The Beard Bunker

When we decided to hold the first ever Beard Bunker painting competition, we needed a neutral figure, since we all painted different armies, but we wanted someone suitably powerful and impressive.  So who better to choose than the intergalactic space warrior, leader of the Recyclons from Sigma IX, Count Binface! Ok, well, maybe that's true, or maybe with all the recent hype about him we found out about his official mini and decided it would be fun to all buy him and paint him and thus came up with the idea of a Beard Bunker painting competition.  Tomayto tomahto. If you have been living under a bin rock , and don't know who were are talking about (not unlikely for our non-British readers), the good old Beeb has done a good summary here . Tom Starting with myself as probably the least interesting entrant, it didn't really occur to me to do anything special here.  I just wanted a tiny Binface painted accurately to his r...

When I was a kid, Forgeworld was churning out Imperial Guard tank variants and other vehicles in all sorts of delightful flavours.  At the time, I wasn’t collecting Guard, nor did I have the money, but I always looked at them with great envy.  By the time I finally started collecting Guard, many of those kits had become plastic GW models (Baneblade, Valkyrie, Hydra,...) but alas some of them disappeared from the lineup.  My all time top favourite of them, perhaps of any Forgeworld kits, is the Destroyer Tank Hunter.  And now I have one. Ethics Ok, let’s be clear, this is not a Forgeworld original.  I have looked, and I can see on eBay they go for £200-300 painted and I’m pretty sure those are also fake.  I could have converted my own out of a Leman Russ, I’ve seen people do it, but in general you don’t get that unique Destroyer Tank Hunter shape.  Freddy Mercury put it best: “Fat bottomed girls, you make the rockin' world go 'round.” I’ve also seen ple...

I’ve mentioned a few times in previous posts about being back into the Guard in a big way, and I wasn’t kidding.   To recap, I built my guard army originally as some infantry to accompany my Imperial Knights, back when soup was a thing.   Having a core of three infantry squads and two heavy weapon squads (plus a a few characters) gave a sense of scale to the Knights.  But having done the hard part of making a Guard force (the infantry) it seemed rude not to add a few more things so I could field the Guard on their own.  In came three Leman Russes, three Sentinels, and to try and bulk out the non-vehicle section without painting even more guardsmen, a squad of Bullgryns and a squad of Ratlings.  Suddenly I was sitting on 1,500 points. But now, starting to treat it as its own army project, the main issue was... its relative lack of infantry.  Frankly, this was frustrating given how much effort had gone into painting so many men, but Guard really do ...

I may have moaned on the Bunker about how much I hate painting Guard infantry.  I have definitely moaned to my fellow Bunkerites about it in person, extensively.  But I worked out a method to paint them moderately quickly, and churned out three infantry squads, a command squad and a couple of heavy weapon squads.  Grudgeingly.  I upped my “infantry” quota with some more interesting Ratlings and Ogryns, although it was pointed out to me that this really doesn't count.  And then the new Caidans came out and they look gorgeous and I love them and…  they’re so much more difficult to paint . I got my way through one command squad to give Captain Founder a much deserved glow-up, and got as far as building and spraying one infantry squad and just burned out, as the layers and layers of Castellan Green I had to apply just burned out my already tenuous enthusiasm.  I think I got as far as painting the green on one dude.  Hobby enthusiasm moved on, and I’ve...

It’s very unusual for me to consider a project “finished”, but this one is.  At least for now.  Whilst some Bearded Bunker dwellers are capable of starting a project, building a modest collection, and then calling it complete, I’ve never been able to do that.  I collect a lot of armies , and after the initial sprint to get them to minimum usable size, they continue on, being added to in fits and starts as inspiration strikes and new models get released.  They vary between 'boxed up and ignored' to 'current burning passion,' depending on the vagaries of the hobby butterfly.  Currently the winds of obsession are blowing the hobby butterfly distinctly Guard-wards, but that is largely due to my most recent success: completing my Knight Lance. Clan Vestrfjall of House Ulfir Armigers L-R: Vapnburtha - Vei Danr, Sverthsegg - Vei Bjartr, Glymja - Vei Asta Questoris L-R: Breithux - Gar Touki, Striiguth - Jafnather Yarl Rúna I previously shared the start of this army , an...

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...