The Beard Bunker

Three years ago I wrote a frothing fan-rant about how my Successor Chapter would canonically possess however many suits of Terminator plate I'd painted, and that this meant they'd acquire it very slowly.  To prove this point, I have only just now finished painting the multipart kit to bulk out the five beautiful push-fit boys I got in the Leviathan box. A ten-man squad of Terminators does, it has to be said, have quite an imposing heft to it. It also provides the backbone of a proper teleport strike for boarding enemy ships (460 points at present, once a character's along for the ride). It also provides justification to paint more characters in Terminator armour, next of which will be a Chaplain. I'm also a huge fan of the Ancient in Terminator armour. The Captain is cool too, which I guess means at some point means a Terminator Assault Squad... and so the cycle continues. I'd better paint some Scouts first, though, or this strike force will get too top-heavy. Cyc...

At this point I’ve done quite a run of “Tom fixes a Primaris kit he doesn't like”.  The Desolators , obviously, the Invictor Warsuit , the Aggressors and Incursors …  Quite aside from my constant tweaking and improving of otherwise acceptable units I just want to do my way.  This isn’t that, well, not exactly.  I genuinely think the Lieutenant With Combi-weapon is a great model (with a stupid name).  I used to be an Ultramarine player when I first started (blindly following the box art without understanding, and then sticking with that choice for many years), and I love this call-back to the Tyrannic War Veterans.  However it doesn't really suit my Raven Guard, who don’t often face Tyranids (since I’m the only person I know in this city with a full Tyranid army*).  Plus the model kind of gives off psycho killer vibes, rather than sneaky beaky.  So, as ever, I made my own. Image Credit: Games Workshop, used without permission for illustrative purpo...

Falling through the heavens in a drop pod is about the most Space Marine thing you can do, besides angrily pointing at something while standing on a rock, or possibly struggling to fit through doors. So last year, when Games Workshop announced they were doing a new drop pod kit that's easier to build, I was pretty excited. I have two of the old ones, which are great once you've done them, but which take a lot of time to build, and suck to paint. The new ones, on the other hand, were a fun puzzle: was it possible, I wondered, to paint them mostly using masking tape and spray primer? It's so few parts, and those parts are so flat, that I wanted to see if it was possible. The answer is yes, but the remaining question is how much effort this truly saves you. Glue is mostly optional Other than one section of one of the five doors, the only parts you need glue for are the optional extras, which are the additional bits of rubble and the Chapter Badges/Aquilas. Once those are glued...

It wasn't immediately obvious that I had a lemon in my hands. The packaging promised me a Space Marine Gladiator tank. Certainly that's what my friends thought they'd bought me for my birthday, and very grateful I was too. And as proven the first time I built one of these things, a Gladiator can also serve as an Impulsor - just don't glue the arse on . With this new lad, I set about building it just the same way. I remembered how easily it had gone together the last time. All was well. Except, of course, it wasn't. Because it was a lemon. The citrusness first emerged when I dry-fitted the hull plates. That's weird , I thought, those are supposed to fit.  And yet they didn't. I was looking at a 1-3mm gap, depending on where you looked. How have I got this so wrong? I wondered. But 'twas not I, oh no sir. This bitch had warped harder than the USS Voyager hijacking a Borg transwarp conduit. Maybe it's just bent , I thought. That's fine, I can bend p...

When Maisey painted a demi-company of Dark Angels , all with freehand squad markings, I envied his madness. When Tom painted a whole battle company of Raven Guard , I envied his madness. When Jeff painted a battle company of Blood Angels using, of all things, an 'Eavy Metal painting guide, I really  envied his madness. I envy them no longer, for the six frosted Smurfs in today's post put me in the same sanitarium: a full battle company of Space Marines, all lovingly highlighted and covered in freehand heraldry. Upon completion of the company I immediately took to our gaming group's WhatsApp thread to share my thoughts and reflections at that time. It's a heady mix of pride and confusion (I made this! Wait,  I  made this?). There's also a certain amount of excitement that I can paint whatever auxiliary units I feel like without needing to worry about how they could affect the Third Company's composition. This was a particular thorn when fitting three-man squads ...

So, I mean, hobby progress: I have just wildly increased my Raven Guard tankage by adding two Repulsors to my army, one regular and one spicy.   But that’s not specifically what I brought you here to talk about today.  Let's talk about the downsides of modernisation away from brass. So a little known fact about brass is that it’s naturally antibacterial, so all the old brass doorknobs we used to have were actually really good at preventing the spread of disease…  hang on, sorry, wrong brass rant.  I’m trying to talk about etched brass.   Foregworld etched brass Not-Forgeworld etched brass Back when GW leaned more heavily into non-plastic products and also customisation and conversion was a bigger part of the hobby, Forgeworld used to produce these lovely sheets of acid etched brass that you could cut out and stick on whatever.  Ideally suited for flat surfaces, although depending on the shape sometimes you could also bend them onto e.g. shoulder p...

People have mocked James and his Workshop for producing a surfeit of Space Marine Lieutenants, but I for one was extremely pleased both by the addition of lieutenants, and by the various kits they put out for them. Obviously even the official releases weren't sufficient to cover all the theoretical options, hence our post in August containing, among other thicc characters, rules for Lieutenants in Gravis Armour . The point is, having more options on which kit to buy is pure upside, as far as I'm concerned. As the Cobalt Scions' Third Company nears completion, I have added their second Lieutenant using the modular plastic kit, since Astartes Companies all have two Lieutenants. I have previously produced two other Lieutenants for this army: the Third Company's Antigonus Nerva  in 2021 (where I laughably said I'd completed the army) and the Tenth Company's Andrus Varro  (a conversion of the Lieutenant with combi-weapon to be less Tyraniddy). I wanted to try and con...