The Beard Bunker

If you're going to create your own sector of Imperial space to situate your games of Warhammer 40K ( and in 2020 we did ), it follows that you would want to fight some one-off battles in it, as well as short campaigns, and some all-out wars. Following on from the Word Bearers' raid on the Lachesis system (which we played through in 2022 and  wrote up on Goonhammer ), everyone's favourite Chaos-worshipping gits finally invaded the system in July of 2024, when we added a persistent warzone . We then caught up with happenings in that warzone in October . This last January, the war ended over one final weekend of butchery. Today's post consolidates all 18 months of the campaign's narrative, followed by my reflections on how well the campaign structure worked. An Overview of the Lachesian War The extract below is the first chapter of The Lachesian War: its Causes, Occurrences and Consequences by Diokles Adrastos, Chief Librarian of the Cobalt Scions. Before I embark upon...

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...

For the last year or so, we've been conducting an experiment: to what extent is it useful to have an ongoing warzone that enables an easy narrative context for games without having to come up with a whole new situation every time? We've had a persistent region of space for years, with all our campaigns becoming part of the region's history. That's nothing new, and it's still something that we keep track of on our campaign wiki. A specific warzone, however, is a long-running war between specific factions, enabling more focussed storytelling. You can read about the initial concept in this post from July last year . As such I'm not going to re-explain the concept, but instead talk about how it's going, both in terms of enjoyment and the emergent narrative. How well is the system working? The initial battles went very well for the Imperium, which gave us some concern that one side might run away with it, making the whole thing feel a bit futile. However, the rub...

When Krug was a young ork, a runtherd took him into Mek City to see the Goff Parade. He said, "Krug, when you grow up, will you be a really fighty Goff boy, a killer of our foes?" Krug said, "Yeah course." "Good lad." 'Parade' was doing some heavy lifting, as words go. Mostly it was a bunch of Stormboy yoofs marching down the road in lines in their silly polished boots, with onlooking orks lobbing stuff at them to see how distractible they were. But the best bit of the whole thing, as far as young Krug was concerned, was the energy of so many orks in one place. He'd come out of the ground way out beyond Vulcha Cliffs. There weren't a whole lot of ladz out that way. Being here, in the city, filled him with something. Something that needed to get out. And it did. Legend has it that Krug spontaneously vomited so much green energy out of his mouth that it torched a whole mob of Stormboyz, which inevitably prompted their mates to come over with ...

Populating an army with characters who have names and personalities really brings miniature battles to life for me. But five years into using my Cobalt Scions Space Marines on the regular, it was starting to strain credulity that none of those characters had popped their clogs. Reasons not to kill off characters I will always be reluctant to kill off characters who have faces. I'd have to remove the head and paint a new face if I wanted to keep using the mini. I'm really proud of some of those faces. Then there's the characters, like First Sergeant Tyvus, who are helmeted but have their names lovingly painted onto their armour. Plus of course there's a question of how many emotionally distinct characters I can write for the same group of marines, and every time someone dies, I have to come up with something new. Now that there's a sergeant for all ten squads of the Third Company, plus all the command staff, there's a lot of individuals running around. Side note:...

Charlie: I've been running a campaign for Tom and Drew in which each of them plays a Space Marine officer with a strike cruiser and some escorts. Confrontations are fought in a mix of Battlefleet Gothic, Warhammer 40K, and Boarding Actions. Following on from Tom's previous post , we're now 5 months into the campaign (that's 10 sessions). When Tom and I were teenagers, my Eldar Corsair fleet single-handedly crushed his ability to enjoy Battlefleet Gothic. In today's post, we'll hear from Tom and Drew about how it's gone so far. Expect notes on the campaign format, repainting old minis, and most importantly, how Tom is finding this ancient system he remembers with such distaste?

A long time ago in a 40k edition far far away, the game was a different beast. Unlike today’s highly constrained options based entirely on what models are available from GW, and distinct datasheets for different flavours of the same thing, the game used to permit a huge amount of customisation in your units, particularly characters. This included the ability to swap out their armour. With the increased variety of armour in the modern range, that ability to have equipment lists is more appealing than ever. 3rd Edition Codex Space Marines - Image Credit: Games Workshop, used without permission for illustrative purposes only. Whilst Games Workshop has leaned into using separate datasheets to put Space Marine characters into various different armour types in their current range, there are a lot of characters and a lot of armours, so they haven’t been keeping pace with our creativity.  Conseque...