Mark of Calth finished, finally.

This book was a grind to get through. I suppose I'm a bit biased, though, as I'm not fond of either faction participating in the underworld battle for Calth. Being a series of short stories made it difficult to feel attached to any of the characters presented in it. Most of them being forgettable. The stories did however clearly illustrate the dire and hopeless situation the Imperial defenders were in. Touching references to the name of the story being made by the "Mark of Calth" which are the radiation burns caused by the destroyed sun of the Calth system in the final chapters of Know No Fear, by Dan Abnett.
The gem of the novel was the final story "Unmarked," also by Dan Abnett featuring the reluctant Perpetual, Oll Perrson, continuing his story after leaving Calth thanks to the previous story, "Athame" in which the title suggests is about a warp touched magical knife or athame that finds its way into Oll's hands after he kills its owner. This penultimate story quickly grew tiresome when its pattern became clear. It follows different people who don't matter who find the athame, are killed and the killer takes the knife who then dies and so on until it finds its way to Oll. The passage of time and use of the knife as the focus of the story made for what I could only believe was an interesting quirk in an otherwise dull story. With the athame having the most character it seemed to be more of a curious writing exercise than anything else.
In Unmarked we follow Oll and his ragtag group of human survivors, most of who are green Imperial Army soldiers as well as a female civilian and Oll's personal servitor, as they cut through real space using the athame to travel through time and space. They are unwittingly guided by the  reoccurring Horus Heresy character John Grammaticus, the Cabal spy first encountered in Abnett's Legion, who is in my opinion one of the best developed characters in the whole series. Oll is guided by his feeling or some other ambiguous rationale for traveling between the "cuts" he makes to travel in time and space. He first travels to a past battle for Imperial compliance during the Great Crusade where they encounter strange trumpeting predators. Then they find themselves on Terra, escaping warp touched pre-humans and then onto battles from Oll's own battle scarred past. Its at this point Oll realizes that he is being guided by John Grammaticus. Its in Know No Fear, that Grammaticus speaks to Oll in a dream forewarning him of the impending war on Calth, setting these events into motion.
In Verdun, during World War One, that Oll speaks with John again, through some ethereal means and he tells him that a warp demon of some kind is hunting him, which he realizes later is because of the powerful artefact, the athame, he is using to travel. John tells him to keep running because the demon can't keep hunting him forever, that it has other more important, deeds to do.

Anyway, I plan to do more Black Library book reviews and I hope this was a proper start for my first go at it. I'm currently on Promethean Sun, by Nick Kyme, so that will likely be my next review. I have previously read his novel Vulkan Lives, which was good when following Vulkan himself, but faltered with the story line following my favorite spy John Grammaticus and the rabble of Isstvan survivors and their Word Bearer persuers.

Pinning the Void Raven Bomber

Being a gamer on a budget is a difficult position because this hobby often necessitates purchasing other materials beyond just buying the models and rule books. Magnetizing is an efficient way to make the most of your models by allowing you to easily switch out weapon options and other war gear. For larger models I find pinning to be an easier and cheaper alternative. All you need is a drill or pin vice, super glue, and paper clips.

 Here I have the Void Lances and Dark Scythes pinned. I drilled them into the weapons with a pin about 3/4 inch long. I have half the pin sticking out to fit into the weapon mount which is also drilled.

 I used a hobby knife to prep the missile pods for drilling. I placed the guide holes in both ends of the pods where they fit into the fuselage.

 After drilling the missile pods, I places them in position on the Void Raven frame to line up the holes and used them as a guide to drill into the bomber's fuselage.

 Here you see the holes properly drilled

 After this I glued the missile pods together. I placed the paper clip pins in. I used the first fitting pin as a measuring reference for the other three. Super glue them in place and there you go!

 Here they are fitting perfectly in place!

Now we have a complete modular Void Raven! Now on to painting. I've still yet to figured out a proper color scheme for my real space raiders.

Lastly, cause I almost forgot, here is the Void mine pinned where it sits into the bomb bay.

 Here are my past pinning projects. Forge World Imperial Navy Lightning with pinned wings, missiles and bombs. Pinning the wings make transport and storage much easier since you don't have to worry about breaking the wings.

 Vulture with my two load out options; Punisher Gatling cannons or four multiple missile pods.

My Valkyrie/Vendetta was my first project of this type. I found that pinning was a superior method, as the magnets you see there allowed the weapons to move a bit too freely for my liking so I pinned them into place. The wings are also magnetized and work well enough without needing to be pinned. I'm sure I'm not the only hobbyist out there to figure this out, but it seemed to be nice enough for a first posting on my blog.