The Beard Bunker

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Judging a Codex By Its Cover(age)

The impending release of Codex: Orks for 9th edition 40K is stirring the long-dormant bit of me that enjoys painting ramshackle vehicles, but it's not a foregone conclusion. If the new Codex is overpowered it'll dent my enthusiasm. As GW's Community team tease details from the new book, I find myself growing concerned. In today's short post, then, I'm going to talk about whether or not that concern is sensible, and what to do if we get a bad case of Codex power creep. The first thing that really got my attention was the announcement that basic orks would henceforth be Toughness 5. Any seasoned player of 40K probably understands what a big difference that is. Suddenly, a Space Marine with a boltgun will have just as much a chance of causing a wound as a veteran Guardsman with a lasgun. From an immersion perspective, that feels off, and like it risks making basic workhorse units weirdly ineffective against massed infantry. On the one hand, I tell myself not to worry.

Modular Urban Board Project Log 3: painting the Sanctum Administratus

The the last log entry I was umming and erring about the colour scheme for the Sanctum Administratus. In this week's log, which should probably be titled "things I managed to do in between long stretches of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition ," I've painted a second intact building segment. In and of itself that isn't exactly newsworthy, so I'll go the extra mile and provide the step-by-step paint recipes. Am I 100% sold on this scheme? No. It simultaneously needs more and less detail, and by the measure of my usual terrain painting, it's not that quick either. So why am I giving you a recipe for it? Well, largely, in case there are individual elements of it that you like, and want to steal. Rattle Cans I spray primed with Mechanicus Standard Grey, then did a patchy semi-zenithal spray of Zandri Dust. This is going to get mostly hidden by the basecoat stage, but serves to provide some subliminal tonal variation that doesn't show up much in the photos and h

Modular Urban Board Project Log 2

Well bugger me if painting the Sanctum Administratus kit hasn't given me an existential crisis. I've now finished one of the intact building halves, and have been second-guessing myself all the way through. Normally with terrain I'd say you want to avoid picking out too many of the details, since painting them would a) take ages and b) create a lot of visual noise for your armies to disappear into, rather than being a pleasing backdrop. With the Sector Imperialis stuff you can get away with that minimalist approach, but I'm not convinced that minimalism works on the altogether more industrial (and pithily named) Battlezone Manufactorum: Sanctum Administratus. I've followed through on the test panel I did in the last post , hoping to create something that could work as either dilapidated Imperial infrastructure or pure underhive despair. Here's how it turned out: Somehow this looks simultaneously too pristine and too old and busted, and takes a long time to do re

Magnetising - a sticky solution

Almost exactly a year ago I finished up my mini Tau force, you can see them all together here: Operation House Party . I haven't done anything with them but about a week ago there was a chat amongst our local Nerd Herd (TM) about how to magnetise the weapons on Battlesuits and since I've been magnetising pretty much everything for as long as I've been hobbying we thought it would make a useful post here. This post assumes you have a drill/pin vice suitable for the task, and are familiar with its use. Before I get onto the specifics of Battlesuits, I thought I'd point out the most important aspect in magnetising: polarity. Get this right and ultimately anything you magnetise will be compatible with any other item you've magnetised. This has lead to me being extremely silly and onetime had a Terminator running around with the arms from an old box Dreadnought - definitely not narrative and sadly not recorded in an image. These little beauties aren't some horri

Sponge My Stencil

Hopefully regular readers will have forgotten how, two months ago, I said I was done with my Cobalt Scions army. Nine years of blogging should've taught me to avoid declarative statements. That's not the only U-turn either. I also said "primaris units only!" and the Stormtalon, famously, is not one of Cawl's brainchildren (it'd need at least three more guns strapped to it). The thing is I wanted fast firepower, but there's so much detail on the Storm Speeder, and so little choice about which weapons you can slap on it, that I plumped for this overweight mosquito instead. It's faster, it's got the guns I want, and doesn't require a bajillion subassemblies. Whilst we're in realtalk mode, I should shamefully confess that this thing is here because I'm otherwise incapable of dealing with Drew's flying farseer, who doesn't need to see me to nuke space marines and can't stop windmill slamming the fire & fade stratagem button.

Orlocks! Orlocks with wings!

All right, calm down Sméagol. They don't have wings, they have a crudely designed, home workshop assembled, jump pack. That's better, right? As anyone familiar with this blog will know, I am a teeny bit obsessed with Necromunda . In particular the mad biker shotgun enthusiasts: The Orlocks. My own gang (the Blood & Chrome ) have been already expanded to the size of an Imperial Guard Platoon and I figured I was done! I was out! Noooooope. They drag me back in, and all because GDubs just had to go and release an upgrade box for them. An awesome upgrade box. An upgrade box with doggos. I started with the bog standard Arms Master as I figured I needed to flex my Orlock painting muscles after this long away. I decided he needed kind of a Latinx vibe so went to my old favourite skin painting rainbow (ranging from Burnt Umber, through Beige Brown and into the Citadel "skin tones"). I haven't named any of these chaps and chapesses yet as I'm not currently playing