The Beard Bunker

Last Christmas (I think) Jen enhanced my festiveness by buying me this dude: So dashing. Ohmygod, pretty. He’s one of the Empire duellists . It’s an absolutely beautiful sculpt. I mean seriously . Now technically , you can’t use this guy as an Empire captain, because captains can’t take a brace of pistols, but I loved the idea of a young, smug prettyboy as the obvious counterfoil to my general, Erhard von Rüdiger – a grizzled Templar Grand Master. Moreover, most Empire captains, like Captain Stefan Rainer , who I painted for my Nordlanders, are big, barrel-chested bastards. This guy would be a refreshing change. So, what to do with the rules? Other members of the Beard Bunker probably would’ve been cool with me just paying more points for the extra pistol, but I thought, screw it, why not go one step further? There was just one fly in the ointment. Apparently, Oskar wears tights: So pert. Ok, it’s not that I’d feel self-conscious spending...

Mark, Maisey and I have been getting to grips with the 6 th edition of Warhammer 40,000 lately by playing small games of 750-1000 points. I feel like I’ve still got a lot to learn. Generally speaking, though, I’m really enjoying the new rules (which I started to read after I stopped dribbling all over the paintings of Holy Terra and the Space Marine Monastery, which NEED to be released as posters). The last such game was between Mark’s Deathskulls and my Evil Sunz , and was a variation on The Relic (Mission 6, p.131). Rather than having a small relic that could be picked up, we took the mission as inspiration for a scenario in which my warboss (Grimtoof Boomshanka) had left his beloved Boss Bus in the mek’s garage so it could be, er, rebuilt after that git Tycho punched the snot out of it (thanks for that post- Nerd Thunder 3 revenge pasting, Jeff). What with Mark’s mek Tekkwotts being a filthy, swindling Deathskull, he turned up with a bunch of his mates to nick it whils...

All due credit and respect for the background stock goes to Humblebeez . Many years ago, as a spotty teenage gamer, I felt blessed to be able to play games on my parents’ ping pong table in the garage. Ping pong was fun, but what was even more fun was fighting my friend Ali’s Orks for dominance over a battlefield of empty food tins, stacks of CDs, and rubbish bunkers made out of the polystyrene packing in which Citadel Miniatures used to come. I didn’t even paint the polystyrene; I just stuck cocktail sticks into it because I thought that sharp wooden sticks would look EXACTLY like the exposed bars in broken reinforced concrete. Particularly when they weren’t painted. Man, I could’ve entered that bunker into Golden Damon, which is like Golden Daemon, but for people who can’t be bothered to paint . * I used to look in the pages of White Dwarf and practically dribble over the GW studio's scenery. The very concept of having a decent board, never mind stuff to go on it, ...

In the wake of the positive reactions to  my first battle report , and as promised  in my last post , I have here the tale of Nerd Thunder III. To the wild and reckless joy of my inner nerd,* photos of this game have already been featured on  Games Workshop’s official blog , for which I must thank Mr Dan Harden, who dropped by our table armed only with a camera and an excellent sense of humour.  [All due credit and respect for the original background stock in this image goes to Humblebeez . Many thanks!] A quick recap: our 8.5k-a-side game was set in the opening weeks of the Third War for Armageddon, on the outskirts of Helsreach Hive. The pugilists? Maisey and Jeff as the Imperial forces, with Mark and myself as little green space fungi. To find out just how messy it got, hit the jump.

Greetings fellow bunker dwellers. I thought I would share with you one of the first fruits of my work with my Dwarf army. Eagle-eyed readers from my previous post will have noticed that the thunderer unit are equipped with shields. Trouble is that the models I am using do not support shields and they always look stupid glued to their backs without the proper strapping. I needed a solution, read on and see if you can guess what I'm up to before I get there! Step one was breaking out my trusty Chopper II and cutting nine lengths of plastic rod at a cm long. The chopper helps here because the cuts are at precisely the same length and perfectly perpendicular. I glued the rods to the rim of the movement tray (I texture all of my movement trays to help them blend with a table). I used the gaps between bases to give a guide as to regular placement. Once all the vertical rods were in place I used the 60° mitre on the Chopper to create angled braces for the end uprights. A st...

There’s a bunch of stuff that has to be sorted out whenever you want to play a game of Warhammer 40K Apocalypse : your friends all getting the same day off work, transport, a venue, and Ork-glyph-themed cupcakes (you’re the best, Mark). The thing is, the wargaming demographic crosses over quite extensively with the I couldn’t organise my way out of a wet paper bag even if you gave me the Jaws of Life demographic. Concordantly, amongst all that last-minute faffing, there’s one thing which is often left behind. That thing is a narrative. So, when myself and three of my fellow Beard Bunkerettes* decided to head up to Warhammer World for Nerd Thunder III (our third annual game of Apocalypse ) we needed a narrative. To my mind, the constituent components of a game’s narrative are as follows: The armies being used The battlefield being used The overall narrative concept (Last stand? Planetary assault? Hold the line?) The armies were Blood Angels and White Hands ...

 We all sit in a circle, dodgey coffee in plastic cups. I stand: "Hi, I'm Jeff and I've got a Butterfly Brain." We all chorus "Hi Jeff" and I get to the confessionals part: Yeah, as you might have guessed there's trouble in them thar hills. Sadly I have made no progress whatsoever on my Nurgle Chaos at all. Not a sausage, nada. This got me to thinking why recently, as diagnosing the underlying causes of "project flitting syndrome" can help you avoid it in the future. Here's what I think are the problems with my Chaos army at present: They take forever to assemble. Oh dear god do they take forever. The corroded armour is lovely and I adore the effect but it needs a huge amount of work to achieve before paint is even applied. While the army is small in number the slow progress is incredibly frustrating. As a coda to part 1, I like the army concept too much to cut corners and rush it but I want to make progress, it's satisfyi...

  Oi, is that action compliant with EC framework directive 2008/98/EC? So, Hi. Yeah it has been a while… (awkward silence)   I bet you’re all wondering how my Skaven are getting on then? What magical ratty delights are on offer? Ready? A ferocious horde of er, Skaven? Now… The observant amongst you may have noticed that those weren’t *exactly* Warhammer Skaven; and were in fact a huge bunch of 40K Orks and some vehicles. This pretty much directly contradicts what I said in my previous post – about how I was going to do less Orky stuff and more ratty stuff. If I have an excuse (and I really don’t have a good one) it’s that the sort-of-annual ish Nerd Thunder has come round again, and it is very nearly time for the denizens of the Beard Bunker to head up to Warhammer World and play with lots of our toys all at once. It’ll be a bit like the Famous Five, but with more shouting; more dice; more beards; there won’t ...