The Beard Bunker

'Allo again Bunker dwellers! 'Tis I with more tales of Dwarfy derring-do and covert sneakiness. In part one we met the first, and most normal, half of Dwalin's Dirty Dozen. In part two we'll meet the slightly madder half in the form of the Odd Squad: Something of a theme running through the Odd Squad is that a lot of them are criminals. Now some of you will be saying "but Jeff, when a Dwarf disgraces themselves they can't stand it and become a trollslayer". To which I reply, ah-hah! But those are the good Dwarfs, the proper Dwarfs who follow societies laws. The Dwarfs of the army book backstory are the ideal of Dwarfkind. There will always be wonky people. Monocultures are boring, if ever single Dwarf behaves in the way described in the book then they would be awfully bland. Instead I grant license for Dwarfs to be as nasty, backstabbing, thieving and generally naer-do-welling as any other race. They're just rarer. I went through the backstory ...

Greetings bunker dwellers! Lordy, three months have passed since I last posted here. I’ve been focusing rather on the last bits of commission stuff I was working on (before wrapping up that whole thing) rather than my own hobby. Fortunately, even in the busiest times I can find space for a dwarf, or twelve…   This motley crew are an upgrade to my Dwarf Rangers, a sort of Impossible Mission Force. Remember last time when I was talking about fun things that develop during narrative campaigns? Well Stromni’s Wanderers – the name for the Rangers in my army – have grown far beyond their battlefield role. We’ve mentioned before how we’re mostly all roleplayers as well as wargamers and thus have fun doing small, story-driven missions where we can achieve goals that don’t belong on the field of battle. When I was trying to figure out which unit would be best for covert and highly secret intelligence gathering and concealed naughtiness against my allies (ahem) enemies, one gr...

Things I have done with Devlan Mud Sitting there, looking at a pile of 56 unpainted Skaven slaves; I'm thinking “I'm going to cherish and value each and every one of you and give you a paintjob fit for a prince of Slaneesh”. 2 rats in, the base coats are going on with a drybrush and I'm thinking “I want to get shot of you as quickly as possible and you’re going to get a paintjob fit for the dirty, useless, and expendable, 2 point shod that you are.” The redemption for these very poorly painted models was that they’d get a lovely coating of Citadel Devlan mud wash once the base colours were on and dry. Devlan Mud was splendid! It hid where I’d gone over the lines, did some shading, added definition to the model and even filled in the crevices - a la the old technique of black lining. It made everything look dirty and shonky and gave the illusion that I was a competent painter. It was my staple diet for rat painting and I thrived upon it. ...

Good day fellow hobbyists. Many moons ago during one of Charlie's scenery parties. Yes, that a party where we all get stuck into building and painting scenery, it's a really great way of getting a lot done in a short time and takes a lot of the tedium out of the process. Anyway, I had the honour(?) of painting a Skyshield landing pad. Whilst its a really good bit of kit, it's rather huge and I decided in my foolish youthfulness to paint the whole thing in the patented Jeff-Rust method ( PVP Workbench tutorial: rusting ). Well, doing that over the 500 square inches (I counted them!) of the surface it was definitely a labour of love. Now, Em and I are building our very own urban board and I really wanted to have a Skyshield of my own. They make great objectives and general scenery piece. Since times and paints have changed, here is an updated step by step of getting the same/similar effects in new money. Mobile users, this is going to be picture heavy. First thing, R...

It’s been a long, long time since the last update on our Hochland campaign. One of the reasons it’s been so long is that so much stuff has happened that it was hard to think of a format in which to deliver said events. Or at least, a format that wasn’t just a series of bullet points slightly drier than an octogenarian’s happy parts. Finally it came to me: what better way than to write a letter from the perspective of the Empire’s new commander writing his first report back to Tussenhof? Rikarht von Hess But first, here’s an update of the campaign map: I’ll sprinkle a few portraits of the characters mentioned in the letter as a reminder of who’s who. For the attention of Aldebrand Ludenhof, Elector of Hochland My lord, Now I see why you delegated so much responsibility to Von Rüdiger. Our armies are engaged on so many fronts that it would be impossible to conduct the business of ruling the province at the same time. Admittedly, Von Rüdiger had ...