The Beard Bunker

An honest review of a product I bought, Anvil Industries has not sponsored this in any way (I highly doubt they know we exist).  This is my first experience buying virtual 3d models, rather than physical, and I jumped right into the deep end with a large highly customisable vehicle model. (Please note, as mentioned later, the chainsword on its back is a custom addition and not part of the base kit.) What is it? The Light Assault Mech is a highly customisable digital model from Anvil Industry’s “Digital Forge” range, designed for you to print yourself.  What you purchase is a .zip file full of digital files you can use to customise your own model.  The end result is about a dozen separate pieces printed out that you need to stick together to build the finished model. Customising Anvil seems to have tried quite hard to provide for the full spectrum of customisation here.  At one end of the spectrum they have provided the files to build this standard model as is, without any customisation

Just over a year ago I painted my first marines in Phobos armour using this method . I've now done the other five in the Incursor squad, and have included some purely cosmetic specialists to this lot, just as I have with my Intercessors and other units. Today's post is a pretty short one going through the various minor conversions and painting decisions in the hopes that it might contain some ideas other people want to steal. Preamble Notes All Hail the Kill Team Sprue! An overall point before I go into the individual minis: all the unusual parts are from the Phobos Kill Team upgrade sprue. Like most of the Kill Team upgrades, it's a lovely smattering of bitz. Charlie, those are Infiltrator helmets not Incursor visors Yeah the visors don't do it for me, and nor does having a giant camera on everyone's backpack. Hopefully the prevalence of combat blades and big box scopes will signal to my opponents that these are Incursors. Sergeant Hairan Syras I assembled this gu

Welcome, fellow traveller on the tides of fate, we are looking today at some Rubric Marines dedicated to that trickiest of gods Tzeentch... but just a little bit twisted... I've said before in this august journal of nerdy knowings that I intend to have one of each of what I call the "God Squads" in the army. I've so far got Noise Marines and Plague Marines sorted, and they're pretty easy to fit into the "Mystery Cults" vibe that I had going. The Berserkers I was waiting on for the new kit and I'm glad I did. That leaves just the Rubric Marines of Tzeentch. Huh. How the hell was I going to make them work in the army? The tl;dr of Rubric Marines is that they were all created by Ahriman and are all Thousand Sons. They're literally just animated suits of armour filled with the dusty remains of the former occupant. So I needed something that would mimic the same vibe, but with a Word Bearers twist. Finally, the answer came to me: Necromancy. Yep, a

What? Why? The thing about ork warbosses in 40K crusade is this: they become unstoppable beasts. This is highly entertaining, of course, but they do have a way of making every game about themselves. Consequently, as the boss' Waaagh grows , I find myself using my other warboss models to represent his leff-tenunts. I could just say "here's a random boss," but it's way more fun to have a name and a personality. And so, one thing led to another and... well... ladies and gentlemen, for your consideration I present: the Boss-o-Matic 9000. This extremely stupid series of random tables incorporate an ork name generator, a squig name generator, a gretchin name generator, and then goes waaaay further than necessary by generating a personality for your boss, including his quirks and hobbies. Today, my brain worms iz green. I've already had a fair bit of fun using this to generate a couple of leftenunts for my fellow Bunker dwellers to fight; generally if my opponent can

The latest marine to join my Cobalt Scions brings an extremely Imperial grasp of due process to the army. In today's post I invite you, dear reader, to join me on the conceptual journey I took from "never gonna want ye" to "Judiciar now plz." It was a journey that only required me to replace both the model and its lore. When the official Judiciar mini was first shown off, it immediately fell into that sub-genre of 40K minis that look like a wannabe JRPG videogame character, thanks largely to the bandana over the skull mask and the shitnormous hourglass. The off-the-shoulder coat situation is a clear nod to samurai, which on the one hand leans into the wannabe JRPG thing, but on the other hand is a welcome reference to something other than Western Europe, so I'll give that a pass. The square-tipped executioner sword is also a clever design nod, communicating this guy's purpose without needing words, but as a whole it was... not a model I felt the urge to

If you have read my previous “Oops New Army” you’ll know that I have a problem, and it’s collecting armies.  I have intentionally created two armies, but I own six.  Current and fully painted.  Not counting anything I owned before 2019, i.e. for the first twenty something years of hobbying…  The others keep tempting me with Warhammer Fantasy and honestly it’s a terrifying idea, I don’t think I’d survive.   This week we’re taking a look at Tyranids. Why Because Contrast.   No really.  I had always liked the idea of a Tyranid army, they are the ultimate evil alien, they get to have horrific deadly monsters but also endless waves of chaff.  I watched Starship Troopers on a bus to Games Day at a formative age.  But the idea of painting them always intimidated me.  When Contrast came out it became readily apparent (to me at least) that they weren’t great for hard shapes like Space Marines but would be wonderful on organic stuff.  As a thought exercise I wondered about collecting a few Tyran