The Beard Bunker

I’ve mentioned a few times in previous posts about being back into the Guard in a big way, and I wasn’t kidding.   To recap, I built my guard army originally as some infantry to accompany my Imperial Knights, back when soup was a thing.   Having a core of three infantry squads and two heavy weapon squads (plus a a few characters) gave a sense of scale to the Knights.  But having done the hard part of making a Guard force (the infantry) it seemed rude not to add a few more things so I could field the Guard on their own.  In came three Leman Russes, three Sentinels, and to try and bulk out the non-vehicle section without painting even more guardsmen, a squad of Bullgryns and a squad of Ratlings.  Suddenly I was sitting on 1,500 points. But now, starting to treat it as its own army project, the main issue was... its relative lack of infantry.  Frankly, this was frustrating given how much effort had gone into painting so many men, but Guard really do ...

Welcome to a world of infinite possibilities!  Veteran bunker readers will be aware that I’ve been dabbling in 3d printing warhammer bits for a long time, despite the fact I do not have a printer myself.  I recently shared some photos of newly acquired bits to fellow bunkerites, and a few asked about how I went about acquiring them, so I figured why not write a little post to share that knowledge.  Honestly there’s no mystery to it, but these things are often easier if you don’t have to work it out for yourself. Unlike Charlie, I hate freehand, so these lovely raven icons on their shoulders are custom printed Worth noting here that a lot of sites these days are selling 3d printed products, what I’m talking about here is the process of finding or making 3d models and getting them printed for you on demand. Finding Bits There’s two obvious options here, you can find some online and download them, or you can make them yourself.  The key thing is the file type you will n...

There are many big, difficult issues in the world. War, famine, corruption, ecological collapse, the Storm Speeder's turret design. I could go on. Today's post holds an answer to one of those issues. It's a very, very simple answer, so in the interests of not burying the lead: I plopped the Impulsor turret in the relevant hole. No conversion work is needed, you just pop it in. You don't even need glue; once the surfaces are painted, it'll hold nice and firmly. The internet has joked long and hard about poor Brother Tinnitus up there in the turret. Ironically I don't think tinnitus is his biggest problem, given that soldiers generally fire shoulder-mounted missile launchers, literally rest their cheeks on their rifles while aiming, and are generally subjected to all manner of loud noises whether or not they're manning a turret. No, Brother Tinnitus' biggest problem is knees. I doubt he has any. Presumably his role requires a double amputee, and in fairnes...

Charlie: We’ve all imagined having actual glass in the tiny plastic windows of our ruined dollhouses. What a fun idea! How utterly impractical! The idea is sensibly consigned to the most conceptual of wishlists and left there to rot next to concepts like successfully painting one’s entire backlog. But in the distant, mist-wreathed valleys of Snowdonia, there is a man - well, a collection of 52 caffeine-addled squirrels in a trench coat with the name of a man - who wanted to know: just how does one make stained glass windows for 40K ruins? That squirrel collective is the lovely Boris, one of the most far-flung members of our gaming group. At any given moment, one of the squirrels can have an idea that sets off a hyperfocus cascade. In today’s guest post, he is here to explain what he did and how he did it. We are not asking why he did it because the answer will be a sleep-deprived eye twitch and a giggle. We are simply here to enjoy and understand the fruits of his labours. Boris: ...

Just a quick post this week, and this is largely a public service announcement for budding Space Marine commanders suffering from indecision.  In brief, the Gladiator tank can be built to swap between all loadouts without magnets. I can’t claim credit for working this out myself, there are lots of other posts about this floating around the internet, but when I shared mine with fellow bunkerites none of them knew about it so we felt it was worth passing the word along.   The key is to not glue in the base plates of the turret or the side sponsons.  Once they are undercoated, the paint will fill that gap nicely and the friction will hold them in place.  It’s as simple as that.  The Valiant and Reaper sponson options are simply not glued onto the peg, and again once sprayed friction will hold it in place whilst still allowing you to pull it apart. The one option you can’t swap without using magnets is the storm bolter or grenades on the Lancer/Impulsor sponson...

This brief post is about how to get a Whirlwind that looks at home in an army of Primaris Space Marines.  I'm not the first person to do this, but I am now a person who's done it, so here you are. The Whirlwind tank has had a long career in the Space Marines range, and while its effectiveness has varied over the last 30+ years, I've always liked the idea of an elite infantry army being supported by self-propelled light artillery. It fills a niche in the roster that no other Astartes unit quite fulfills. Besides, I'm playing Space Romans. Having a space catapult is a good addition to the Bit. Hoverwind? No. Hmm. Flywind? No. Wait... Floaty McFloatface? While I love the Rhino chassis, it doesn't make much sense to use a tracked vehicle when all my other tanks are grav tanks able to handle any terrain. Enter the Gladiator chassis. With a pair of storm bolters on the sponsons, you don't even have to fudge legal weapon options. Better yet, the Primaris range's tu...

As I settle in to write yet another “Tom doesn’t like GW’s design so he fixes it” I feel I have to point out that I really do like most of the new Primaris range.  The core armour designs are excellent and the vehicles are (mostly) great.  They just occasionally have a tendency to stick something pretty derpy on top of that excellent core, and I feel the urge to replace it with something less dumb. Image Credit: Games Workshop, used without permission for illustrative purposes only. Inceptors were some of the very earliest of these derpy designs.  Modelling them in a more upright pose certainly helps with the “floating baby” look, but those stupidly large pistols…  I just can’t get past them.  They’re so massively front heavy, and why a pair of jumbo pistols instead of a sensible weapon?  So I just ignored them. But they kept niggling at me, because they’re a very cool concept that is extremely on-brand for Raven Guard.  A highly mobile jump pack unit ...

Today's short post is an ode to the advanced headswap. I've just finished off a Primaris Psyker for the mechanised Guard army I painted back in 8th edition, because sometimes you just fancy a palette cleanser. There were however two issues with using the stock kit. For one, I'm not a huge fan of the default head and collar, even if I recognise that shying away from Imperial weirdness is an act of cowardice. Secondly, both Jeff and Tom have already painted the same mini for their armies, and I didn't like the idea of having triplets running around. I'm a special snowflake, and so are my tiny plastic people. Enter a spare head from Statuesque Miniatures, some pinning, and some green stuff. I took a deep breath and snipped off the collar. No going back now.  Pinning the head in place and sculpting a neck, the next move was to smooth over the damage to the cuirass and then get a collar and hair bun in place, since the head's original ponytail didn't feel right. ...