The State of The Blog

This isn't so much an announcement of more delays for once, so much as it is bringing you all up to date on events. I said partway through the Deepkin review that I would do so (admittedly "tomorrow" turned into a few days" and that's what we're dealing with now. This will be basic, but it is going to address a few points.

The first is simple - Life has been getting in the way a great deal of late. Since departing from my previous job I have been trying to strike a balance between several long-standing problems and finding a new one. The former has thankfully been dealt with for the most part, but the latter is taking some time. While I have been using the opportunity to establish and expand a new source of income, I will need to find something sooner rather than later. Atop of this, there have been a fair few shake-ups at home as well. Besides the aftermath of a few family deaths, my home is undergoing some severe maintenance, each of which has taken its toll on things one time after another. In fact, the maintenance is ongoing, and will likely cause a severe slowdown of my output on here for some time.

There's also Games Workshop to consider here. GW is our wheelhouse of course and I have thankfully had more than a few positive things to say of late. The problem is that they have proven to produce an extremely high output of work. None of it has been truly bad from what I have covered, and even when it is disappointing, it thankfully remains head and shoulders above the condition of previous Edition creations. Yet with so much of it coming out, it's burning me out and it takes time away from everything else. 

We tend to go into great detail with Codex reviews, after all, and just one tends to take multiple days, repeated playthroughs and testing to formulate a final opinion on things. It's why there never was a Codex: Dark Eldar review as I had planned to do that, but Necrons was taking so long and Deepkin had just come out, so there was no time at all to fit it in. It's also why, after joining them, there have been so few TechRaptor articles. As such, future reviews are going to be a bit different. On some we will look fully into the book's strengths and weaknesses in lore and on the tabletop. In others, we will just examine the lore. This is what tends to get the most attention in what I do, so that will take priority from here on.

Another issue is coming to terms with the news that John Bain, also known as Totalbiscuit has announced his effective retirement as a video game critic. You can see the full details here, but they are grim. Given that he was a major source of inspiration in maintaining such high standards and never compromising when issuing feedback or commentary on a work, it's a hard thing to take in, to say the least. Everyone saw it coming, but it's still something of a shock in its own way.

Finally, as a start to fixing things and trying to bring the blog back on track, I will be going through a backlog of review copies for Starburst Magazine. These are lesser known titles (with one or two big ones) which I didn't have the time for, but do deserve a once over. In others, there are a few opinion pieces I have been meaning to write, more about general media and industry approaches over all else along with one or two Games Workshop theories. That and dealing with one or two more Star Wars Expanded Universe stories as well, for obvious reasons. So, over the next few days, you have that to look forward to.