The Beard Bunker

It had to happen. We all knew it was coming. I had just two models* in the entire Genestealer Cult range I did not have painted. It was kinda inevitable that my completionist urge would combine with the final release of the Kellermorph and complete the army once and for all**.

Welcome all you beloved of the Dark Gods. Take care where your eyes linger this day, for we are journeying beyond the material plane and into the higher realms. To lead us there we have a most appropriate guide, Sorot Tchure*, Master of Possession for the Graven Star chapter of the Word Bearers:

Regular readers may recall that all the gaming we Bunker dwellers do in the 40K mythos is set in a lovingly crafted region of space we refer to as the Achernar Sector. Every campaign, and sometimes individual games, leave their mark on the setting and help it grow.
There was just one problem.
A setting initially designed for roleplaying as Inquisition agents (the Cetus sub-sector) and contemplative space exploration (the Scyrian Expanse) doesn't lend itself to big, sweeping wars of the sort one would, on occasion, like to fight. Even fighting big wars in the other two sub-sectors in Achernar would have had too drastic an effect, so we ended up limiting our campaigns to single system affairs, and that's not ideal. One's own setting shouldn't feel constraining.
I am not a subtle creature, and thus my solution wasn't subtle either: create a whole new sector of space next to the current one, with the explicit intention of making it suitable for bigger, explodier wars.
To s…

Inquisitor Greyfax is one of those miniatures designed to convey the technological contradictions and iconic weirdness of the 40K setting. Unfortunately for my tastes, it actually goes too far. A crossbow attached to an assault rifle has a comedy charm, I grant you, but a candle on one's hat is asking for trouble, particularly when the hat is taller than the candle. If the hat doesn't catch fire first, there'll be wax running off the brim and giving poor Greyfax the look of a rock that's had seabirds nesting on it for a while. Perhaps it's a known trend in Imperial fashion: guano streak. And finally, we come to my favourite bit... the stiletto heels. Supporting the weight of power armour.
This should probably make everything except concrete qualify as dangerous terrain.
Suffice to say, I have once again returned to my classic hobby haunt: turning Games Workshop's output down to maximum volume. Behold the fruits of my partially successful labours:

Skulls, a corset,…

Well met my vengeful brothers and sisters, we gather again to swell the ranks of the Word Bearers once more. This time with another example of our Master's plans coming to fruition in the form of a worshipful cult. Kind of a weird one this time, presenting the Corvid Cabal:

Welcome back fellow followers of the Eightfold Path! It's another lovely day in the Word Bearers, every meal a banquet! Every paycheck a fortune! I love... hmm. Might have cross-mojinated myself a bit there. Back on track Jeff, today we introduce another new character (might he be our mysterious narrator? Spoiler: No) and a unit of troops he inspired to come to our side. So settle in with a nice cup of tea and meet Halam Caeroth the Many Blessed. Dark Apostle of the Graven Star chapter of Word Bearers.

The second squad of Cobalt Scions Intercessors are complete, which also means I have finally finished the Imperial Fists battleforce box. I started painting this kit in September 2019, which means it's taken me A MERE TEN MONTHS to paint... 20 miniatures.
That makes it sound like more work than it actually was.
Don't get me wrong, it has been a time consuming level of detail; each basic marine takes about 6 hours. In total it's probably about 140 hours of work including build time and a little conversion time. That means if I'd been doing an hour of hobby a day, this would have been done in 4 months.
"Fascinating" calendar maths aside, I'm really, really happy right now. I set myself the challenge of doing the whole force to what for me is a high standard, and I actually kept at it! Those who know me will understand this is an unusual degree of discipline and focus.

Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey gubbins effect  - like a cheap soap opera or sitcom 
We're heading back 12 years to the summer of 2008, I'm still living in Oulu, Finland, and I'm bored.  Wandering the streets I find two things: Iron Man has just been released in cinemas so I'll be going to watch that.The local news agents has a magazine I remember from when I was a kid - White Dwarf, and amazingly 40K is up to its 5th Edition (I last hobbied in '96 when we were still playing 2nd).Little did my wallet know how expensive one of these discoveries was going to be....
Fade cut back to the present...

You see in the intervening years amongst all the changes there had been the introduction of at least one new race, the Tau.  Having just gone to see Iron Man, the obvious connections occurred in my head and an Iron Man themed Tau force was the offspring.  It only took me 12 years to realise... 

Greetings fellow heretics and devoties of the Dark Gods! Yup! We're back with the Graven Star chapter of Word Bearers and some decidedly lumpy boys...

Today's post attempts to answer the question "what would it be like to be a junior officer in the strategium support staff of one of the Imperium's battleships... during a massive fleet engagement?"
It's a question no-one asked me to answer, but I've answered it in prose form anyway, so nurr. I also appear to have illustrated it, because spaceships.

The Battle of Hasmides
Ensign Josselana Brannick was facing a test encountered by many Imperial citizens: keeping faith when confronted with mind-numbing dread.

She glanced up from her work station and stared through the arched windows of the bridge. The spine of the battleship Dammerung stretched away for eleven kilometers. At regular intervals, lance turrets the size of hab-stacks protruded from the dorsal armour. Beyond that, the pinprick lights of the void. Those distant lights usually calmed her, but today, she knew that some of them were not stars. They were the flaring engines of an enemy fleet.

Looking back dow…

Greetings all you lovely people. Today I start my newest and evilest project. Oh yes, we did a Genestealer Cult together, you and I, but they are innately evil. I want something that chooses evil, revels in it, corrupts others. With that in mind, there really is only one candidate: the forces of the XVII legion, formerly the Imperial Heralds, now the Word Bearers.

I was recently invited to write something for the gloriously named Goonhammer.com, specifically their How to Paint Everything series. Humbled, I frantically attempted to think of something worth writing while simultaneously mastering the shock enough to avoid pooping an actual live kitten.
The most obvious gap in their archive was freehand technique, so I teamed up with one of Goonhammer's founders, Rob "TheChirurgeon" Jones and set about creating what is essentially a compendium of various Beard Bunker articles I've written over the years. It was oddly satisfying to draw all those disparate tutorials into one place and to end up with a reasonably comprehensive primer on how to paint your own freehand designs. If you're curious, then here you are:
How to Paint Everything: Freehand

It's laid dormant for a little while, but recently there was a little itch at the back of my head. "Hey, Jeff, you know what you want to paint? WW2 dudes..."

Given that none of us in the Bunker are professional hobbyists we can't make our living that way. So we've all got "side gigs" to support the main job of painting miniatures. I think I've got that the right way round... Well, anyway, I am unbelievably lucky and my day job is also a creative one, I am a leatherworker. While this is absolutely how I make my coin, the thing I love most is when I can make a one-off piece for a friend. It's using my talents to make others happy and that's gold to me. With my most recent piece, we finally see my two worlds collide in a fashion that we think you all would find interesting! You see, I made this...