The Beard Bunker

Dark Eldar are famous for many things: spikes, pain, spikes, topknots, spikes... the list goes on. What they are not famous for is being conducive to last-minute paint jobs. It’s all those smooth, crisp lines. Most experienced hobbyists would not, therefore, try to paint a squad of five of them and a six-man hive gang and a character model the night before they’re due to be used. To do something like that, you’d have to resemble the end of a bell. Konk, konk. I spent hours and hours on that bloody character development pack , and hours more on painting one of the agents participating in the Inq28 scenario. The other twelve models got an evening (and a good chunk of the next morning whilst waiting for everyone to arrive). The added challenge? The Dark Eldar were a secret. It’s not easy to keep a secret when you’re painting at the dining table and live with two of the people playing in the fudging scenario. Bless ’em, they did a fine job of looking the other way wh

Aside from shooting stuff in the face with my shiny rusty new second hand ork fleet, I've primarily been preparing for a few role playing games. Specifically, I'm running a one-day Inquisitor scenario in the next few weeks. I say 'Inquisitor'... that's not technically true, in that we're not playing a narrative skirmish wargame. It's more like the 40K roleplaying game  Dark Heresy , in that the gamers are each playing an agent in the employ of an Imperial Inquisitor , but then... it's not Dark Heresy because whilst its production values and content are excellent, I find the game mechanics long-winded. Instead, we're using 20Eight (i.e. the barebones game engine I've been working on for the last year or so). I'm excited to use it in a futuristic context to see how well it holds up. We've hitherto played plenty of fantasy, and that's been great, but fantasy doesn't have guns, spaceships, and them funny-looking spehs ayliurr