The Beard Bunker

For the most part, the Genestealer Cult is existentially horrifying. The loss of identity, the glad subordination of free will. But lurking at its heart is something much, much more straightforwardly horrific. Entities that are utterly, inimically alien, yet nonetheless born to human mothers. Yes folks, we've proceeded through the generations and have finally emerged, hissing and coiled, at the Purestrain Genestealers. I really wanted my Purestrains to have a good sense of motion and energy. The kit on it's own in quantity can be a little bit samey. Thankfully there exist some other sculpts of Genestealers out there, the Space Hulk set. Even more thankfully Maisey was looking to divest himself of his copy so I didn't have make the agonising choice of modelling my own Space Hulk set for the battlefield. Thanks Maisey! Mixing in the Space Hulk set and the slightly different two from the Deathwatch Overkill box gave me both 30 Purestrains (second half coming soon) but m...

... you're in for a big surprise. Maisey has actually painted something gaming related. I'm not sure if that's how the song goes, but that's the relevant version. I have been off the radar a bit lately. Partly I've been distracted by the scale modelling thing, which I've mostly kept it off the blog unless it's something special or relevant. I've also been distracted by Life (TM), turns out buying a house is not conducive to a steady hobby output. Anyway, Em and I are safely in to our new home and I've finally unpacked enough of the hobby stuff to be able to sit down and paint something. Back in December I painted a Blood Ravens kill team. I've now finished painting the rest of the box of Intercessor Marines, as well as a slightly converted Lieutenant model. I've not sat down and thought about naming these guys yet, although I've been referring to the LT as Lieutenant Dan during the painting process. Not very grimdark that name. I...

With the core of the cult now laid down we can start to work on the weirder elements of the cult. There's purestrains on my workbench at the moment but first we have what happens when that pure strain goes very right and very wrong... Here we're starting to see where the colour scheme starts to fragment. The abominations are clearly of the Ortag facility, as is the Primus although he has some flourishes that mark him out. But it is the Magus that deviates the most so we'll start with him. This is the first of a pair of Magi? Maguses? Maguseees? Meh, this is the first of two that I'm going to have in the army. His sister will be along shortly. I wanted the nice purple robes, first for tradition's sake, and second for emulating the skin tone of the Broodlord. It is his ritual connection to the father of the cult. In order to tie him to the rest of the Starborn Souls, I used the same neutral grey for the adapted pressure suit and there's a little orange pee...

I’m about to embark upon a detachment of Ultrasmurfs, or at least Ultrasmurf successors, and the first logistical question was this: should I do the Macragge Blue basecoat with a brush, an airbrush, or a spray can? There are arguments for all three options, and as with all hobby quandaries, everyone must answer the question for themselves. Here’s my breakdown of the options, but let me know in the comments if you think I’m talking right out of my proverbial: With a brush A very large brush loaded with watered down paint will cover a model inside of about 30 seconds, but will need three or more coats for an even finish, depending on the colour. Your palette technique and brush loading also has to be on point (since it would be easy to overload the mini with paint) so this technique isn’t great for beginners. Faffyness: 4/5 Quality: 4/5 With an airbrush In my ignorance I thought this might save me time over a brush, but after talking to several airbrushing friends and after ...

I talked in the first episode of this series about the existential horror of the Genestealer Cult. The loss of free will and the corruption of the love for one's children. Well, I think there should be another layer of horror added in. The fact that humans make stupid, stupid choices and there will always be some who will willingly drink the Kool-Aid so to speak. When I was first thinking about GSC models, it was mostly for roleplay purposes. So I'd decided to have some brood brother type human allies along for the ride so as to increase the amount of genestealer in the cult gradually. The more I thought about it though, the stronger the desire to have some actual willing humans among the cult. They might be there because they are anti-imperial and the stealer cult gives them the best chance of sticking it to the man; or because they have convinced themselves that the stealers are some next step in mankind's evolution; or just because they're suicidal and want to g...

Thanks to the inestimable Gideon of  dicebard.com , we're going to MCM ComicCon in London this weekend to help him sell pretty polyhedral dice, and spread the word about our roleplaying game whilst we're at it. To paraphrase renowned bad boy Martin Lawrence, poop just got actual . Jeff revealed that we'd developed a Weird War II RPG back in October . The TLDR is this: it's 1941, and you play a government agent with strange abilities tasked with policing Britain's shadow society of supernatural people and creatures. Occupational hazards include sporadic fisticuffs with Himmler's Thule Society. Both Jeff and myself will be manning the Dicebard booth from Friday through to Sunday, so if you're going, you're very welcome to drop by and say hi! As per Dicebard's usual dapper vibe, Jeff and I will be shedding our usual stoner-hobo derelicte threads for waistcoats and other toffery, so that in itself is bloody weird. The current state of the game i...

So, it was my turn to do a post, which is why it's late. In fairness, it wasn’t my fault: Malal made me put it off. In short, this is my gang for the upcoming Necromunda campaign that we will run as soon as everyone finishes their gang. A quick note about the models: I used the cultist models that were originally released in the Dork Vengeance box set back in 2012.   (Yeah, I’m only just painting models I bought seven years ago. My pile of shame is a terrible thing to behold.) Anyway, the truly great thing about the models is that due to their excellent sculpts, they kind of write their own backstory for you, which is handy when you’re dealing with a small unit game like Necromunda as back story for these characters helps bring them to life.  Most of the models are stock, with a couple of head swaps from the Empire flagellants kit. The Psyker is from the Blackstone Fortress game. In general, I really like these models. The sculpts and the poses are ...

Last time we prowled around the surface levels of the House Ortag Refinery and Mineral Exploitation Plant. There we met some people with funny looking heads but nothing too weird... but now we're in the sub levels and things are getting... claw-ey... Yup, they're back and this time they brought grandpa... the Acolytes are the earlier generations of the cult, still more genestealer than person and more bestial in mind. They thus favour the close up rough and tumble over more considered shooting. Like all the rest of the Star-born Souls (hey, check it out! I named them!) these acolytes are dressed in the jury-rigged remains of the pressure suits and coveralls that the neophytes wear. So other than the skin colour, all other painting details remain the same... in which case, let's talk skin! This is another step down on the purple train towards genestealer. They start from pure genestealer purple and are highlighted up with Cadian Fleshtone. All the chitinous bits ar...