The Beard Bunker

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...

Drew's Kroot post is a tough act to follow, so rather than trying to beat her, I'm radiating strong sh*tpost energy. That's right, I'm here to tell you I have painted  yet more Space Marines . This post has nothing to offer you other than some pictures of some newly painted dudes, me squeeing about how close I am to completing a full Battle Company, and perhaps least uninterestingly, an answer to the most vexing Cobalt Scions heraldry question: why do some of these idiots get a circle on the Chapter badge, and some don't? Vital content . As you will have intuited from the image above, the miniatures in question are five of the artists formerly known as Assault Marines, and now known as Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs ,   in a change described as 'pithy.' I have nothing useful to say about them, because Tom already wrote an excellent post about the kit and his conversion of it, in Baby Got Pack . Given how detailed regular Intercessors are, I didn't...

Never is the distinction between painting for realism and painting for the tabletop more obvious than when it's time to paint some camouflage. Miniatures need to be readable from four feet away; relatively speaking that's like a commando trying to sneak up on someone in Elton John's iconic ensembles. Since we want our tiny tacticool terrors to look like they're ready to do the right kind of slaying, this means painting something that yearns to be camo, but isn't. I knew this to be true when I started painting three Eliminators for my Cobalt Scions. This didn't stop me screwing it up. I thought I was being clever. It seemed like a good idea to take the official camo scheme on the Eliminators, with all their sharp angles, but just change the colours to vaguely match my basing scheme, so browns and greens and greys. The original scheme. Copyright Games Workshop; used for illustrative purposes only to show the kind of shapes I used. This of course has been executed ...

We shifted to monthly posts in October 2024 amidst what I nebulously referred to as "spectacular real life events" for a number of the Bunker's contributors. The monthly posts let the Bunker maintain a weak pulse, and gave us time to consider what to do with the site going forwards. That thought process is still ongoing, but - for now at least - things have calmed down enough that weekly posting should be manageable. Won't you tell us what happened? Sadly for the curious, I shall remain nebulous the things that happened to my fellow Bunker dwellers. It's not my news to share. For my own part, in the first half of this year, my job has some dramatic developments, then my mother in law unexpectedly died, at which point my job got even more crunchy for a few months. Happily my job's now calmed down again, and we're some months on from the death. Life is sort of normal-adjacent, albeit with heightened emotions. Thoughts on the Beard Bunker's future This we...

There are many big, difficult issues in the world. War, famine, corruption, ecological collapse, the Storm Speeder's turret design. I could go on. Today's post holds an answer to one of those issues. It's a very, very simple answer, so in the interests of not burying the lead: I plopped the Impulsor turret in the relevant hole. No conversion work is needed, you just pop it in. You don't even need glue; once the surfaces are painted, it'll hold nice and firmly. The internet has joked long and hard about poor Brother Tinnitus up there in the turret. Ironically I don't think tinnitus is his biggest problem, given that soldiers generally fire shoulder-mounted missile launchers, literally rest their cheeks on their rifles while aiming, and are generally subjected to all manner of loud noises whether or not they're manning a turret. No, Brother Tinnitus' biggest problem is knees. I doubt he has any. Presumably his role requires a double amputee, and in fairnes...

This brief post is about how to get a Whirlwind that looks at home in an army of Primaris Space Marines.  I'm not the first person to do this, but I am now a person who's done it, so here you are. The Whirlwind tank has had a long career in the Space Marines range, and while its effectiveness has varied over the last 30+ years, I've always liked the idea of an elite infantry army being supported by self-propelled light artillery. It fills a niche in the roster that no other Astartes unit quite fulfills. Besides, I'm playing Space Romans. Having a space catapult is a good addition to the Bit. Hoverwind? No. Hmm. Flywind? No. Wait... Floaty McFloatface? While I love the Rhino chassis, it doesn't make much sense to use a tracked vehicle when all my other tanks are grav tanks able to handle any terrain. Enter the Gladiator chassis. With a pair of storm bolters on the sponsons, you don't even have to fudge legal weapon options. Better yet, the Primaris range's tu...

Today's post is about just straight up ignoring official rules, in the right context. In this case, the rules were ignored during a GM'd 40K campaign, so no actual players were harmed by my tinkering. More on what I changed later, first: some context as to why I so enthusiastically painted up Bulbus McThew (PhD) in time for said campaign.* Some months ago, Tom came up with the idea that noted wraith-fancier Drew and my own infrastructure fetishists the Cobalt Scions should fight a four-day war against some Tyranids. GM'd 40K is something we've done before, and is, for me, the absolute Bentley of 40K playing. Louchely flicks engine grille with the seductive power of a walrus in a party hat.  Given that I already had over 3,000 points of marines ready to go, I strongly didn't need to paint anything else for my army. But the format of these narrative campaigns - where all your units get split out into battle groups in each phase of the story - means that you are rew...

Today's post is a bit of a medley. I'm working on expanding my Cobalt Scions Space Marines for a campaign, and so for your viewing pleasure, I bring you: (1) an Aggressor/Heavy Intercessor kitbash, (2) a quick but kinda nice pale skin painting method, and (3) my joy at building and painting a stripped-down Repulsor. Kitbash: Heavy Aggresstercessors Blingwangs, paunches and cowels are among the details on Aggressors that I'm not wild about. Questions might be asked about the wisdom of attaching firearms and ammo feeds to a melee weapon , but err.... welcome to 40K. The main problem here is indisputably the chunk of metal swinging between Aggressors' legs, rather than the waterline conceptual hole of Boltstorm Gauntlets. Don't worry, I fixed it, by doing possibly the most expensive kitbash in my collection. The fruits of my highly affordable labours can be seen above. Here's a shot from behind: Note that I clip off the leg cables on Gravis armour, because that...