The Beard Bunker

Hello and welcome to my first and last commission job. Approximately ages ago, my mate Nick decided he wanted the Banebeasts "Chimaera". He really, really wanted it. And then he asked if I’d be willing to paint it. For money. Me: And you want me to paint it, like, nicely? Nick: That’s kindof the point, yes. Me: Judging by the photo on the website, it looks quite big. Nick: Yep. Me: It might take me a while. Nick: Sure. Me: A long while. Nick: OK. Me: Which means commissioning it might cost a fair bit. I quoted Nick a big number that would have me working for over 70 hours at a low wage. I figured at this point Nick would give up and let me go back to having no money ever. Nick: Can I pay in instalments? Clearly I hadn’t appreciated quite how much Nick wanted this model. Also, I suspect Nick didn’t realise quite how long it’d take me to finish. Admittedly this is more because I’m a dreadful person to hire as a painter, since my brai...

For reasons that will become readily apparent in the next campaign update, I recently found myself in need of a new general for my Hochland army. Whilst plans are still afoot for Hochland’s Elector Count on a griffon, I also wanted someone a bit less points-heavy. More specifically, I wanted a general on foot who could sit in the middle of the battle line (where his leadership bonus would be, you know, relevant). Thus, without further preamble, I give you General Rikarht von Haas: Rikarht’s been serving as the captain of the Tussenhof city watch. As much as he’s respected in the city, the most dangerous situations he’s dealt with involve gangs of hungry refugees looting the Tussenhof markets. Being an officer of noble birth, he’s well-schooled in matters of strategy, but he’s got no front line experience; he knows full well that the only reason he’s been given the job is that there’s no-one else left. The conversion work on the model was relatively limited. The origina...

This is a shameless plug post. I make no apologies for it. I recently had the pleasure of finding a new independent games shop in Middlesbrough: Asgard Wargames. I'm a big fan of businesses setting up in town/city centres – I think that towns should be places for people to go and interact and do all those human things that just don’t really, well, work in retail parks or on the internet. Anyhow, I found out about Asgard from the Faeit 212 blog. (If you’re a wargamey person and haven’t come across Faeit 212 here it is: http://natfka.blogspot.co.uk/ ) Faeit 212 runs a ‘blog exchange’ and one of their chosen blogs was about starting up a games store. Imagine my astonishment to discover that this little Indy start-up was in my very own Middlesbrough. I work nearby so the very same day, I waved goodbye to the circus and popped down town.  Gilkes Street's Premier Wargame Supplier The owner greeted me, he was a thoroughly pleasant and engaging chap,...

A rat on a steam powered death machine (Natch). A bit like this one: The Skaven Doom-flayer* (* another classic Citadel ‘lottery of grimdark’ name) Now, there’s nothing wrong with this model, apart from it looks a bit like the late and demented Dwarf Deathroller from Bloodbowl. But... I think of the Doom-flayer as something that the rat has to sit in and carefully operate, rather than stand on and ride - more like a steam train than a cross between a lawnmower and a Segway. So I had a little think, looked at the available ratty kits and decided that I could make a better (or at least, different) one from parts of the Doomwheel kit. Hopefully mine would look more suited to the battlefields of the old world than a crown green bowls field. Although this seems hopelessly extravagant; (the Doomwheel kit costs £5.00 more than the Grinder) there are a number of advantages: 1. It means I don’t have to work with Finecast 2. I get to make a thing unique to my ar...

Welcome back to the second instalment of the Blasta Bomma project log It’ll seem like I've made a lot of progress since the last post - I haven’t (sad face). These posts are retrospective and any progress is progress that has happened in the past. At some point, the progress in the past will become (in respect to this point of time) progress that happened in the future. Of course, the future progress will be past (or current) progress when I blog about it. If I report that progress that will happen in the future as if it were progress that occurred in the past; everyone will get confused. Also, I won’t be able to take photos of it unless I invent a tachyon camera. I don’t think I'm very likely to do that, because if I had done so in the future, I should already be receiving photos from it in the past, which is now; well, then.   And I'm not, so I didn't, or won’t. Well, I'm glad that’s all cleared up. In respect of taking pictures: I haven’t done ...

The lady in the image above is Elsa Gerhart, and she's the latest effort in my ongoing attempt to paint one wizard for every lore of magic. Previous entrants came with ovaries , bangles and herbs . As her semi-clandestine vibe suggests, she uses the Lore of Shadow. As such, I wanted her to be far less conspicuous than the other wizards. The Grey College is in the poor quarter in Altdorf, and it seemed appropriate to have a model that could vanish in a crowd. Other than her skin tone, everything on this model is drab, neutral, and generally hobo-tastic. Here's the above photo without all the Photoshoppery: Elsa is actually a level three wizard, and a fairly senior member of her college. Why she's come to Hochland remains unknown; indeed, most people probably don't even know she's there. The model is another Hasslefree sculpt, with one minor alteration: I sculpted a headscarf on. You can see the original sculpt here . There...

It's a Bomber! It's a Bomber! It's a Bomber! Ahem, Thanks Lemmy.  Hello all. It’s been a while since I last stuck anything up on the Bunker. I have been doing hobby stuff (I promise) but I've been very remiss about turning it into posts here. So, to prevent Charlie and others propping up the bunker on their own; I've decided to stick some of my stuff up. One of the reasons that I haven’t posted for a while is because I've spent a lot of my hobby time working on a major project that isn't yet complete. My original plan was to post once the project was complete… However, that would be a very long post and the project is still a long way from being finished. So, this is a ‘progress so far post’, done in a slightly retrospective manner. My interest in 40K has taken a pretty savage nose dive since the *arbitrary* new *moronic* 6 th edition *inconsistent* rules came in. I hate the current 40K rules and I may put up a whining post ...

If there is one thing I love most about campaign gaming, it is the daft side plots that develop. The unit champions that seem to be invulnerable. The characters that don't get on and never seem to pass leadership tests while fielded together. Sometimes it's just memes and in-jokes that take on a life of their own. The Popular Goblins' Front are one of these that has not only taken on a life of their own but are actively expanding almost beyond our control: It'll never heal if you picket... This all started during a game where Charlie and I combined our respective goblin hordes: my (mostly) competent Bitter Moons and the collection of incompetence and infighting called the Bloo Moons. During deployment I assigned Joodee the Shaman to a regiment of Bloo Moons with a certain degree of trepidation. I was right to be worried. After taking the bare minimum of casualties to justify their fleeing (25% break test from shooting) they turned tail and fled. Taking my shaman...