The Beard Bunker

Today's post is about just straight up ignoring official rules, in the right context. In this case, the rules were ignored during a GM'd 40K campaign, so no actual players were harmed by my tinkering. More on what I changed later, first: some context as to why I so enthusiastically painted up Bulbus McThew (PhD) in time for said campaign.* Some months ago, Tom came up with the idea that noted wraith-fancier Drew and my own infrastructure fetishists the Cobalt Scions should fight a four-day war against some Tyranids. GM'd 40K is something we've done before, and is, for me, the absolute Bentley of 40K playing. Louchely flicks engine grille with the seductive power of a walrus in a party hat.  Given that I already had over 3,000 points of marines ready to go, I strongly didn't need to paint anything else for my army. But the format of these narrative campaigns - where all your units get split out into battle groups in each phase of the story - means that you are rew...

Today's post is a bit of a medley. I'm working on expanding my Cobalt Scions Space Marines for a campaign, and so for your viewing pleasure, I bring you: (1) an Aggressor/Heavy Intercessor kitbash, (2) a quick but kinda nice pale skin painting method, and (3) my joy at building and painting a stripped-down Repulsor. Kitbash: Heavy Aggresstercessors Blingwangs, paunches and cowels are among the details on Aggressors that I'm not wild about. Questions might be asked about the wisdom of attaching firearms and ammo feeds to a melee weapon , but err.... welcome to 40K. The main problem here is indisputably the chunk of metal swinging between Aggressors' legs, rather than the waterline conceptual hole of Boltstorm Gauntlets. Don't worry, I fixed it, by doing possibly the most expensive kitbash in my collection. The fruits of my highly affordable labours can be seen above. Here's a shot from behind: Note that I clip off the leg cables on Gravis armour, because that...

In June 2013, Mark and I undertook to convert the old Warhammer chapel into a more generic dwelling . The Beard Bunker's long-standing Bit of turning down the visual volume on GW's output has enjoyed the same consistency as Suella Braverman waking up on any given morning and deciding whether or not to be performatively inflammatory. The thing is we did all this work, then just one month   later, I painted my first Tabletop World buildings . My desire to paint GW Fantasy terrain died harder than a tapdancer in a minefield. Skip ahead ten years and I'm slowly gearing up to posthumously close out the story arc of Mark's Skaven army and their lordship over Hochland's one-time capital Hergig. I need buildings. Lots of buildings. Then I see this thing that we built together all those years ago, dust-addled and half-painted on the shelf next to much prettier Tabletop World stuff, and confronted with the bin or the brush, I chose the brush. Keen to make sure I just got it d...

Some may mock the volume of Primaris Lieutenants grunted out by Games Workshop, but variety of choice is rarely a bad thing. One might as well enjoy Marine Privilege if one can. Besides, we're still missing a Lieutenant in Gravis armour and a Lieutenant in Terminator plate,* so if there isn't a white and red helmet stripe in a pipeline somewhere, I'm Barbara Streisand. Today's particular lieutenant is my take on converting the Lieutenant with combi-weapon. The original is great, but it's also extremely specifically a Tyranid war veteran, and I wanted something that felt right in more contexts than that. Turns out, this is pretty doable with a spot of kitbashing and a small amount of sculpting. Even if you've not sculpted before it's probably doable, so today I'll quickly describe which bitz I used and how I did it. As is traditional, I'll also talk about how I've reinterpreted the datasheet lore-wise. The conversion The first order of business wa...

After months of effort, Charlie has finally completed his experimental co-op mode for Warhammer 40,000 where you and a friend (or you alone) can team up to fight against a non-player-controlled swarm of Tyranids.  He has, unsurprisingly, written a lot about it recently, with many many revisions of the rules and his fortnightly development blog posts over on Goonhammer, so I have volunteered to step up and write this announcement post and save him the decidedly unsettling (if you’re British) experience of having to write about his own work without being self-deprecating. If you just want to jump straight to the finished product, jump on over to Goonhammer where he’s sharing this supplement. Otherwise read on for a somewhat less biassed view of the game.  Obviously I’m still Charlie’s friend, the supplement is stuffed full of photos of my army and I’ve been supporting the project from its inception and even painted extra models just for this.  So, you know, I don’t exactl...

“Pack in Black”? “Pack to You”? “There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Pack”?  Choose your poison I guess.  But it’s definitely more “Don’t Look Pack in Anger”, than “We Are Never Ever Getting Pack Together”.   What am I blithering on about?  Jump packs baby!  YEEEEEEAAAAAAAH!!!   (Or if you’re a Google spider indexing this page: “How to convert Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs”.) The Long Vigil Back before all this Primaris stuff brought the tacti-cool Phobos with it, the Raven Guard were all about two things, Scouts and Assault Marines.  In my Firstborn army I have a lot of both.  My very first Raven Guard unit was an Assault Marine unit. Squad Aibek.  The eagle raven eyed will notice a squad medic and technician. That’s right, I was doing it long before Charlie made it cool . Since I made the switch to Primaris, I’ve been eagerly hoping for Assault Marines and Scouts to follow suit.  I came damn close to making them myself when they b...

I am quite reknowned for having some long term projects. Ideas that have been on the boil for a while that just need that special something to spark the mojo and get them started. Well, today I'm able to share the results of the first phase of what has been one of my oldest back-burner projects*... The Kessarine 4th Armoured Brigade: 7th Platoon, Sergeants Tavade and Prabu led by Commissar Dravland Now some of you might already be going "Armoured brigade? They look a bit squishy for that." Well quite, shush you. These fine men and women are of C Company; 1st Motor Batallion attached to the 4th Armoured Brigade for all those ticklish situations which tanks just are a bit... big to handle. They're also not the standard Cadian-pattern lads either. This is for a number of reasons, some of them now slightly outdated. See I really did not like the old plastic Cadians, for all sorts of reasons but lets just say 'shoulders' and move on. Plus I'm a real fan of th...