The Beard Bunker

Hi everybody! (Hi Doctor Jeff...) I have been remiss lately, it's true. My posts here have been few and far between. Truth be told, so was my personal hobby over the Christmas period. But not any more baby! I recently managed to fridge* out the last 70 goblins that were standing in the way of my original 3000 point list. Glory be, the basics are done. To celebrate this, I thought I'd have a bit of a photoshoot: *fridge(n): a beard bunker idiom for anything difficult done with great mindlessness and purpose. Just to get. It. Done. Like carrying a fridge up stairs. No I don't remember why... Now that is a heck of a lot of goblin. 220 of them to be precise and a bunch of spiders and monsters along for the ride. Now photographing this many gobbos is a real pain in the bum (more on that later) so I thought after the initial "impact" shot I'd break down the tribes. The Bitter Moons first: The Bitter Moons (named for an oriental LARP teahouse belonging ...

Ways to maintain a high output of painted models no. 314: don’t buy a pimp-ass PC. Now, as you might be able to tell by the way the Beard Bunker produced half as many posts in 2014 as it did in 2012, I bought a pimp-ass PC. Woo spaceships woo. Now I’ve done very, very well at STARTING projects... just not so well with the finishing part. A few spearmen here, a few greatswords there. One thing that I have done, though, is to paint a new member of the Silver Drakes. Why have I done so? Because Erhard von Rüdiger is dead. If anyone who’s been following our campaign is remotely interested in the how and the why, leave a message in the comments section and I’ll go into it. Mostly, though, I figure the campaign story is only interesting to the people who are playing it. Now Mr von Rüdiger used to ride with the Inner Circle of the Silver Drakes, so his departure left a hole in the unit that needed filling. I’ve since filled it with a character who might one day become a hero but ...

It’s both interesting and exciting to see Games Workshop (or G-Dubz, if you’re keeping it real) venturing into new territory with their series Warhammer: The End Times , but this leaves the Beard Bunker’s Hochland campaign setting in a weird place. For anyone unfamiliar with the Warhammer setting, the last big event in its chronology was the Storm of Chaos, and we decided to set our own story immediately after it. The most recent edition of Warhammer dialled the clocks back to the years just before this event, but they never officially retconned it. That changed with the release of Warhammer: the End Times. Nagash and his top had get right up in someone's shi. Our little cul-de-sac of the Old World is now not only beyond Warhammer’s timeline, but mutually exclusive with it. For some reason, this made me feel weird. Apparently I have some deep-seated nerd phobia of doing anything that contradicts the official canon. This is pretty dumb, since said canon has been ...

Almost a year ago, I wrote issue 1 of the Hochland Gazette. Mainly because I fancied a bit of a giggle. I've now written issue 2 in the wake of a particularly stupid battle between Maisey and I. You see, I accidentally won a 3,500-point game after a regiment of flagellants failed their frenzy check. Yes, really. If you want the 'authentic' medieval paper-reading experience, feel free to do so by clicking on the image above. If you're less of a masochist and/or gothic font fetishist, here is the legible version: THE HOCHLAND GAZETTE Published by Ernst Drucker & Sons of Tussenhof on 20 th Vorhexen 2255 I.C. Containing the surest news and firmest advice every Angestag & Aubentag [ Price: 4 shillings ] Fanatical cult slay zombie dragon! Gruyden village safe; Hochland’s army “on top form,” says Ludenhof.  The village of Gruyden, famed for having shrine to all the gods (old and new), has once again come under attack by the restless dead...

As much as I’m not that keen on the current edition of 40K, our recent foray into Inquisitor means that my enthusiasm for the 40K mythos has crept back in, like a nervous and recently-evicted lover, scared that they’re only going to be inside the nice warm house for minutes rather than years. Part of this enthusiasm is contingent upon not being subjected to endless numbers of Spehs Mahreens. As such, I found myself contemplating the Imperial Guard (or Astra Vauxhaulius, depending on which bit of the Imperium you're from). Those of you with an elephant's memory may remember the test model . Finally, I’ve had a go at some more. Now, everyone who’s ever tried to make a Guard army will remember the slog. You need a lot of little plastic dudes. As usual, one must strike a balance between speed and quality... the speed in this case being less than two hours to paint a tank. The tracks were weathered with a light brown drybrush followed by Typhus Corrosion, because...

Dark Eldar are famous for many things: spikes, pain, spikes, topknots, spikes... the list goes on. What they are not famous for is being conducive to last-minute paint jobs. It’s all those smooth, crisp lines. Most experienced hobbyists would not, therefore, try to paint a squad of five of them and a six-man hive gang and a character model the night before they’re due to be used. To do something like that, you’d have to resemble the end of a bell. Konk, konk. I spent hours and hours on that bloody character development pack , and hours more on painting one of the agents participating in the Inq28 scenario. The other twelve models got an evening (and a good chunk of the next morning whilst waiting for everyone to arrive). The added challenge? The Dark Eldar were a secret. It’s not easy to keep a secret when you’re painting at the dining table and live with two of the people playing in the fudging scenario. Bless ’em, they did a fine job of looking the other way wh...

Aside from shooting stuff in the face with my shiny rusty new second hand ork fleet, I've primarily been preparing for a few role playing games. Specifically, I'm running a one-day Inquisitor scenario in the next few weeks. I say 'Inquisitor'... that's not technically true, in that we're not playing a narrative skirmish wargame. It's more like the 40K roleplaying game  Dark Heresy , in that the gamers are each playing an agent in the employ of an Imperial Inquisitor , but then... it's not Dark Heresy because whilst its production values and content are excellent, I find the game mechanics long-winded. Instead, we're using 20Eight (i.e. the barebones game engine I've been working on for the last year or so). I'm excited to use it in a futuristic context to see how well it holds up. We've hitherto played plenty of fantasy, and that's been great, but fantasy doesn't have guns, spaceships, and them funny-looking spehs ayliurr...

We’re not dead! Two and a half years of weekly posting followed by almost two months of total silence... it probably seemed a bit out of sorts. And, perhaps, that’s because things were out of sorts (we all have our moments). But don't worry, this post isn’t about deep emotional stuff, it’s about orcs, and paint, and, and... spaceships. Yeah that’s right. Spaceships. Some of you will never have heard of Battlefleet Gothic , whereas some of you will, quite rightly, know it as Games Workshop’s Most Awesome Game . There may be people with other opinions, but they’re wrong. It’s been years since I played BFG properly, mainly because there ain’t that many folks who realise that it’s the best game ever, and moreover it’s bloody hard to buy something that’s been out of print for ten years. That eBay still features over 160 listings for the game in the UK, though, speaks to its longevity. Anyway my housemate Jon and I have been checking it out. Overcome with enthusiasm,...