The Beard Bunker

Way back when in 1999, Games Workshop dropped Battlefleet Gothic on my tender teenage self.  I’d come to the hobby just too late to get into Epic, and didn’t know anyone playing Necromunda, so it was my first 40k spinoff.  I got pretty excited, started collecting two different fleets, joined the most epic narrative campaign of anything I’d ever played, and burned out on it so hard I’ve never touched it since. Whilst the reasoning is complex and nuanced the biggest factor was fighting Eldar.  They could dash forwards, blast you to smithereens, then retreat back out of gun range all in one turn, whilst everyone else was ponderously gliding about trying get enemies into their side arcs. They were fragile, so mistakes could be punished, but in the hands of a skilled opponent (which mine was) they were murderous.  I don’t think I won a single game against them.  Over the course of a long campaign I tried everything I could imagine, every tactic, every manoeuvre, and ...

After an unexpected interlude, here are the continuing adventures of building a Thunderhawk Gunship.  For further context please see previous articles in this series .  

 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...

Herein lies the first part of my ongoing project to build (and paint I guess) a Thunderhawk.  I have previously posted about the motivations for taking on such a crazy project , so this is just the ongoing project diary. Day 1 Thunderhawk arrived!  I went through the box and got a bit intimidated by the sheer volume of stuff, but I’ll just have to grind through.   Day 2 Started clipping out and cleaning bits whilst listening to podcasts. Day 3 Got the laser done and lay it out on my desk.  This thing is big.  Starting to worry a little that the Thunderhawk is maybe a bit bigger than I anticipated.   Days 4-7 Periodically clipped and cleaned the smaller parts in fits and bursts whilst listening to podcasts, but spent way too much time distracted playing Factorio instead.  The factory must grow. Day 8 Finally got the Dremel out for the big bits.  I got everything set up but realised that even though the sun was still up and the weather was...

Herein we find the first of several posts I'll be making reporting my progress in what I am calling Project Capstone. I've been pretty keen on Raven Guard aircraft from day one.  Before even the Storm Raven existed I bought myself a Valkyrie for them to use (illegally of course).  When the Storm Raven appeared it was initially just for Blood Angels and Grey Knights (no idea why) but I went ahead and bought one anyway (despite how ugly is it too).  When Charlie suggested the Samalut IX campaign I splashed out and bought myself a Storm Eagle and by the time the campaign began I had space in either flying transports or Land Speeder Storms for every model that didn't have a jump pack or teleport homer. 5th company attached air wing Honestly I've always loved 40k aircraft in general.  I have loads of the buggers.  I built an entire Ork army around the idea of Ork aircraft.  I have a bunch of Forgeworld aircraft of various factions, and even more in plastic....

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...

 Stupid Tom, doesn't he know it’s a warsuit not a dreadnought?  No shit Inquisitor Obiwan Sherlock Cluseau.  But Warhammer is all about making it yours, so I made it mine. Why Ok, so, first up, in my mind there is a difference between a Walker, and a Mech.  So for the sake of today’s article I’m going to define a walker as a vehicle with legs, but those legs are basically autonomous and the pilot just pushed the joystick to whatever to “go forwards” and the vehicle automatically makes the legs do whatever they need to do to achieve that.  The Imperial Guard Sentinel is a classic Walker, but also maybe the Aeldari War Walker and the Mechanicus Ironstrider.  Think of it kind of like riding a horse, you have the reins and give directions, but the horse decides where to put its feet. On the other hand, a Mech is, for my purposes at least, a machine that allows a person to directly control a large mechanical body.  This can be via control machinery that rea...