The Beard Bunker

Today’s post is about iteration, how satisfying it can be to watch skills improve over time, and grav tanks. We here at the Craftworld Eldar Appreciation Society love grav tanks, yes we do. It’s been thrown about in our little gaming group from time to time that I have a type when it comes to my hobby. I like my characters a little villainous (or if they’re straight up heroes, a little dumb), and I paint a lot of black-and-off-white. Over the years I’ve done black stormtroopers with white lights, white harlequins with black underclothes, black templars, and a whole craftworld eldar army in Ulthwe colours. That last one is the important one for this post, because I’ve actually worked on 3 Ulthwe armies so far. Sort of. I’ve spent my last year or so, on and off, revisiting my eldar army. It started with a rebasing, given I’d begun the army (6 years or so ago) with the fastest basing I could think of: Crackle paint, rocks, and not much else. This changed, partly to reflect the army’s lore...

A brainwashed fearless uber-warrior is not, in general, a promising starting point for a compelling character. Anyone trying to come up with their own Space Marine characters is therefore immediately confronted with pitfalls, and it's all to easy to end up with quite bland or samey characters. Even official characters like Marneus Calgar don't have a personality to speak of (winning is not a personality). In today's post, then, I'm going to talk about some of the things I consider when adding a new character to my Cobalt Scions, a task that grows harder as I add more and more while trying to keep each one distinct. I'll leave you to judge how successful I've been. How Fearless is a Space Marine? Let's start with the titular claim about Space Marines: that they Know No Fear. This is a good line, of course, and we know that they're indoctrinated to endure horrors far beyond that which a baseline human could handle, but it's easy to take an overly rigid...