I went on a Pfeffernüsse baking spree over the holidays. Pfeffernüsse are German spiced cookies made using the same spice mix as Lebkuchen (i.e. Lebkuchengewürz), with a dollop of icing sugar on top.
To me, these dumpy wee guys are inseperable from the winter holidays. I gotta have some, or it just ain’t really the Season. Therefore I was pretty miffed when I couldn’t find any in the shops - even in Lidl!
I was so miffed, in fact, that I decided to try making my own. Here is my own recipe, adapted from another to be dairy- and nut-free, but not completely vegan (sorry!). The ingredients are pretty easy to find in the supermarket, too 1.
Happy New Year! I’m thinking about what I want to achieve hobby-wise in 2022, so I’m making some goals and resolutions for the new year. I have three big goals, two resolutions, and some lesser goals.
It’s been a while and I fancied writing a little blog post, so here we are.
Personal & Work
This weekend me and Nat are staying at a little holiday house in Dunkeld, the first time we’ve managed to escape Edinburgh all year. It’s good! (Unfortunately the internet connection is very bad.) We went for a long walk today in the Tay Forest Park and got very lucky with the weather.
It’s a welcome break from work, which at the moment is a bad combination of difficult and slow.
It’s been kind of a weird year, to say the least, and it has made me tired. I’m always mega tired around October due to the changing season, but this time it’s been particularly crushing. Hopefully I’ll finish adjusting soon and be able to do useful things like get out of bed on time and stay awake past 6pm.
Tabletop Games
Board gaming has resumed a bit. Me and some friends have been playing Oath, a big fat political intrigue game with absolutely gorgeous art. It seems really complicated, but is actually quite simple, and works as a very effective storytelling engine, albeit not a particularly strategic one.
Over the past few months I’ve managed to play Age of Sigmar a few times at home. 3rd edition is… okay. Is it better? Maybe? It’s probably not worse, at least.
Hobby-wise I’m desperately trying to finish painting a whole new army for the Rollmodels meetup next weekend, which I’m very excited about. It’s got 3 Steam Tanks, lots of Drakespawn Knights, a big block of dark elves, and two ballistas. (I’m excited about the meetup, too, of course!)
For the past few months I’ve been working on a game of my own, a simple small-scale skirmish affair with a cool (perhaps unique?) magic system. It’s been a slow process of playtesting, iterating, playtesting, iterating… I wish I could speed it up but it’s quite hard to find the time and energy for it, especially right now. It’s definitely the furthest I’ve got with one of my miniature game design projects, however, so I can at least be pleased with that.
I do playtests using Tabletop Simulator with a small cult of folks who are willing to sacrifice a bit of their free time on the altar of game design. If you’re interested in joining said cult, please get in touch!
Video Games
I’ve been playing Enderal, a total conversion mod for Skyrim. It really is very impressive, managing to usurp Skyrim itself in terms of quality despite its sometimes amateurish trappings and zero-budget constraints. I’m not far in, having only just arrived in the big city (and been bombarded with a million sidequests), and it’s doubtful I’ll make it all the way to the end of the game’s presumably-epic runtime, but in the meantime I’m itching to get back to this weird German alt-Skyrim every minute I’m away from it.
I was playing Psychonauts 2, and loving it - it’s more Psychonauts, after 15 years, incredible - but haven’t found the time to continue.
Reading & Listening
I am reading Earthsea for the first time since childhood, remembering very little about it so that it is almost all fresh. Finding myself swept away, as I always am, by the understated beauty of Ursula Le Guin’s writing.
Meanwhile, I have run out of Genevieve stories to listen to. Maybe I should try Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula series, which allegedly contains a character who is basically just Genevieve, and has a similar storytelling and worldbuilding vibe which I can only describe as ‘dark Pratchett’. I’m worried it won’t be quite as good without the silly Warhammer backdrop, though.
Until Next Time
That’s all I can think to write for now. I hope I can get back into regular blogging, I do rather like it.
Did you know this blog exists? I didn’t! Yet for some reason I have the keys…
Here’s a couple of Warhammer Underworlds warbands I’ve painted recently.
First, Khagra’s Ravagers. These are Slaves to Darkness - warriors and wizards sworn to Chaos.
I love painting gold. I’m always eagre to paint some, to try a slightly different recipe - in this case I wanted to try to replicate the gold armour of my Iron Golems but using Vallejo Metal Color paints instead of Citadel ones.
I’m fairly happy with the result. It’s not a perfect match, but I wasn’t expecting it to be.
As for the blue-into-orange fabrics… I kinda wish I’d just kept it simple and gone with purple.
Secondly, the Starblood Stalkers, who are Seraphon (AKA Lizardmen). A bunch of cute little skinks and one gnarly old saurus.
Lizardmen were one of my first Warhammer loves, having been gifted a moderately-sized box of them and the army book as a tween. I barely painted any of them, and I lost interest in the hobby shortly afterwards, but they made a lasting impression. One day I’ll do an Age of Sigmar Seraphon army, but not until they update some of the old sculpts. If the models in this warband are anything to go by they’ll do a stellar job. I mean, look at this Saurus:
He’s so much better than the old ones (but notably he has no golden angle for photographs).
Once again I had fun painting the gold on these, this time going for a more aged, but not weathered, style.
It’s been a while since I painted any Seraphon. I might make room in my schedule for more soon…
Since these two warbands, I took a brief trip into Reaper-land to paint up an Ogre and a Basilisk (which were both a lot of fun) and am now making inroads into the Stormcast half of the Dominion boxset.
