Doctor Who: The Church on Ruby Road

The 2023 Christmas Special of Doctor Who, this is also the very first adventure of the 15th Doctor, portrayed by Ncuti Gatwa.

 

Normally the Doctor tends to regenerate at the end of a series, but in this case the 13th Doctor ended the previous season, and the 15th began the new.  And the 14th?  For that you need to have a look at the 60th Anniversary specials!

 

This christmas special, featuring the first real outing of the 15th Doctor, focusses on him meeting his new companion, Ruby Sunday, an orphan who lives with her adoptive mother Carla and grandmother Cherry.  She was abandoned at the church on Ruby Road, hence where her name came from, and is looking to find her birth parents to no avail.  A new baby arrives at her fostermom's, Lulubelle, but is kidnapped by goblins.

 

Ruby chases them over the roof, with the Doctor also in pursuit and meeting her as such as they board the goblin airship.  When the baby is about to be offered to the Goblin King, who feeds on babies and causes back luck on those around, but after saving them a crack appears in the ceiling of Ruby's house causing a change in her foster mom's personality and no-one recollecting Ruby.  The Doctor realises the goblins must have gone back in time to kill baby Ruby, and saves her in the past, impaling the Goblin King in doing so.

 

He brings baby Ruby to a church on Ruby Road, to ensure the parson finds her, and setting the timeline right again.  Together with Ruby, they step into the TARDIS of to new adventures.

 

So a fun intro to the new characters, with a very catchy Goblin jazzband singing about their plans for babies, it was definitly a great fun special.

 

On the Painting Desk 336

 Another week of blistering heat has gone by, and yet I managed to do some decent painting this week.

 

First and foremost, the Slaanesh Shardspeaker has been completed, the first step of doing the Hedonites spearhead force.

 

But then I suddenly decided to switch over the items on the painting desk.  During the way to hot week, I did an "undercoat day", in which I have been, well, undercoating a variety of things.  And this resulted in me deciding to do some other units first after all, namely a block of Oathmark orcs that will serve as Hobgoblins for my Chaos Dwarfs, and be included in the army list for a 500pts tournament end of august, as well as a set of Sneaky Gitz.  I am going to do the models I need to finish for the tournament first, then afterwards paint up the remainder of the units to get them all hopefully done by the end of july.

 

That means the Knives of the Crone are put aside for a while now, as I've also been working on the ruins, the Belgian mortar and well, two very special blokes for Blood Bowl...

 

So check back next week to see how far I've gotten on the big unit of greenskins! 

Warhammer Underworlds: Myari's Purifiers

 The second warband we painted for Underworlds this year, and as many know, I love playing Aelves in the game.

 

As a result, I finally started working on the Lumineth warband in the game, who have been in my cabinet for ages, ever since the release of the Direchasm core-box.

 

The warband is often seen as a perfect alrounder, which is both it's greatest strength and biggest weakness.  You have in this edition Myari, who used to be a wizard but now is a support character with the removal of magic dice in the game. 

 

Bahannar is a bruiser, while his combat buddy Ailenn is a more precise striking swordmaster.  Finally, Senaela is probably the best ranged attacker in the game system with her immense range and her Impeccable Aim skill. 

 

 

The trick with the warband is that they each have an Aetherquartz stone at the beginning, and these give them a seperate buff each as long as you don't use it to make a re-roll of any dice in an attack or defence roll... and the fact all bar Ailenn have reach on their weapon profiles can keep you out of a hard spot. 

I build a first deck for them, using the Emberstone Sentinels together with Burning Assault, which is revolving around Myari doing the own half stuff while Ailenn infiltrates, supported by the archer.  Bahannar, the tank of the party, will get the free role to aid where needed...

 

 

Or at least, that is the initial plan, let's bring them to the table a few times and see how they go, with the plans of taking them to Mines of Alost 3 in september to go for that hattrick...

Fantasy Anime League Summer 2025 edition

 Starting back to back wth the spring edition, where I ended in the top 26%, the summer league kicked off for predicting the anime of the season.

 

And I aimed at doing at least one percent better then previous season.

 

However, I will start on the backburner, as all the possible top ranking series I selected only start airing from week 2 onwards.  This means I can only start filtering them in using my swaps during weeks 2, 3 and 4 and this can cost some serious points.  Apart from that, I will also have to chose wisely which one to bring in, in the hopes of being able to score with the Ace for each of them while doing so...

 

These hopefully heavy hitters are as such Sakamoto Days part 2, the fourth season of The Rising of the Shield Hero and the second part of Dr Stone Science Future, especially that first one gives me a potential high scorer.

 

That also means I'll be starting out in week one with an eclectic mix of anime and genre's, of which I believe The Fragrant Flowers and Gachiakuta might be sleepers who will hopefully rise pretty high in the points.  I then selected The Summer Hikaru Died as well as the 4th season of Rent-a-Girlfriend to form the bulk, with Reincarnated as a Vending Machine getting a spot just because I thought the first season was hilarious!

 

So let's see how they all perform in the coming 13 weeks, and if the top 25% will be obtainable this time round! 

 

 

 

 

Babylon 5 ACTA: Hyperion Cruiser

 The first model to return to the venerable A Call to Arms gamesystem has been painted, and what else could that be then the mainstay of a Dawn of the 3rd Age Earth Alliance fleet, the venerable Hyperion Cruiser.

 

A solid all rounder at Raid level, these vessels are the literal backbone of the EA fleet, workhorses like the Excelsior class is in Star Trek.

 

Armed with the needed medium ranged guns and boresight lasers, it also comes with a flight of Aurora Starfuries, excellent little dogfighters in the game and pretty iconic for the show.   

 

As everything is measured base to base for fighter flights, it doesn't really matter how you make them up, and I re-opted like in the old days to put them by the two's on a round base.  The huge hexagons from Fleet Action are just to unwieldy, and as they are cast in metal weigh a ton that can damage paintjobs in transport otherwise.

 

The Hyperion itself has been painted now in a light grey compared to inked metal I used to do all those years ago, to get some more joy out of working on them and it just looks better in my opinion now, as my paint style has evolved as well over all those years.

 

Now to start working on the rest of the fleet as well and get a game in somewhere during the summerbreak period... 

Den Teerling issue 17

 Every once in a while I remember to take along the free "gazette" our club produces, a great work by Arno with the help of guest writers.

 

And this time, we are having a quick look at the 10 page logn issue 17, which was released recently in May.

 

The main story is the third part of the life of Napoleon, inspired to rectify the fairy tale the Napoleon movie turned out to be.  It takes a look specifically this time at Eylan and his divorce.  The next article is a game review of the Battle of Hagerstown, a massive ACW game held at the club premises a while ago.

 

The Silver Bayonet then gets some attention, with an article that takes a look at this most excellent Frostgrave inspired Napoleonics game.  The final big article is a look at the Andor series, which recently got it's fantastic second season as well.  Rounding out with a puzzle contest and a comic, this was a fun little read once again, and some intresting topics for yours truly.

 

Keep up the good work blokes! 

Fantasy Anime League Spring 2025 edition: the results

 So how did we do in this season's anime prediction competition?

 

After going in the top 300 last time round, I doubted I would be able to repeat this feat, but one can try after all.

 

But first of all, let's have a look at how my picked anime faired.  

 

 

I've Been Killing Slimes: 24th place, way lower then expected

My Hero Academia Vigilante: 4th place

Lazarus: 2nd place

The Beginning After the End: 26th place, this dropped off seriously after a strong start

Please Put Them On Takamine-san: 28th place

Yandere Dark Elf: 46th place, did everyone become holier then a saint?

Shiunji Family Children: 15th place

Summer Pockets: 17th place

 

All together, this resulted in a top 26% place, so still not totally terrible but a bit lower then I hoped for never the less. 

 

On a weekly basis, my League went like this for the current edition: 

Week 1: 38767 pts, 9994 th place

Week 2: 244950 pts, 3016 th place, succesfully aced Beginning After the End

Week 3: 508253 pts, 1583 th place, swapped Beginning for Summer Pockets, succesfully aced Vigilante

Week 4: 593362 pts, 2886 th place, swapped Takamine for Beginning,

Week 5: 759523 pts, 3334 th place, swapped Summer Pockets for Takamine

Week 6: 875333 pts, 4249 th place 

Week 7: 1075577 pts, 7222 th place, swapped Beginning for Shiunji

Week 8: 1206329 pts, 4833 th place, succesfully aced Shiunji

Week 9: 1444595 pts, 3912 th place, succesfully aced Takamine-san

Week 10: 1729721 pts, 3396 th place, Wild Card swap Summer Pockets for Takamine, succesfully aced Summer Pockets

Week 11: 1798030 pts, 3965th place

Week 12: 1954267 pts, 5246th place

Week 13: 2315712 pts, 6142th place

Unfortunatly, due to a family outing, I forgot to Ace in my first week, and have been on the chase as a result since then.  Now, my selection wasn't top notch either though it turned out, and slowly I started slipping down the table at slightly under 1000 spots per week.

 

Most of my anime didn't perform as well as hoped, only Lazarus and Vigilante ending in the top regions, so those weren't the best of gut feelings I guess.

 

Let's hope that the summer edition fares better, which kicks off right after this one ends... 

 

The half year update of the 2025 goals

 Already half the year has gone by, and some very good progress has been made in the planned objectives.

 

In that some more goals have been completed... but some are officially failures as well now!

 

So let's have a look at how everything proceeded over the past quarter, and how far we came from the end of march update to this moment. 

And let's immediatly kick in the open door: both the Combat Patrol and the Kill Team of Aeldari are failures.  I looked through the rules, and just couldn't get excited for it, selling them off again, cutting my losses in a failure to get motivated again for the whole 40k universe.

 

Other projects on the painting table aren't labelled (yet) as failures, but due to circumstances and other projects requiring more immediate attention haven't been touched upon yet.  These are the Moonstone warband, the Wood Elf army first and foremost, and the Easterlings and Rohan forces for Middle-earth, though none of them have been given up upon yet. 

Because I have been doing quite a nice batch of painting on other forces!  The Lothlorien force has grown to 99 points, and though I will initially need only 500 pts for a tournament in november, I'm planning on rounding that goal out completely.  Talking gaming events, the Empire army for our club's Escalation League now stands at 1635 out of the aimed 2000 points, even though I bowed out of the campaign for family health issues.  

 

 

Furthermore, painting has been done on the Idoneth Deepkin, now totalling 1050 points (with a new book and as such probably new points values coming soon), while the Hedonites of Slaanesh have expanded to 790 points, an additional bonus being that it also included one of the Underworlds warbands, putting that counter now on 1 out of 5.  Next, for said MESBG tournament in november that I am actually organising, some terrain has been finished now as well, and that stands at 1 out of the aimed 5 buildings.  Finally, the Belgians for Bolt Action have been brought up to 121 points, as they actually need to get to double the 500 points goal for the tournament in november.

 

And that is the part of painting goals for this year, so let's have a look as well at the other things on the list, starting with the viewings parts.   

And that kicks off with a succesfull goal already obtained, as I managed to get to the series goal: 24 out of 20 have been viewed in the past months.  The movies are close on it's heels as well, currently standing at 15 out of 20, so those will be probably reaching their goal in the coming quarter.

 

On the anime front, I watched 17 out of 50 series aimed, and of those 5 where from the 40 Noshi had already seen. Maybe this will help focussing a bit more on reading, because while I already completed the rulebooks and regular books reading with 7 out of 5 aimed, the manga trail behind still hanging at a measly 2 out of 30.

 

For the other goals this year, things are still on schedule, having attended 5 out of aimed 10 wargame events and competitions, all culminating in 38 played games of the prognosed 50 so far. Rounding out this overview, we tasted 55 out of 50 new beers making that a completion as well, while 5 out of 10 frituurs have been visited.

 

So all in all it looks like it is going to be a strong showing for the goals.  As soon as the Bolt Action army hits it's mark this year, I'm going to be shifting my focus on some of the other armies in an effort to get as much done in the final quarter of the year.  The coming quarter will be as such rounding out other projects and deadlines, but I'm not planning on starting any more "must finish" projects in between for this year.  But as it goes now, even with the two abandoned 40k projects included, I still believe finishing between 60% to 75% of the goals set, which makes it a good year that way.

 

Let's see how we progress during the summer vacation period!

 

 

On the Painting Desk 335

 Time for another weekly update, and it has been a good one as I got some things finished.

 

Namely Myari's is completely done, but also the Oracle scout.

 

So it is time to move to the next project, and that is first and foremost now the Shardspeaker for my Hedonites of Slaanesh Spearhead.  This sorceress is mostly a support general, so no fighting shenanigans from her part.

 

For the rest I'm planning to do some decent work on the Spearhead wall section mostly, before maybe if I still find some additional time to do work on the other things as well. 

 

Check back next week to see any possible progress!