The Beard Bunker

Back in 8th edition I got back into 40k after a bit of a break, and built myself an Ork army.  I wrote about it here .  When 9th came out and brought with it Crusade, I started with Raven Guard, but eventually I wanted to pick up a non-Imperial Crusade army to play against Imperial armies such as Charlie’s Cobalt Scions .  When the Ork Codex dropped full of Crusade goodness, I knew it was time to dust of Da Ork Airforce and bring Da Two Worlds Waaagh! To the Eridani Sector . A Blood Axe army vaguely themed towards WW2 with an emphasis on aircraft.  The core of the army is a large mob of choppa boyz (Da Paras) that I often deep strike (using the Tellyporta stratagem, but instead of teleporting I flavour it as them parachuting out of da Orkules), a mob of shoota boyz for holding objectives (Da Guard) and a mob of Kommandoes (Bravo Toof Zero) to take and hold forward objectives.  Fire support is provided by aircraft and mek guns.   Getting Legal First up,...

There are plenty of places where one might draw an arbitrary line in the sands of realism with Warhammer 40K. Apparently one of my lines is bikes with fixed weapons and zero ground clearance. Indeed with the exception of the Storm Speeder, most of the Primaris fast attack options don't do it for me for one reason or another… And that's how I got over 2,500 points into a marine army without painting a single fast attack unit. I did paint a Stormtalon, which is effectively fast attack, but still. Not exactly the paragon of Ultramarian flexibility. I don't hate the stock kit, indeed I quite like the ridiculously en-chonkened Akira lads, but those things would've looked completely ridiculous on my moorland basing scheme. And then along came @scriv_paints on Instagram with his beautiful Raven Guard grav bikes. Now these, these I can see being more useful. There are a few grav bike conversion kits knocking around, but to my eye these do the best job of applying the modern...

 When the Bladeguard arrived, I was smitten.  They really are incredibly lovely models.  The initial Indomitus easy-build release was good, but the multipart kit was even better.  But they’re not exactly very “Raven Guard”.  So I spent quite a while imagining how I could fit them into my army. I had some pretty... imaginative ideas; at one point I was considering covering the shields in dirt and grass so the Bladeguard could hide in pits and use their shields to disguise them in the style of the Viet Cong , or Robin Hood’s Merry Men .   As I got deep into the schemes, I realised the ideas I was having for “Raven Guard with shields” had diverged completely from the actual models I loved so much.  How to sensibly resolve this contradiction?  Do both!  Please don’t read my articles for the advice of a rational person with self control. Bladeguard Squad Estavo The one thing I didn’t love about the kit was the shields.  Too much bling f...