The Beard Bunker

We shifted to monthly posts in October 2024 amidst what I nebulously referred to as "spectacular real life events" for a number of the Bunker's contributors. The monthly posts let the Bunker maintain a weak pulse, and gave us time to consider what to do with the site going forwards. That thought process is still ongoing, but - for now at least - things have calmed down enough that weekly posting should be manageable. Won't you tell us what happened? Sadly for the curious, I shall remain nebulous the things that happened to my fellow Bunker dwellers. It's not my news to share. For my own part, in the first half of this year, my job has some dramatic developments, then my mother in law unexpectedly died, at which point my job got even more crunchy for a few months. Happily my job's now calmed down again, and we're some months on from the death. Life is sort of normal-adjacent, albeit with heightened emotions. Thoughts on the Beard Bunker's future This we...

I am here today on behalf the management* to make an announcement to all Beard Bunker readers, and instead of burying the lead, I've put it in the title. Regrettably, for while, we are going to have to switch from weekly posts to monthly . What? Why?! A number of us are currently undergoing spectacular real life events, and the other half are stretched in other ways. In such times, one has to prioritise. The Beard Bunker has, mostly, been putting out a weekly post for twelve years . That's a fact we're very proud of (let us not mention the stunning Warhams Drought of 2015-2016). We'd like to keep doing that, but events have grabbed us by the short'n'curlies and have started singing that System of a Down song about pogo sticks. If the Beard Bunker were a money-earning website, maybe that would necessitate different priorities, since we'd owe paying customers more content, but it's something we do for fun. How long will you be posting monthly instead of we...

Regular readers may recall that all the gaming we Bunker dwellers do in the 40K mythos is set in a lovingly crafted region of space we refer to as the Achernar Sector. Every campaign, and sometimes individual games, leave their mark on the setting and help it grow. There was just one problem. A setting initially designed for roleplaying as Inquisition agents (the Cetus sub-sector) and contemplative space exploration (the Scyrian Expanse) doesn't lend itself to big, sweeping wars of the sort one would, on occasion, like to fight. Even fighting big wars in the other two sub-sectors in Achernar would have had too drastic an effect, so we ended up limiting our campaigns to single system affairs, and that's not ideal. One's own setting shouldn't feel constraining. I am not a subtle creature, and thus my solution wasn't subtle either: create a whole new sector of space next to the current one, with the explicit intention of making it suitable for bigger, explodier wars. T...

A history of high speed passes over five Big Mek's Workshops and one Warboss's Squig I felt the need, the need for speed. And endless cliched Top Gun quotes, so I put a couple of Ork planes together and here they are. Is your ego riting cheques wot your Dakka can't cash? Then you need a Dakkajet.  The Dakkajet received a bit of conversion work to it. - I swapped the position of the vent hatch and the cockpit to give the jet a 'longer bonnet' so that it looks faster. - I dislike the stock landing gear, and wanted to make at least one of the planes usable as a static model / scenery. With that in mind, I created a set of landing gear from the landing skids and a set of cheap 1/35 resin Stuka wheels off Ebay. These pin into little holes in the side of the fuselage and allow the plane to sit on the ground and look a bit like a proper plane that could e.g. land without exploding. Fortunately, the holes aren't particularly obvious when the pla...

Finally, I can post the reason I've been quiet for a while: I've been working on a Necromunda gang. Looking back through the blog, the last time I posted finished models (beyond a single Ultramarine test model ) was five Empire outriders  back at the start of March , and they were quick and dirty. A Necromunda gang, though? This seemed like a good opportunity to try and apply more than my usual amount of love to a project. I had two main objectives: Paint to a high enough standard that I don't regret my laziness three minutes after finishing. Make it feel earthy and grounded but with intense splashes of colour, a bit like the aesthetics of Fallout 4. For once I feel pretty good about hitting those goals. They aren't flawless, but they're good enough for me. As a result I got overexcited and have written a long, in-depth post geeking out about paintjobs, characters and the gang's history. Seriously, it's chunky. If that's what you're into ...

... or a short essay on my motivations for starting a collection. A little while ago Em restarted her long abandoned pending Wood Elf project. For the last few weeks the army book has been laying around the house, and an increasing number of plastic tree-like bits have been spreading across our hobby space. During a painting binge one evening (I'm currently attempting to paint 70 skeletons in a single batch and incidentally is the main reason why I don't have anything new to show you all) I innocently said... "I really like the Wood Elf models, but I wouldn't collect any" To which Em said... "Well, what does make you want to collect something?" I was instantly plunged into a massive existential conundrum focused around why I make the hobby choices that I do. I think I might have replied at the time with something along the lines of 'erm... the blue one's?!'. I didn't draw this, Charle M Schulz did. This is his work that I...

Charlie:  When someone tells me that they're unlucky, I assume it's confirmation bias. Some people seem oblivious to all the times they've been fortunate and bemoan all the times they aren't, failing to notice that things average out over a long enough time span. Le sob. That having been said, a universe of infinite possibility means that some people will be luckier than others, and some people... some people will be Maisey. I've been gaming with Maisey for just over a decade now, and when things go wrong for him, it tends toward the ridiculous. So now, because it amuses me, here are my favourite top three Maisey dice fails. If you've had similar tales of woe, please brighten Maisey's day and share them in the comments. Third place: the noble veterans Losing a squad of terminators is painful. Losing all five in a single shooting phase is even worse, but at least the enemy usually has to use up their snazziest guns to get the job done...

Maisey: 2017 was going to be year of finishing things. For the most part that has been true. Looking back at my to do list from the beginning of the year and this is what I have actually managed to get done. Orge Scrap Launcher. DONE Bolt Action German veteran Grenadiers. DONE Frost Grave warband, board, and scenery. DONE Tabletop world buildings. DONE Charlie’s Storm Eagle. DONE Desert board scenery. DONE Industrial scenery. DONE Thousand Sons. DONE + More What is still left over from that list? Vampire Counts - This was meant to be a tidy up and finishing thing. Sorting out all those little bits and bobs. I’ve not actually started anything here, in fact I totally failed and ended up buying some more models. In my defence, I picked them up off a friend and it was a time limited offer, so I jumped on it. Also, we’ve not actually been playing fantasy at all, so if something is going to get bumped down the priority list it’s going to be the thing that isn’t being played. Em...