

This month: 22. Total so far: 42

There was a whole load of games this month, and many of them were at the UK Games Expo in the last couple of days in May, so the descriptions of the games will be shorter than usual:

·        Catan – played in a Tournament at the Expo.

·        Flip 7 – Nice push-your-luck game that I think will go well with the usual crowd!

·        The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship – Lord of the Rings meets Pandemic.

·        Azul – I’d been getting the rules wrong all along.

·        Space Base – A somewhat heavy game about building the most efficient space port.

·        Sausage Sizzle – Nice little dice-roller, based on an Australian BBQ.

·        Bomb Busters – Cute Animals Disarming Bombs.

·        Heat: Pedal to the Metal – Good translation of cars into a card game with a slight deck-building element.

·        Ecosystem – Lovely little drafting game about building a home for animals.

·        Quoridor – I liked the original better than the Pacman version.

·        Quantik – A competitive abstract puzzler.

·        Pengoloo – A cute game about penguins and eggs.

·        Minecraft Labyrinth – functionally almost identical to Labyrinth but for the inclusion of the pickaxe.

·        Echidna Shuffle – Another game with cute animals, the titular echidnas giving bugs a lift home, but with an impressive dice balancing mechanic that makes a good difference.

·        Donkey Kong: Jungle Speed – Another variation on Snap with the DK theme.

·        The Fix for 626 – Lilo and Stitch meets Love Letter.

·        Chronicles of Light: Darkness Falls: Disney Edition – Similar crisis management to Pandemic.

·        Six Second Scribbles: Absolutely hysterical drawing game.

·        Camel Up: Betting on racing camels, which apparently happens in Dubai.

·        Dixit: Finally played my copy! The art style was very well received, and we love the game.

·        The Chameleon: The bare bones of hidden identity games, but easy to explain!

·        Dobble: Disney Princess edition: Snap turned up to 11. Always good fun to play.

Which brings my quest to play 40 board games this year to its conclusion! To be fair, I was always going to make this one – but even so, I’m amazed I managed it so quickly!

Gigs

This month: 1. Total so far: 9

Just the assisted living centre this month. I also helped to run a concert for Wombourne School of Music, but as I didn’t perform there – I didn’t want to make it more about me than the students – I’m not going to count it. Next month, there’ll be more to say…

Video Games

This month: 2. Total so far: 10

I’ve been playing Spiderman: Miles Morales on the PS5 this month and reached the end of it a few weeks ago. It’s a good game, in many ways better than the PS4 Spiderman game but it didn’t grab me in quite the same way. Still, I enjoyed it, and it was nice to beat a heavier game!

I also beat Super Mario Bros on the Switch – the version that was packed in with Super Mario All Stars. I was surprised at how different this version of the game feels: the controls are “floatier” than the NES original. I reached the end of it this morning, with a little help from the re-wind function built into the Switch – it’s not cheating if it’s in the structure of the game, right? To be honest, I didn’t want to get bogged down.

Models Painted

This month: 12. Total so far: 38

I painted some Chaos Dwarf Bull Centaurs to finish my Chaos Dwarf Blood Bowl Team. This was in preparation for a league I was hoping to join; I think that opportunity may have passed now but I enjoyed painting them, nonetheless. I bought them off an American website; Games Workshop doesn’t have them in stock now and I’m not going to wait until they do! I built them in the hotel I stayed at when I went to the Expo, and at some point I dropped one of their horns – the plastic was the exact same colour as the carpet, so after hunting around for it for about half an hour and still not finding it, I decided to use one of the off-cuts from the model as a ‘broken horn.’ They came out alright, though!

I also finished off those Skaven clanrats I mentioned last month; I went for a style partially inspired by Gareth Hamilton, who was featured in White Dwarf in the late 1990s, and used some things I’ve learned since then to give them a really dirty, mucky feel. I like how they turned out, and I’m looking forward to getting the whole army done – but I have some projects to do before then!

40 for 40: May

 A couple of shifts in the month of May, and I’m getting this out early as I’m going to be at the UK Games Expo over the next few days:

Weight

Target weight loss: 210lbs. Current weight: 235lbs. Weight lost this month: 1lb.

I knew my weight loss journey was going to slow down a bit in May. I’ve been trying to control the amount of sugar I’ve been eating over the last month and while I have been somewhat successful, there have been a few days when I’ve lapsed – mainly due to the time and place. For example, last Monday, Kirsty and I went up to Liverpool to see Hamilton (excellent piece of theatre,) and due to a matter of inconvenient timing, ended up eating a McDonalds for dinner at beyond 1am, a Subway for breakfast the following day, and finished the day with a curry for our anniversary. I got up the following morning to find that I’d gained a pound.

There’s still a way to go with this. While I don’t need to drop back down to “lent” levels of looking after myself, I still need to be a little more careful – although I’ll be at the Expo this weekend so who knows.

Board Games

This month: 3. Total so far: 20

Three board games played in May:

·        Blood Bowl: I’ve been playing various iterations of the video game for over a decade, but never played the tabletop game. Simon, one of the lads at the Safe Haven Gaming Club in Netherton was kind enough to run me through my first game with the Chaos Dwarfs I showed you last month – I know the general flow of the game, but the ins and outs of the dice rolls that video games are designed to remove was something I needed a bit of help with. I won, and may join a league at the club next month.

·        Takenoko: A delightful little game about building a garden for a panda to live in. This is a significant game for me and Kirsty; it was even featured on our wedding cake! We’d picked the three games we put on the cake – Takenoko, Hey That’s My Fish and Ticket to Ride – as the “first” games we played at different points in our relationship. Hey That’s My Fish was the first game we ever played together when we got together in 2017, Ticket to Ride was the first game we played after we moved in together in 2018, and Takenoko was the first game we played when we moved into our house that we bought in 2020. It features a cute panda, that we’ve named Sprout, so it was always going to be a hit for Kirsty!

·        Ticket to Ride: Most of us have played this or one of its variants at some point, but it was nice to introduce a new friend Ruth to it. Everyone enjoyed it, although Jessie might have been more comfortable with one of the smaller variants.

Gigs

This month: 2. Total so far: 8

I managed to get to an open mic this time! It’s been a long time since I played at the Stile – I used to be regular there, but Bash stopped running it on Fridays, and while someone did get one going again on the last Sunday of the month, I wasn’t able to make it happen. I’m glad I have now, though, as I played some songs I haven’t yet played live before – Distant Colours by Manic Street Preachers, The Messenger by Linkin Park, and Heaven Ain’t Much Better, which I wrote a few months ago.

Video Games

This month: 1. Total so far: 8

I haven’t beaten many games this month, but this is because I’ve been interested in the online element of Blood Bowl 3. I know questions were raised about the quality of the game compared to previous iterations, but I really enjoy it. For this season, I’m running Chaos Chosen with the colours of the Jamaican flag, inspired by the “Bad Boy Rammy” video put up by White Yardie – I’ve never seen anything so funny in all my life.

At the top of the month, I reached the end of Donkey Kong Country on the Switch. This was another game I played with my friend Matt on his SNES years and years ago. We enjoyed it a lot at the time, but going back to play it now reveals quite a few flaws in the game! Nonetheless, it was nice to go through it again.

Models Painted

This month: 0. Total so far: 26

I’m about halfway through painting some Skaven Clanrats (or equivalent!) from the Age of Sigmar boxed set – I’ll finish these off next month, but between various family commitments, there just hasn’t been the time.

40 for 40: April

 April was an interesting month with some progress made:

Weight

Target weight loss: 210lbs. Current weight: 236lbs. Weight lost this month: 8lbs.

Lent has finished, and the real challenge begins – try to keep my healthy eating up until I’m down to 15 stone. And so far, I’ve been doing OK; it’s only been 10 days since Easter Sunday but since then I’ve been trying to not eat a dessert as often, only have one drink of fizzy pop a day and trying not to drink it on consecutive days, and only having a takeaway at the very most once per week (including packed sandwiches.)

It has involved a conscious effort not to fall back in to so many bad habits that Ed Sheeran would do a song about them, and it is working. While the overall amount of weight I’m losing has slowed down, it is still coming off, so I’m hoping to keep this going to the point where I get to my target weight.

After that, I don’t know; it will depend on whether I feel at the time it’s worth losing another few pounds, or whether I’ll be happy with my body the shape it is. We will see.

Board Games

This month: 3. Total so far: 17

Three board games played in April:

·        The Animals of Baker Street: A delightful take on the Sherlock Holmes mythos, where you play as a group of small animals solving mysteries under the tutelage of Toby, Sherlock’s dog. There’s a lovely time mechanic to bring in a sense of urgency, but it’s a friendly game which I really enjoy playing with Jessie and Kirsty.

·        Penguin Pile Up: A family-orientated caper that me and Kirsty found in a pub in Bridgenorth involving balancing penguins on an iceberg. It was fun while it lasted, but it’s not an experience that warrants more than one play when you’re an adult.

·        Warhammer 40K: I’ve been playing 40K on and off since I was 13, and this latest game was at the Safe Haven Gaming Club in Netherton. I ran my Tyranids out against some Grey Knights run by Sean, I lad I know from when I used to work for Games Workshop. I lost the game but it was good fun!

Gigs

This month: 1. Total so far: 6

Just the assisted living centre, this time. It is my intention to get on some more open mics, but life gets in the way!

Video Games

This month: 1. Total so far: 7

I’ve been messing around with a few video games this month, when I could spare the time. Some I’m nearing to beating than others, but the one I managed to beat was Twelve Minutes, which I bought on the Xbox Series S.

This is a time-loop game concerning a man who comes home to his wife after a day at work, to have their evening together interrupted by a man who breaks into their apartment and kills them both – only for the man to re-awaken at his front door at the moment of death. The aim of the game is to discover what is behind the home invasion, what secrets are being kept, and what kind of contrived nonsense caused the time-loop in the first place. The premise is great, and the characters are well-performed, but the ending has come under some criticism, and I can certainly see why.

Models Painted

This month: 14. Total so far: 26

I painted their numbers on the bases,
the supplied transfers are a mystery to me.

I spent this month painting a Blood Bowl team of Chaos Dwarves! Chaos Dwarves have long been a faction I found fascinating, but now that they’re all but written out of both Warhammer games with no set return, it fell to Blood Bowl to keep the faction alive. And I had a great time painting these. One of the things that helped is that there are Hobgoblins in the set as well as the Chaos Dwarves, which gave some variety to what would otherwise have been a very long project.

I’ve painted the accessories that come with the team as well (coins, balls) but I’m not counting these as it really didn’t take that long and it almost feels like cheating to include them.

40 for 40: March

March has been a productive month for some of my goals! However, the weight goals are hard to quantify:

Weight

Target weight loss: 40lbs. Weight lost so far: probably quite a bit, but I can’t be sure.

When Lent comes around each year, I give up chocolate and all sweets, Coke and all fizzy drinks, and all takeaways. This year, I’ve done the same thing, and due to my weight loss goals, also took the opportunity to start a regular exercise routine, involving walking around the area and using the outdoor gym in the park near my house. It started out well, with me apparently losing 3lbs in the first week, and 4lbs in the next. Then, last Wednesday, I got on my scales and discovered that I’d apparently gained 6lbs.

And, well. No, I hadn’t.

I can’t remember where I discovered this, but I have no problem believing it: You would need to eat over 2.5* your recommended calorie intake in a day before you would even gain 1lb. Is that possible? Sure. Have I done it? In the past, yes. But for me to have done this six times in the space of a single week and not even realised – that’s far beyond an anomaly; something’s gone wrong. So, I bought some new, better-quality scales, and found that I weighed 244lbs – 8lbs less than I thought I’d weighed the previous week.

Obviously, that’s great - but it makes counting the weight I wanted to lose a bit of a faff, since as the old scales were likely taking inaccurate readings all along, I don’t know where I started from. I’ve lost weight though, there’s no doubt about that. So, new goal – My target weight it 15 stone, by which time I will have lost around 40lbs and will certainly be in a fitter state than I was before.

Board Games

This month: 0. Total so far: 14

I didn’t play any this month. Our friends and family that we normally play with were tied up in all sorts of things, and while we did get involved in some of it, none of it involved board games.

Gigs

This month: 2. Total so far: 5

I did a gig with Sam Draisey and the Revolt at Katie Fitzgeralds on the first weekend in March. I love playing with The Revolt, it’s a nice easy gig and we’ve all been friends for a long time. We showcased one of Sam’s new songs (link to the video) which went well, and we were kindly-received by Rebel and the Banned, the other band on that night and our fans – there was a strong solidarity with the political nature of our music! I also did the assisted living centre again, which is always good.

Video Games

This month: 2. Total so far: 6

I managed two video games this month:

Alien Breed: Chapter One on the Xbox 360 was a game I bought last year in the run up to the Xbox Live servers being shut down for the 360, on recommendation by Metal Jesus. It was a fun overhead shooter, and it’s nice to see the familiar contours of the Unreal engine, but it’s not the sort of experience that stays with you.

Kid Dracula: This was part of the Castlevania collection for the Switch, and is an odd entry in the series – it plays more like Mega Man than anything else. I’d come back to it after a couple of years; having reached the seventh stage almost without trying, I ran into a huge difficulty spike with some pretty fiddly boss battles. I’ll freely admit to using some Youtube videos to find out how to do some of it, as I didn’t want to get bogged down, and quite frankly it would have taken me the rest of the year to divine exactly what attack patterns would work on which boss. A nice enough game while it lasted, but I doubt I’ll come back to it.

Models Painted

This month: 2. Total so far: 12

I finally finished the Votann army I’ve been working on! My good friend Sam gave me these a while ago, and I’d just got around to painting them after blasting out Tyranids last year. I painted them in the colour scheme of the Ymir Conglomerate, because I liked the name (it reminds me of one of my favourite books, the Wierdstone of Brisingamen,) and apparently they like to give all their soldiers the best equipment so with little else to go on, I built the models with what I thought were the best weapons and all the upgrades. Here are some pictures, to show that I’ve done them – one of the Hearthkin squads and the two characters at the front are the ones I’ve painted this year.

40 for 40: February

 February was an interesting month, for reasons beyond the goals that I’ve set for myself. On those, I made some steps forward with the models, kept it steady with the games, and sadly fell on my weight loss goals:

Weight

Target weight loss: 40lbs. Net total weight lost so far: 0lbs.

Ugh, dropped the ball a bit here. There’s no excuse for it really, I basically eat too much, and – last week particularly – didn’t move around enough. But that doesn’t mean I’ve ruined it forever. It’s lent next month, so maybe I can pick things up a bit then.

Board games

This month: 3. Total played so far: 14.

I slowed down a bit this month, but I still played the following games: (there were a few more, but some of them I’ve played before in the year)

·        Fairy Tale Inn: a nice game involving stacking various fairy tale characters in a “Connect-4” style grid to maximise the profits you get from them. Me and Kirsty break it out every now and then, as it doesn’t stay long enough to wear out its welcome and the different characters mean that the experience is slightly different each time.

·        Enchanted Forest: I’ve had a lot of mileage out of this one over the years. This involves rolling dice to move your character around the board, trying to remember which treasures are where, and winning the treasure cards on the castle at the end by correctly guessing them. The random movement means a lot depends on luck, but it’s a solid enough experience – if a little frustrating for younger children who may not have developed their long-form memory skills yet!

·        No Thanks: A fiendishly simple card game where you aim to achieve the lowest score by taking as few cards as possible, putting a limited number of chips on the cards you don’t want. While it doesn’t have the range of activity some of my other games offer, “How do I win this?” becomes a very different question when the answer is tied up in one of two things you can do from the very beginning – which nonetheless potentially influence a much larger number of outcomes.

Gigs

This month: 1. Total played so far: 3

Just the assisted living centre this month, as between work and family commitments, there wasn’t much room for open mics. I also haven’t rehearsed an open mic set in a while, so I may need to get back on that in the coming weeks. I have at least one more gig lined up for March, though – I’m playing bass for Sam Draisey and the Revolt on Saturday 1^st at Katie Fitzgeralds in Stourbridge.

Video Games

This month: 2. Total beaten so far: 4

I managed to beat another couple of games:

·        Super Mario World: This was amongst the first console games I remember playing, and I enjoyed it enough to come back to it every now and then. I remember being absolutely fascinated by it when my age was in single digits, and every so often I feel that small tingle of wonder as I explore the overworld map – but I’ve done this one before, and by the time I got to the end of it, I was ready for it to be over.

·        Big Rumble Boxing: Creed Champions. Another fighting game! This one is an arcade boxing game based on the Rocky / Creed saga. I bought this game on holiday a few years ago, and if I’d bought it for anything other than the Nintendo Switch I’d have been disappointed, but for a pick-up-and-play game, it’s fine. I beat the game with all 20 boxers, and while the lack of additional content means I’m unlikely to return to it, it was a nice experience while it lasted.

Models

Models painted so far: 10

I finished painting the Votann Hearthkin I was talking about last month, and made a start on the two character models that come in the boxed set – the Einhyr Champion, and Uthar the Destined. I’m about two thirds of the way through, with some highlighting and work on the base to do now, at which point I’ll move on to some different models.

40 for 40: January

 If you’ve been following my social media, you’ll know that I’ve set myself a few challenges for 2025, the year I turn 40: try to achieve some goals related to that number through the year. I’ve been posting weekly updates, but now that we’re at the end of the month, I thought I’d give a more detailed breakdown on how I’ve been getting on.

Weight

Target weight loss: 40lbs. Net total weight lost so far: 3lbs.

I’ve been trying to make a few small changes to help me lose weight, rather than throw myself into a heavy exercise and diet regime that I know I’ll never stick to. Aside from trying to achieve at least 6,000 steps per day (although I tend to lose more weight when I don’t do this than when I do,) I’ve tried – more successfully than not – to limit the amount of Coke I’ve been drinking. While I very much doubt it will stop completely, I have been trying to make sure that if I have a drink of Pepsi Max, then my next one must be either water or squash. This has helped up to a point, but as my total weight loss indicates, if I’m going to lose 40lbs, I’m going to need to be doing more. I need to take some initiative over this, because Lent doesn’t start this year until the first week in March.

Board games

Total played so far: 11.

Through a combination of various family engagements and a games night that we sometimes do around our house on roughly a monthly basis, I managed to play the following games in January:

·        Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza: An energetic card game that I’d describe as Snap turned up to 11.

·        Kingdomino: A nice board-building game using domino concepts to build the richest possible kingdom, with some risk / reward style mechanics when choosing your next piece,

·        5 Second Rule Relay: A variation on Five Second Rule, where you’re all answering the same question, and passing the baton (which counts the five seconds) to the next person after every answer,

·        Timber!: Jenga with a different name,

·        Trivial Pursuit: Family Edition: A small version of this game that Jessie got for Christmas, with the font size to prove it. I enjoyed it, but if Trivial Pursuit is a game you’re interested in, you’d be better off with one of the bigger box editions!

·        Harmonies: A lovely game about building habitats for various animals,

·        Green Team Wins: If you’ve ever played Herd Mentality, it’s that, but with the fat chewed off, and without the cow gimmicks. We really enjoyed it!

·        Zombie Dice: A good push-your-luck experience that does what it says on the tin and doesn’t outstay its welcome,

·        Poetry for Neanderthals: An amusing game about trying to describe a clue using only one-syllable words, and getting bashed with a bat if you don’t.

·        Dixit: Odyssey: I’ve now played some iteration of Dixit three times but not the copy I own. Odyssey is a good version of it, designed for larger groups and trying to find a less-than-obvious way to describe abstract art is always fun!

·        5 Second Rule… I don’t know which version this was, but it comes in a small cylindrical container that is very light on the rules. We weren’t really playing, we were just trying to answer the clues on the cards, but we enjoyed it so I’m counting it here.

Interestingly, very few of these games were the heavy “Euro” board games that I got into this hobby to play. Board games don’t always have to be battles and war, and they have a decent range of experiences! And in any case, I now own enough of them to be able to cater to almost anybody who turns up, which is always a good thing.

Gigs

Total played so far: 2

I only managed two this month; owning to recent developments in my personal circumstances that I won’t go in to here, it didn’t leave a lot of time for going out and playing gigs. But it’s always a pleasure to be able to come to my mate Richard’s open mic at the Round Oak in Wombourne when time allows! I’ve also got a regular gig at a local assisted living centre, which is a really nice thing to be able to do. But some of the people I’m still in contact with from my regular gigging days still ask me to do open mics from time to time, so who knows.

Video Games

Total beaten so far: 2

Again, there wasn’t a lot of time. And the ones that I did beat were fighting games – my stipulation for beating these is to get through to the end of the Story / Tower / Arcade mode with all the fighters. I managed that with Mortal Kombat X and Tekken 2, and had a cracking time with both, although in the case of the latter I was ready to move on by the time I reached the end.

I also spent a lot of the time I had playing WW2K24. I love wrestling games, and in the absence of GamePass or PS+, this was a game I was really excited to play;I’m thoroughly enjoying it. The wrestling is great, all the best game modes from previous editions are in it, and the create mode has got just the right amount of depth. I’m mentioning this because games like this don’t get “beaten,” in the usual sense. If I manage to get all the achievement trophies, that would be brilliant – but it’s a long-term goal at the very least, by which time I expect 2K25 will be released…

Models

Models painted so far: 0

I have made a small amount of progress on the Votann Hearthkin I was working on before Christmas. The problem is that I’ve now reached the point where I have to do a lot of shading on the models, mixing some Contrast paint with the medium and getting it into a lot of very fiddly cracks on the models. Nothing I can’t do, but it’s going to take me some time, and I rarely have a long-enough gap in my day where I can do it. I find it hard to motivate myself to start a project knowing that I’m going to have to stop before I’ve finished, which given what else is going on in my day is a virtual certainty, so the ten models I’m painting now are still awaiting their shade! Hopefully I can pick up some of my own slack next month.

40 for 40 in 2025

Happy New Year Folks!

Most of you probably know that 2025 is the year that I will turn 40 years old, and while some people have been asking me how I want to mark the occasion – a question that I am almost completely unable to answer, I don’t really do birthday parties anymore – there are some things I would like to achieve for myself based on the milestone age. 40 achievements for 40 years, within certain aspects of my life. 40 for 40, so to speak. I’ve started many of these already, as they are ongoing projects, and they are things I’m interested in doing so it’s not like I feel I have to wait until new year to make a start. I’ll be updating these on roughly a weekly basis as we’re going along, but I’ll describe them in some detail now, so you know what I’m aiming for:

Lose 40lbs.

Yeah, we know. Chance would be a fine thing. But here’s the thing: Most people who know me know that I haven’t been going in the right direction physically for years now; roughly half of my lifetime if I’m being honest with myself. Damage like that doesn’t get fixed overnight, but it does need to get fixed; my doctor warned me a couple of years ago that I need to lose weight and, while I’ve kept it around where it was, I’ve not lost any substantial amount of weight, nor keep off the weight that I lost.

Here's where I want to change it: I want to make a few small changes in my lifestyle that will mean I can drop some weight at a slow but safe rate – no point losing 40lbs in a month, as some Facebook adverts have been cheering about, if I go ahead and put it on again the week after. I’m starting off at 18st 5lbs, so if I lose all the weight I’m hoping to lose by the end of the year, I’ll be 15st 7lbs. Will I manage it? Maybe I will, maybe I won’t, but any progress on this at all would be a step in the right direction.

Play 40 Board Games.

I have a stack of board games in my spare room that, yes, do get played, but not often enough. Over the next year I would like to play at least 40 different board games with friends, family, and people who I meet out and about in gaming shops and conventions. It doesn’t matter what the game is – board games, card games, table-top roleplaying games or war games – or even whether I own the game in question. But I’m only allowed to count each game once.

Can I do it? Quite possibly, yes. This year, I managed 42 different board games, and I didn’t even count my Dungeons and Dragons campaign that wrapped up in May, or the two games of Warhammer 40K I managed to play. It will depend a lot on the UK Games Expo, where I try lots of different games. Either way, it will be a laugh finding out how many different games I’ll get to play.

Do 40 Gigs.

I’ve not been hugely active on the music scene over the last few years, mainly due to work and childcare commitments, but it would be great to get back out and do some more shows. I’m thinking small, here – most of the ones I sort out for myself will be some sort of open mic, as none of the bands I’m currently in are particularly busy or even active. But I’ve got a gig at a local residential care home that I’m hoping to take into the mid-long term, I’ll hopefully manage a few shows with Sam Draisey and the Revolt, The Fakes if we can manage it, and all the shows that I do for work - there's usually around seven or eight of these per year.

Is this achievable? Well, if I keep an eye on what open mics are around, and when, I reckon it is, but I’ll need to be on it for the year to get up to 40. As other commitments get in the way of me being able to go out and do a gig or open mic whenever I feel like it, some forward planning may be needed here!

Beat 40 Video Games.

I like video games. I’ve always liked video games, and always will. I’ve got a huge backlog of games I need to play through and hopefully beat, but doing this will be a challenge for me – I average out at about 12 a year, so I’m going to need to put some effort in to beat more than that!

For this reason, I think I’m going to be getting a lot more use out of my Switch this year. I’ve been playing a lot of games on Nintendo Switch Online that were originally released for the NES, SNES and Gameboy, and while those games are usually quite hard, they are also often quite a bit shorter than their contemporary counterparts. So, I imagine I will beat some of those, which will make up some of the numbers to offset the long-form Role-Playing Games and Strategy games that I play for most of the rest of the time. Also, I’m going to allow myself some free passes here: I don’t have to play the game from the start, and I’m allowed to come back to old save files. Also, I am allowed to play through games that I’ve beaten before, because in most cases, I beat them years ago, and if they’re enjoyable enough to come back to, then they’re worth my time to attempt to beat again. This is my insurance against the fact that I’m almost certainly going to want to play XCOM: Enemy Unknown again at some point.

Will I beat them all? Er… well, we’ll see. Let’s hope so.

Paint 40 Models

This is probably going to be the easiest target to achieve, because I tend to paint in batches of five or ten models at a time. I’m also allowed to come back to ongoing projects – the aim is to get them done, after all. I’ll probably paint 40 models and then some, so this is a challenge I’ll likely put to bed quite quickly.

Can I paint 40 models? Almost certainly.

There are some other things I want to achieve for the year:

I’d love to get a band going that writes and performs original material. Since I first picked up the bass guitar, my aim was to be in a band where I’d made some significant contribution to the music that the band is making, and while I’m long past the point of being able to make any substantial amount of money doing this, I might try doing it for fun – certainly, at this point in my life, it would be a massive achievement!

Also, I’d like to do another Dungeons and Dragons game. This year saw the end of my Tomb of Annihilation campaign, and while the ending was somewhat bittersweet (two of the players dropped it for life-getting-in-the-way reasons,) I have missed running the game since then. It would even be nice to play every now and then!

Unfortunately, there are barriers getting in the way of both of those things, mostly stemming from the fact that they rely on other people to make it happen, and most of my contemporaries live very busy lives. Asking people to drop everything at a certain point every week for what is essentially someone’s hobby is a fairly big ask, and experience has taught me that it isn’t something I can necessarily rely upon, nor should I expect to be able to. That is why I’ve stuck to challenges for the year that I can accomplish by myself.

I’ll keep everyone updated with my progress on my social media sites, Facebook and X (formerly Twitter.) Not YouTube, though. I may upload some videos if I feel like it but doing that in any kind of structured format is something that I’m going to need a lot more time to do than I really have! Hopefully, by the end of the year, I’ll have achieved some – if not all – of my goals. If not, well, hopefully I’ll have had some new experiences and achieved some things along the way.