The Beard Bunker

In part one of this post, on the 26th of February , I wrote, "I'm going to go step-by-step through a work-in-progress, the second half of which I'll do in a fortnight's time." In my defence... um... you can’t rush... genius? Moving on... Hochlanders love the Imperial Cross, apparently, so I decided on that as the design for the flipside of the flag. Here we have the same drill as before: dots to map out the basic shape, then sketching the basic shape (using a layer paint rather than foundation paint – it’s just smoother and easier to sketch with). After that, flesh out the design and get the shape you want, like so: Once I was happy with the proportions, I then went over the design with a foundation paint, and then went over it again with a layer paint, for a stronger colour:     How did I get such a sharp shape on the ends of the cross? By using Chaos Black as an eraser. Now, at this point, it became clear that a plain ol’...

Greetings all, sorry for neglecting the blog of late but that pesky RealLife (TM) has gotten firmly in the way. I am moving to a new lair in the next two weeks so sadly a brief communications blackout is pretty much inevitable. For today though (motivated by the fact that I am leaving for an event in about nine hours) I wanted to talk about one of my other hobbies. LARPing. Now a fair few of you will be going "huh?". It's ok, I forgive you, this is a niche hobby within a niche hobby so frankly it is to be expected that precious few people have the faintest clue what it is. Hence this explanation in this den of geekery and esoteric pursuits! LARP stands for Live Action RolePlay (sometimes shortened to LRP but we like the "A" in there, who doesn't like action?) and is essentially an evolution of the tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons. Whereas tabletop games (which I love playing by the way) use dice and paper to create the game, LARP act...

It turns out that having an overly active social life can have an impact on one’s painting output. Whilst this is a good problem to have, it does mean I still haven’t finished painting the Blades of Taal, and thus I've no pretty pictures to show y’all. What I have done, however, is play a few games using the new Empire book. To that end, and because I’m an opinionated muthahubbard, I thought I’d share my thoughts on it. Doing so may or may not constitute a review. As a precursor, I must confess that I was a little sceptical when I first heard rumours of a new edition of the facial hair delivery system that is Warhammer Armies: The Empire . What was wrong with the current edition, I wondered? The maxim ‘if it ain’t broke...’ seemed to apply, and my fear was that they were going to lead my favourite army into a dark back-alley and leave bits of it bleeding into a bucket. Thus, the question on my (and, I suspect, every other Empire player’s) lips was this: is the...

First, my apologies: between going to France and Devon over the past few weeks, I’ve not found the time to do part two of the freehand tutorial. I shall be slapping it in the face (that means finishing it) this week. Now, moving on... I have something new for the Beard Bunker: a battle report. Kindof. I find myself wondering if I’m about to fall into some of the traps that sometimes befoul the White Dwarf team when they write one of these. At the least, I guess I can try to restrict my use of hyperbole. After all, dire portents are waxing nigh as the End Times descend upon the Olde Worlde, and who am I to indulge in mere rhetoric as such cataclysmic events unfold? Oops. Now, what the rest of this post may lack in hyperbole, it makes up for in length. You might want to put the kettle on before diving in...

Well, as you may have gathered from my last post, things with the Vampires were going quite well. Very well in fact. Then this happened...   How, how does this happen? For a good six months, I’ve been having this vague itch... to resurrect my bodged Dark Angels successor chapter and not make a pig’s ear of them. A couple of weeks ago, I cracked. I bought a Dark Angels veterans box, a command group box and a devastators set. Then I raided my bits box, leftovers and spares, and found I could make a company master, command group, two tactical squads and three transports. It's amazing what you can make when you dig through those bits boxes! To top off the speedy army buildy cake, I had a very lovely and generous birthday gift of the Ravenwing Battleforce box (Thanks Em!!). I'm really impressed with the sheer amount of extras included on those frames. It's allowed me to customise all my vehicles without having to purchase anything extra.  So fa...

Eyup all, realised it has been a while since anyone has seen any progress on my Nurgle army for the campaign so here it is! So far it is mostly metalwork that has been achieved. This is slow for me I know but a combination of RealLife TM and commission projects (for those that don't know that's how I try to make a living!) have gotten in the way. The metalwork is just Jeff-Rust (see here for an explanation of method) the cloth and woodwork is going to be treated the same as the sorcerer as will the bone. The rotting heads will be painted as accurately as I can (and I'm a biomedical scientist) so that is plenty of disgusting reference material in my future. Ironic yaaay! Currently debating with myself (always a curious argument) about the banner, I kinda want it to be drab and raggedey but I don't want the design to vanish into the background. Design-wise I'm thinking the traditional triple fly icon of Nurgle but colours... This could take thought.....

Inspired by Jeff’s spectacular (if somewhat dreamy) backstory for his Nurgle army , this post is going to describe two different methods for generating background for the units in your army. My suspicion (feel free to correct me by leaving a comment) is that most people just decide on an overall theme for the army, and maybe write up a little background for its commander. For me, I want more than that. If every single one of the units (sometimes even the unit champions) in an army has a little backstory (just a sentence can be enough), I get more excited about painting them. To elaborate, I’m going to use two examples: the swordsmen from my Hochlanders, and the stormboyz from my Orks. The Hochlanders are a perfect example of how digging through background material can provide inspiration, whereas the orks are a good example of how staring at the actual model and giggling can be just as effective. First, the Orks. I ended up choosing the following face for the nob: [image taken...

Hi Guys, if you'll excuse the horrible pun but I've been bitten by the Vampire Counts bug. I've been racing through the first 1000pts of the army at a pretty good speed. At the time of writing there is 900pts or so fully painted on my desk all done in just a couple of months. Not bad progress by anyone's standards, especially since I'm putting a fair bit of effort into the basic guys. However, it felt like time to paint a character. When I'm painting an army I like reward myself for finishing a unit or two with a character or a tank or some other singular model. I find it helps to break up the monotony of painting rank and file. In my first guard army I got terribly excited and started painting through all the fun stuff first, a tank, a couple sentinels, the command groups. Then I looked at the rest of the army and found myself staring at 50 basic troopers left to churn through. A daunting prospect even for the most varnish-hardened painters. Frankly, doing that...