The Beard Bunker

  It is fair to say that all Drukhari are masters of nastily applied mayhem and violence. But even amongst that excessively stabby breed there are some who could be considered "professionals" at it. These are the Incubi, elite, mercenary bodyguards and warriors with a dedication and focus that makes them the equal of any temple of Aspect Warriors amongst their Craftworld kin.  And dayumn do they look good doing it. I love the whole Drukhari range but the Incubi were just knocked out of the park. Covered in trophies and the shattered spirit stones of defeated Aspect Warriors they just ooze professional nastiness. As they are "Blades For Hire" I toyed with the idea of having them in another colour, but I just loved the green too much. Also I wanted them to be emphatically part of the Kabbalite force so green a go-go. Weirdly the part I agonised over most on these was the horns. Darker? Lighter? Same as the armour? They caused me all kinds of trials and tribulations. I...

  One of my favourite things about the Drukhari are the various different flavours contained within. The army structure is even tailored to encourage you to take maximum advantage of the three flavours with multiple small detachments encouraged (kinda like stabby neopolitan ice cream). The flavour we are exploring today is the Wych Cults of Comorragh, part mercenary, part performance gladiator acrobat, all stab happy nutcase.  My particular sub-flavour of Wych cult is a classic, the Cult of Strife. I tend to default to the sub-faction that feels most like the quintessence of that army unless I've got a strong reason to do otherwise (like wanting All The Raiders so going with Flayed Skull for the Kabbalites is the smart move). I'd also decided that I would change the colours of the army between the three flavours (Kabal, Wych Cult, Haemonculus cult) because it'll make it real easy to remember which one uses which rules: "Oh, a red one, that's Wyches". I knew ...

  In the last dying gasps of 2021 we were all virtually sitting around our discord and musing that it would be nice to do one of those "new year, new army" deals. Fresh from painting a horde of Chaos and a huge whack of Genestealer Cults you'd think I'd be in the mood for something friendlier. Something light and fluffy perhaps? Nahhhhh! I'm having way too much fun being evil at the moment to go good-guy so soon. Time to double down on the evil and go the the nastiest faction (citation needed) in the 41st millenium: The Drukhari. I'd loved the range since the moment it was released and knew that one day they would be mine. I just couldn't figure a paint scheme that I liked... Then I remembered that Charlie had speed painted a unit of Drukhari in, like, an evening . And that was Charlie managing that in an evening. Plus they looked good. After winkling out his secrets (more on that later) I now had an idea of the look. But there were still some other idea...

After a few games of Kill Team, I decided that life would be a lot quicker and easier if I had all the information I needed for my team on one piece of paper. All their weapons, stat lines, specialisms, tactics, faction special rules, everything. Turns out it's very doable. In today's post, I'm going to share the template document along with my own custom sheets for you to download and alter to suit your team. It's relatively basic - just a Word document - but hopefully it'll be of some use. It's certainly sped up my playing speed, as I haven't played this game enough to just remember everything. I'll also include pictures of my three Kill Teams, with a brief overview of their background. Before I dive in, I must give thanks to Jeff. Whilst we were preparing to run a Kill Team campaign (sadly put off due to scheduling conflicts) he made a Word document formatted to replicate 6 of the generic team member cards you get in the game. It was this origin...

... 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...

Dark Eldar are famous for many things: spikes, pain, spikes, topknots, spikes... the list goes on. What they are not famous for is being conducive to last-minute paint jobs. It’s all those smooth, crisp lines. Most experienced hobbyists would not, therefore, try to paint a squad of five of them and a six-man hive gang and a character model the night before they’re due to be used. To do something like that, you’d have to resemble the end of a bell. Konk, konk. I spent hours and hours on that bloody character development pack , and hours more on painting one of the agents participating in the Inq28 scenario. The other twelve models got an evening (and a good chunk of the next morning whilst waiting for everyone to arrive). The added challenge? The Dark Eldar were a secret. It’s not easy to keep a secret when you’re painting at the dining table and live with two of the people playing in the fudging scenario. Bless ’em, they did a fine job of looking the other way wh...

As Jeff talked about in an earlier post on the fantastic Pirate Viking Painting ( Found Here ) some of the Beard Bunker Dwellers are going to be working on small Dark Eldar skirmish armies this year. As a result of my fairly emphatic army builds last year, my hobby has been fairly slow this year, just some sedate work on my Dark Angels. However, I've finally found me some hobby juice in the Dark Eldar project. The idea has been slowly simmering away in the back of my brain to do a Wych Cult army based around the grand gladiator arenas of Commorragh. Here are the first few models of the main Wyches unit. I've gone for an uncharacteristically bright colour scheme. For both me and the Dark Eldar bright colours are something we just don't get on with. However I wanted to, as a painter, try something outside of my normal repertoire. As for the background for the army, well these people are performers. Sure they are murderous, callous, and very dang...