The Beard Bunker

J ust over a month ago on a memorable Friday evening, I collapsed into the sofa with a beer in my hand and an unopened box of Chaos Warriors on my lap. The fro nt picture promised a unit of dark and demonic soldiers, their armour gleaming in the volcanic light as they marched towards a glorious victory in the name of the Chaos gods. Cool! So I ripped open the box, tipped it up and what should fall out but.... three racks of approximately THOUSANDS of teeny tiny grey things. Can this be right? What am I supposed to do with all these bits!?!? The answer: cut out each tiny piece (being very careful not to accidentally snip off important parts of your manly warrior’s anatomy). Then you need to clean up each tiny piece with a sharp knife (which invariably finds its way into my clutzy fingers). THEN you can start gluing your minions together. All of this has to be done before you can even think about picking up a paint brush. Good job I have a whole year to get this army done then! Ok, ok, e

For those of you who didn’t know, I really, really enjoy painting freehand banners. Here’s one I painted earlier: People tend to have two responses to a reasonably well-painted bit of freehand: “Ooh, shiny,” or “I can’t do that. You’re clearly a mutant. I mean... it doesn’t seem physically possible.” There is some discussion as to the best way to follow up on the latter response, although many plump for raising their fists to the sky, shouting, “Curse ye gods for my untalented fingers!” before sundering their brush across their knee and leaving for a temple in the mountains. It may therefore surprise the budding banner painter that freehand isn’t a mystical art that requires you to have been born under the moon as it waned gibbous. You just need a pair of eyes and the ability to measure stuff. Obviously, artistic talent definitely helps , but if you’re a decent miniatures painter who still struggles with freehand, chances are you already have the skills you need, but lac

And so it begins... The first model of my Nurgle Warriors of Chaos army and it's magic... Well, a sorcerer at any rate.This charming (if a little drippy) chap is Lothar Pneumophilus, Sorcerer of Nurgle and one of the powers behind my Chaos Lord's throne. The model has had no modifications of any sort as he is a splendid sculpt. The only addition is the wee nurgling chap at the front representing the Warrior Familiar that he has in the list. I actually auditioned Nurglings that I had lying around to see which looked best. My wife and flatmates giving me very odd looks as I ran "Nurgling Idol". Painting started with the clothing. I intend to use what I call "Andy Green" - named for Andy of Lair of the Breviks fame - for the main army colour. This colour starts with a basecoat of Charadon Granite so every piece of cloth was basecoated in one go. I intended to use Charadon Granite as the basis for all of the colours on the model to bind it together.

Like a proverbial electronic spider amongst the interwebs I spend a lot of time shaking the internet to make useful stuff fall out. It is what happens when you work in the industry and sell your stuff online! It occurred to me that I have a hoarded treasure trove of links and sharing them would be a public service. Reference Material It is impossible to have too much reference material, why reinvent the wheel when you can just look at how things are done in nature or by the professionals? Below are a selection of my favourites: Equusite - A treasure trove of pictures of different horse species and their markings. Demon Winner - Many, many images of Golden Daemon winning models from around the world and through the years, great inspiration material. Kamouflage - A database of camouflage patterns with images from around the world and through history. A must for guardsmen. News Sites With more and more alleged news sites being more about rumour/creating controversy to drive

When a lot of people (myself included) introduce their friends to the hobby, they often deploy the best of intentions to fairly bewildering effect. As such, we lose a potential gamer. With this post, I’m going to try and provide advice for hobbyists inducting newbies into their geek clique. Obviously different people need to be introduced in a way that suits them, but all too often we try to help them with the always popular Ill-Conceived Intro Rant . Halfway into our Rant , our poor friend may now be looking and feeling a little bit like this: Not sure what I mean by the Intro Rant ? Here’s the worst-case scenario: “OMG Garry you really should start playing 40k because Ultramarines are mad fresh they have 3+ saves which makes them proper nails and I collect them by the way I’ve got like 6,500k of them but you can collect the orks because then we can have super fun battles which I’ll win at first because I’m uber and a bit elite etc but also cos it’s really fun... oh, and orks only h

So, in my last post I mentioned I was going to wait for the new army book for the Vampire Counts to come out before making any firm choices about my army, well I waited for the new book and picked it up on release day and scurried home like an over excited ghoul bringing his master some kind of tasty damsel. I also picked up a single box of skeletons at the same time, mostly because I knew that on reading the book I would want to start working on things straight away. On arriving home I made myself some tea (which is my hobby fuel) and curled up with the book. A few hours and 3 pints of tea later I had absorbed enough of the army book to start working on my list. As everyone on the BBB (Beard Bunker Blog) knows, I’m a very gentle gamer in terms of army selection. I’m not building this army to win anything, I’m building it to enjoy myself. So I started off by working out what I want in the army. To me an undead army wouldn’t be worth it’s bones without seemingly endless ranks of skelet

In my last post, I mentioned that I'm teaming up with my friend John to participate in a doubles tournament. As I said then, we have to build everything from one battalion box, including our generals. Being a resourceful chap, he combined a pegasus knight and a fat peasant to make a magical drag-queen damsel. Called Precious. John felt that her hairdo needed to be a beehive, and asked me if I was up for the challenge of sculpting one as big as possible. How could I say no? Who wouldn't fall in love with a face like that? ~Charlie