The Beard Bunker

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...

A disturbingly long time ago, I was very excited to finally be owning an army I had wanted since I was ten years old . The full story of my adoration of this army is contained in that link so feel free to join me in misty eyed reminiscence, but suffice to say, I owned damn near the entire third company of the Blood Angels. Then something both wonderous and terrible happened: Primaris. The new primaris marines were so gorgeous . The sculpts were great, the scale was finally correct, everything was great... except that my firstborn lads looked like children next to them. And at the time? There wasn't a "primaris army", it was more like auxilliaries. Not enough to excite me. Plus, y'know, I'd painted a 100+ Bangles... that's a lot of Bangles... So I resigned myself to my beautiful boys being a relic of the past and got on with other projects.  [Cue Galadriel voice] But then time passed, and Primaris got more and more units and felt more and more like a real army....

 A lot of people have been posting about heraldry this week in the Raven Guard subreddit , because they’ve just booted up Space Marine 2, have fallen in love with the greatest Chapter in the Imperium, but are (very understandably) confused about how our heraldry should work.  I’ve responded to a few, but I thought it would be good to have the whole thing explained as briefly as possible in one place that can be linked to.  There is no one simple answer.  There are three official sources of info, and then guesswork.  As briefly as possible, I will explain those sources and then you can make your own mind up. My beautiful sneaky boy. That said, the Raven Guard specifically have a huge caveat GW keeps repeating: “they change their markings regularly to confuse the enemy”.  Take that for whatever it’s worth, I think it mostly confuses us fans, but it basically means whatever you do is fine (and conveniently also means the many mistakes GW have themselves made a...

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...

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 ...

Look, things just get out of hand sometimes, you know? It was never my intention to collect an entire company, these things just happen.  I was talking to Charlie recently about his long-term goals for his incredibly beautifully painted Cobalt Scions .  Initially he’d planned it to be a small self-contained force as a focussed project, given that he has painted every model to a high character-worthy standards; however as it had kept on growing and he kept on enjoying it he eventually set his sights on a full battle company. For my part I told him that I had no specific intentions of completing a battle company, I was just collecting.  I don’t number my squads anyway, so I really had no sense of how they fitted into the company structure, but given enough time I figured I’d probably get there eventually anyway.  Afterall, I am putting vastly less effort into painting than he is, and my much lower standards mean I can comfortably knock out a unit in a quarter of the ti...