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...

Nothing speaks to the flexibility of tabletop wargames like mixing in a spot of roleplay and strategic map shenanigans. Having finally gotten to do so as a player rather than as the GM I can confirm that while your mileage may vary, it is, for me, the tits. Four days of having my cake, eating it, and finding another cake in the cupboard. I cannot take you to this magical realm, but this post might just offer a glimpse of it. Perhaps you can find your own way there. Or you might think bloody hell, I'd rather just play a competitive round robin and keep life simple. And hey, look, maybe methodone's your thing. Before I go any further I should probably offer some context. What we did Essentially a weekend-long roleplay campaign (think D&D etc) but where the encounters are fought with 40K armies rather than a band of adventurers. Tom was the GM, Drew and I were the players. It's not a format that lends itself to more than two players without also having more than one GM. ...

Osinell of Craftworld Iybraesil Two years ago I used two of my friends to test the theory that RPGs could be an effective gateway drug for tabletop wargames. You can read the original interview with Becs and Drew-Deece  here , but with the very scientifically rigorous sample size of 2, the answer appears to be yes. Albeit slowly, on account of an actual pandemic . Becs is painting her way through her Delaque gang as I write this. Drew not only painted up a gang to fight in our first  Necromunda  campaign, but also borrowed an undead army to participate in the  Border Princes campaign , and has now painted enough Craftworld Eldar that we've started playing 40K every Sunday (the UK is still very full of plague right now, but she's in our house's bubble). Words cannot express how good it's felt to put minis on terrain and throw dice, but that's by the by. I sat down with Drew to discuss how she's found getting into wargaming, and specifically 9th edition 40K. Her a...