With 2025 upon us, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on 2024 and what we accomplished on the blog, before moving ahead with new projects. The blog has now completed twelve full years! Throughout 2024, we were able to maintain regular blog posts while also continuing our podcast, and weekly Twitch streaming. With this post we wanted to look at our most popular posts of the year, while also highlighting our favorite episodes of the podcast.
Most popular blog posts of 2024:
We had a total of 54 blog posts in 2024, four more than 2023. It was a fantastic year, with us going to Under the Dice Fest and our first Adepticon! But what really defined 2024 was continuing to develop our Vastarian Open Invitational! All of this culminated with us holding our first Inq28 event, with the help of Bill Ford, in the Vastarian setting! Reflecting this, our most popular post was our Vastarian Contest announcement, and the third most a summary of the Vastarian lore. The second most popular was a summary of Day 1 at Under the Dice Fest!
1. Vastarian: Open Invitational Contest (1622 views):
Most popular Instagram posts:
1. Hypatia Etranzi of Special Operations Unit Mitsukurina (2333 likes):
Most popular episodes of Dragged into Turbolasers:
1. Episode 107: Under the Dice Fest 2024, Part 1 (605 downloads):
Beyond our most popular blog posts, Instagram posts, and podcast episodes, we want to highlight some of the other exciting things and topics we explored in 2024:
Vastarian:
Our hobby in 2024 was defined by continuing to develop our Vastarian Open Invitational. All of this culminated with us holding our first Inq28 event, with the help of Bill Ford, in the Vastarian setting! Vastarian is a major cathedral world that has been thrown into turmoil due to the opening of the Cicatrix Maledictum. This has caused a massive psychic awakening amongst the general population and has fomented conflicts between the different religious sects on the planet. The Invitational asks you to create your own Imperial Cult (the more eccentric and deranged the better) and play some skirmish games using your favorite ruleset to help develop the lore!
The year began with us creating a contest to encourage people to get involved in the open invitational. We got over thirty-five amazing contest entries which we featured in multiple posts (one, two, three, four, five) before announcing the winners! First place went to Jean-François (trexcowboy_) for his cult, the Aeris Sanctus, which celebrates the simple act of breathing and believes that the struggle to respire, even in oxygen low environments, imparts a spiritual connection to the Emperor. Adam converted a model for their cult, a beatific saint floating next to a grotesque tree!
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| Lonely vigil. |
We also found time to paint one of the resin casts of the generic cultist model Adam converted for our Vastarian setting. We expanded our Adeptus Arbites Special Operations Unit Mitsukurina unit, led by Hypatia Etranzi. We built and painted a Chronos-pattern Ironcrawler which we used in our Adepticon games. We also created a scenario to go with a wonderful church board created by Bill Ford.
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| Curse Blackened Methuselah shambles within striking distance of Madame Eldur, its mouth agape in the mockery of a smile. |
The last half of the year was focused on creating models and writing lore leading up to running an Inq28 Vastarin event with Bill Ford at Asgard Games! This included creating shrines for the event, converting and painting some Elocutors, writing more lore, painting some cultists sculpted by Marcello Rizza (@uollas_uolsh), and finally creating a saint for the Church of the Red Athenæum. Many people also provided models for the event, which we were able to show on the blog including the Synod of Reclamation, the Knights of Reclamation, Nicky Grillet’s Church of the Gyro Choir, and k0rdhal’s terrifying Eater of Saints.
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| The participants of the Houston Vastarian event! |
The Houston Vastarian event was an amazing experience which we have been documenting on the blog. We have written about the first two days of the event so far (one, two), along with sharing the rules that we used and the participants in the event. We also were able to record a series of episodes of Dragged into Turbolasers about the event, including one we recorded directly after day three of the event. We also interviewed Weirding Way and Modern Synthesist, followed by Sovthofheaven and Noclearcoat (Hive Scum) about their experiences at the event. In 2025, we hope to finish our coverage of the event and continue to create new models for the setting!
Photography:
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| Exakta VX (1955) next to Fujifilm XT4 (2020). |
This past year was an incredibly productive one for me (Eric) growing as a photographer. This renewed interest in photography was primarily due to my grandfather generously giving me some of his beloved film cameras. Having never shot a film camera before (other than disposables), I had a lot to learn about the process, but I was quickly swept up by it. Film forced me to slow down and focus on the basics of photography (the exposure triangle), which pushed me to be more purposeful in my process. I talked at length about miniature photography with 35mm film and the Exakta VX, and also recorded an episode of Dragged into Turbolasers talking about miniature photography. Somehow I managed to shoot 60 rolls of film in 2024! I am not sure if I will surpass that in 2025, but I know I will keep taking photos and trying to better document our exploration of the miniature hobby!
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| Dark Angel: taken on a Exakta VX (Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon 35mm f2.8) with Fujifilm C200 film. |
28:
We helped as editors for and wrote an article for 28’s 6th issue, which featured John Blanch as the cover artist!
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| John Blanche was the featured artist of issue 6 on 28! |
Events:
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| On the eve of Under the Dice Fest. |
We had the good fortune of going to multiple events in 2024, starting with Under the Dice Fest, hosted by our friends from Hive Scum! We split our coverage of the event over the three days of the event (zero, one, two). During the event we had the opportunity to interview a host of people, which we split into two episodes of our podcast (one, two). Shortly afterwards, we got the opportunity to go to Adepticon for the first time, where we spent most of our time in the Grimdark hallway. We took our podcast recording equipment along and interviewed people between shots of Chicago’s famous Malört!
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| A diorama was created by Mike DeBolt (@gundamofficialhobby) and Yasashii Kyojin Studio for Martin McCoy’s feudalistic setting (previously known as Mosscairn), populated by humanoid animal creatures and elder spirits of the forest. |
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| Never Reaching The Surface. |
In August, Greg was able to attend the Brothers of Promethium narrative event set up by the Hive Scum podcast (and their collective friends in the New England War Council). The event was themed around an Imperial planet in the Warhammer 40,000 setting known as Promethium, which is able to pull spacefaring vessels out of the Immaterium and cause them to crash-land on its surface. No one has been able to figure out a way off the planet, so all those stranded on the planet are forced to fend for themselves and survive in its inhospitable desert environment. The event was structured around a series of three games using a combination of rulesets, including Grimdark Future (from One Page Rules), Grimdark Future: Firefight, and a modified version of Mike Hutchinson's Gaslands. Each participant was tasked with making a small warband and some form of vehicle or speeder (for the Gaslands game). Although we were not able to create a full warband for the event, we did manage to create a pair of models to participate. You can find a PDF of the game book that was made to go along with the event HERE.
That is a summary of our output in 2024! This completes twelve full years of Between the Bolter and Me! I am happy to say it was another productive year. We cannot begin to thank everyone who has followed us and supported us over all of these years. We are excited for 2025. As always, never hesitate to contact us with questions or comments!
- Eric, Greg, and Adam Wier
That is a summary of our output in 2024! This completes twelve full years of Between the Bolter and Me! I am happy to say it was another productive year. We cannot begin to thank everyone who has followed us and supported us over all of these years. We are excited for 2025. As always, never hesitate to contact us with questions or comments!
- Eric, Greg, and Adam Wier
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