The Beard Bunker

 ... They ARE the jungle.  In a somewhat Stark contrast to Andy's take on the Tau, my vision of them is rather more utilitarian. I've gone for a very simple scheme indicative of the industrial war machinery of another regime that also believed in the Greater Good*. To add a layer of interest, and because I seem to always want to over compliate everything, I have pushed the boat out with the weathering and basing on these guys.     The main paint scheme is drab green and black. The Green starts with Death World Forest, then a wash/pin wash** of Athonian Camo Shade***, Elysian Green, then finally Ogryn Camo. The Black was Corvus Black everywhere but the deepest of recesses where I left the Choas Black undercoat showing, then highlighted with Eshin Grey and Dawnstone.    Next up was the weathing stage. This was achived by taking a very light colour and a very small brush and gently building up the chipping with tiny dots and stratches. This is time consu...

Inquisitor Greyfax is one of those miniatures designed to convey the technological contradictions and iconic weirdness of the 40K setting. Unfortunately for my tastes, it actually goes too far. A crossbow attached to an assault rifle has a comedy charm, I grant you, but a candle on one's hat is asking for trouble, particularly when the hat is taller than the candle. If the hat doesn't catch fire first, there'll be wax running off the brim and giving poor Greyfax the look of a rock that's had seabirds nesting on it for a while. Perhaps it's a known trend in Imperial fashion: guano streak. And finally, we come to my favourite bit... the stiletto heels. Supporting the weight of power armour. This should probably make everything except concrete qualify as dangerous terrain. Suffice to say, I have once again returned to my classic hobby haunt: turning Games Workshop's output down to maximum volume. Behold the fruits of my partially successful labours: Skulls, a corse...

The second squad of Cobalt Scions Intercessors are complete, which also means I have finally finished the Imperial Fists battleforce box. I started painting this kit in September 2019, which means it's taken me A MERE TEN MONTHS to paint... 20 miniatures. That makes it sound like more work than it actually was. Don't get me wrong, it has been a time consuming level of detail; each basic marine takes about 6 hours. In total it's probably about 140 hours of work including build time and a little conversion time. That means if I'd been doing an hour of hobby a day, this would have been done in 4 months. "Fascinating" calendar maths aside, I'm really, really happy right now. I set myself the challenge of doing the whole force to what for me is a high standard, and I actually kept at it! Those who know me will understand this is an unusual degree of discipline and focus.

If you are thinking "What the hell is that?" you would be having an appropirate response to seeing the Mutalith Vortex Beast for the first time. The Mutalith Vortex Beast, or Gribbles as I've taken to calling it, is a support unit for the Thousand Sons. It is described in the codex as "an utter abomination of nature. It is a terrifying fusion of monster and magic, a creature mutated beyond all reason by the power of Chaos." Which sounds fun right?

Charlie:  When someone tells me that they're unlucky, I assume it's confirmation bias. Some people seem oblivious to all the times they've been fortunate and bemoan all the times they aren't, failing to notice that things average out over a long enough time span. Le sob. That having been said, a universe of infinite possibility means that some people will be luckier than others, and some people... some people will be Maisey. I've been gaming with Maisey for just over a decade now, and when things go wrong for him, it tends toward the ridiculous. So now, because it amuses me, here are my favourite top three Maisey dice fails. If you've had similar tales of woe, please brighten Maisey's day and share them in the comments. Third place: the noble veterans Losing a squad of terminators is painful. Losing all five in a single shooting phase is even worse, but at least the enemy usually has to use up their snazziest guns to get the job done...

Maisey: A little while ago Jeff posted about his beautiful and well thought out Blood Angels. Seeing that post made me glance lovingly at my Dark Angel shelf and I wondered if you guys would actually like to see them for once. I've spoken about my Dangels many times before but never really done a proper post about them. Yes, I have a shelf of Dark Angels... and a bonus Knight I wish I could go back into the mists of time to say how a young Maisey, inspired by some article was drawn into the cowled mysteries of the Dark Angels. I would also like to say that in his youth Maisey struggled to create the army as seen in his childish minds eye. But I can't, because that would be a lie. I didn't play 40k until I was in my 20's, so no childhood memories here. The initial attraction to the Dark Angels was with the 4th Edition codex release back in 2007 and the release of the Veterans kit with 5 robed marines. I saw the models and thought, 'They look cool, a whole ...

It can't have escaped anyone's attention by now that the new edition of 40k is nigh. This is rather exciting news and the steady drip of information coming out each day is only causing further excitement. So in order to avoid the hobby equivalent of blue balls we have all found ourselves getting stuck into some painting to satisfy that particular itch. I've got stuck into more of the Thousands Sons models. The Scarab Occult Terminators are now done, in the same method as the  Rubric Marines                                            The other main troops unit was a blob of Tzaangors, which are Tzeentch tainted beastmen. These are painted a little bit different to the Thousand Son legionnaires. The metal work is intended to look much newer, but keeping the same red touches to tie them in.  So with these I've nearly finished all t...

For many years now I've been feeling that 40K needed a major overhaul. The last few editions didn't go far enough for me, but as yet almost everything I've read about the new edition is encouraging, and thus my ancient love of 40K is stirring. Stirring like a kraken from the depths of my loins . Now I'm faced with a conundrum. Clearly this excitement demands that some stuff gets painted and, come release day, some 40K must be played. But there are two armies I could go for: my fledgling mechanised guard, or more speed freeks. I love both armies dearly and I'm too slow for both. Ultimately it'll probably be orks but I do love me some guard, so before diving into painting more kustom trukks, I made a point of at least finishing the platoon I started waaaay back in 2014. It's not that I'm a slow painter, it's that the river of 40K love really did run that dry. Let's face it, these guardsmen (and women, all two of them... good luck s...

Today I would like to talk. About how Project Get Things Finished is going. About why I have butterfly brain. About how I react to creative urges when there is no outlet, or direction to them. Also about what I want from the hobby. Firstly, Project Get Things Finished. This is actually going well so far in the sense that things are getting finished. I can say that so far this year I have ticked the boxes on a Frost Grave warband, and the board and scenery for Frost Grave. I've finished off the few Tabletop world buildings that were sat ready and waiting for the love. Whilst we're talking about scenery I've also got a usable amount of scenery for my desert board as well as starting to clearing out of the backlog of my industrial scenery which should be all done this month. As for models, well we have finished off the Ogre Scrap Launcher that I never got around to, a bunch of German Veterans for Bolt Action, as well as a fairly large pile of Thousand Sons. Oh, and the Stor...

This post is a bit of a two for one special offer this week. Firstly we have a rather large selection of photos of my finished desert board including a few with the 8th Army boys from before. The second part is a step by step of how I made the trees/scatter pieces for said board. If you want to get straight to the step by step feel free to just skip to the end. So here come the pictures. The buildings I got from  Timeline Miniatures  and the earthworks I picked up from  Red Dragon Gaming . The trees/scatter were scratch built as I'll show below. Tree Scatter Tutorial Now for the tutorial/explanation for the scatter pieces. I do have to state right out the gate that I've not really done anything like this before and I was kinda making it up as I went. Which, seeing how they turned out, is probably the best bit of advice I can share from this. Just give it a go and see what happens, even if it goes a little wrong it can always be ...