The Beard Bunker

  In the last dying gasps of 2021 we were all virtually sitting around our discord and musing that it would be nice to do one of those "new year, new army" deals. Fresh from painting a horde of Chaos and a huge whack of Genestealer Cults you'd think I'd be in the mood for something friendlier. Something light and fluffy perhaps? Nahhhhh! I'm having way too much fun being evil at the moment to go good-guy so soon. Time to double down on the evil and go the the nastiest faction (citation needed) in the 41st millenium: The Drukhari. I'd loved the range since the moment it was released and knew that one day they would be mine. I just couldn't figure a paint scheme that I liked... Then I remembered that Charlie had speed painted a unit of Drukhari in, like, an evening . And that was Charlie managing that in an evening. Plus they looked good. After winkling out his secrets (more on that later) I now had an idea of the look. But there were still some other idea...

 … or ‘how I like to keep these handy, for close encounters.’ That’s right folks, today I’m showing off the more up close and personal elements of my Admech, the Sicarian Ruststalkers and Pteraxii Sterylizors.   First, the Sterylizors. With pretty much every Adeptus Mechanicus kit (except the Characters and the Kastelans) comes with two build options. A lot of the time there is only really one option to pick from. In the case of the Admech pretty much all of them where a difficult choice, rules wise. How do you pick from two equally decent choices? Well I ended up just going with what would be coolest and what could be cooler than a bunch of deepstriking, hotrodded heavy flamers, with bat wings?   Not too much to say on the painting for these. Following my normal recipe for black and metal. Rather sensibly there isn't any flappy fabric, so no blue to paint, and very little carapace armour, so no bone white. What I did do is trim down the connector points for the...

To avoid the classic 40K problem of Imperial armies constantly fighting each other, the players in our group make a point of having at least one non-Imperial army. For years, I've been using my Speed Freaks for this. I'm still proud of that army and its many trukk conversions , but I've played them so much that I need something new. Something really different, you know? So I've decided to do... another ork army. Why orks? It was almost Drukhari, and it was almost Tyranids. With all the new Craftworld stuff coming out, my teenage years of precision elf bullshit almost had a renaissance. But the new ork boys are just so. goddamn. PRETTY. The added benefit of orks is that they feel like a nice, classic enemy that can be anywhere, for no reason, and fight anyone. Absolute peak carnage enabling, that. The other thing about doing Goffs, rather than Evil Sunz, is that it's thematic to have a more varied force that doesn't get quite as obnoxiously in the enemy's fa...

 I was going to title this post The Year of the Cog: Part Thee - Steampunk Robo-Cowboys from the Future, but that seemed a little waffly for a blog title. However, they are Steampunk Robo-Cowboys from the Future! And they are awesome models. I want more. Moar I Say! Ok, this is going to be a shortish post since everyone is a little brain dead after the brütal-crüsade-week plus then returning to the stressful Real Life thing has left the brain juices a little low. I will say that I had fun despite my 0-5 win/loss record. It was great actually playing games with real humans again and the Bear Bunker lot are some of the best humans out there. Still,  I've got a huge amount to learn about using this army, about playing crusade, and playing 9th in general. I've learnt a lot, but there is more to learn, and even more to forget in the heat of the moment (Remember kids, Rad-Saturation Auras are important).  So I have two units to share this week. Firstly is Kappa 3-Rea, my Serbe...

The Beard Bunker’s herd of nerds just spent a week playing Warhammer 40K Crusade at my place, carrying on where we left off with the Brütal Crüsade Weekend . The good times committee have issued a unanimous statement proclaiming said week to be “pretty great.” Eight players, ten armies, and many loud noises. There were so many glorious little narrative moments and spasms of dice-based betrayal that I couldn’t possibly squeeze them into one readable post, so like last time I’m just going to provide my own experience: what I painted beforehand, how I marginally refined my hosting skills, and how my own Cobalt Scions fared in the maelstrom of carnage and biscuits. So many biscuits. God dammit Boris you will be the end of me . I hope my herdmates might also feel the urge to write up their experiences as well, but I make no promise on their behalf. Not least of which because some of them are knackered right now. Well, two of them: the optimists. I'll get to them later.