The Beard Bunker

The boys in blue and heretics in red have been doing far too much of the heavy lifting here of late.  It seemed time for some Necrons to show their faces. There won't be the tips or guidance that Jeff or Charlie can offer, merely a showcase of (almost) all of my shiny metal boyz. Leading my force are a bevvy of various nobles, front-right is my Overlord, centre his Warden, and front-left a supporting Lord.  There's also another Lord hiding on the right.  Behind them are the two shards of the C'Tan the Ikarrans once controlled and aim to recover (I've rebased them to match the Void Dragon I hope to get in the future, and had some fun trying to make the Nightbringer look like the very ground is recoiling from him as he passes). The final Lord in the army is the Skorpekh Lord and his destroyer minions.  New Indomitus additions, these have changed the way the Necrons play quite considerably, giving them far more punch in combat.  You can also see the Canoptek Spyder...

In over 20 years of painting miniatures, I've only just realised this Cobalt Scions army is the first time I've ever painted an army in which every model is fully edge highlighted. Plenty of characters and warbands got highlights over the years, but mostly I've used faster methods for the bulk of an army. Drybrushing, dirt washes, that sort of thing. Doing highlights across the whole army has revealed that I'd never really refined my highlighting method. I hadn't needed to, just doing one character here and there. Two and a half thousand points into the project, I've unsurprisingly learned quite a bit, and over the course of the project I've more or less halved the time it takes me to paint these guys. Today then I'm going to provide some updates to the (still mostly true) guide to highlighting blue power armour I wrote in June 2020 . I figured this stuff out while preparing for a game against Tom and Andy's combined Necrons (an educational thrashing...

When I painted an Impulsor back in March , I mentioned that I'd built it from the Gladiator kit (that's the full Impulsor kit plus the extra gubbins for a turret). In preparation for a recent game against Andy and Tom's extremely aggressive Necrons, I decided guns were more important than speed, and took the chance to paint up the turret. In doing so I learned a thing or two about making vehicle painting more efficient, so I'm sharing those things today. Does this require magnetising? The actual turret mount doesn't need any magnetising - it just sits on the Impulsor's hull and doesn't move around at all. Here's how it goes together: I suspect this may have been a deliberate move by a forward-thinking sculptor. With the additional layers of paint it doesn't sit perfectly flush, but if that bothers you then it's easily scraped back on the underside of the turret mount. If you wanted to be able to field all three Gladiator variants you'd want...

Bladeguard Veterans have a very particular aesthetic, and that aesthetic looks a whole lot more medieval than the rest of my Cobalt Scions force. This led me to have a bit of a think about how they fit in. Regular readers will already have learned that when I say "a bit of a think" this generally means "Charlie's written a load of new lore." Today, then, I offer you three things: Pictures. The death of an Astartes Chapter. Notes on the Heraldry I've chosen. The Nova Tarentis Massacre A prosperous world of significant agricultural and mineral output, Nova Tarentis was crucial to trade within its area of the Segmentum Pacificus, and an obvious target for the archenemy. Traitor Guard and Dark Mechanicum forces attacked in strength, and pleas for aid were made. Keen to end the invasion quickly, the full Azure Drakes chapter responded, along with four companies of Cobalt Scions in support. The Drakes' Chapter Master Sorkhos Danithor committed to a full orbita...

In recent times two things have happened. Firstly, but chronologically second, we have gained a new codex for the Thousand Sons. The codex is actually quite good. Positives include more wounds for your Arcana Astartes and the daemon engines gaining some extra shooty points. Negatives include no actual daemons in the book and you can no longer take hordes of minions. Which to me is a downside as I liked the image of a powerful sorcerer kicking about a mass of expendable underlings towards the enemy. Also gone are the stratagems that allow you to mutate models into daemons or spawn. Do not despair, this is now part of the crusade rules. In fairness I think this is probably a good thing, partly because it probably takes longer than a single game turn to mutate, partly it is also fairer for those of us who don't have the spare models kicking about to spontaneously drop in a Daemon Prince because of a lucky roll. Other things include a whole load of new rules for Cabbalistic Rituals, In...

Back in November I made a Firestrike Servo-turret. So far it has mostly been nuked off the table by opponents realising it has a lot of firepower and not a lot of wounds. Naturally my response to this ineffectiveness is to double down on the stupid and add another. Since this is part of the same unit as the first turret, I wanted it to be automated, imagining it would be slaved to the techmarine running the battery. This required a little conversion work: slicing off the seat, various cables, and handles. There was only a little green stuff needed to fill a hole where the seat protruded from the main chassis. I tried to convey a few things in the painting. Where the manned turret has a decorative silver skull, the one on this turret is an actual servo-skull. Possibly the most heavily armed and armoured servo skull in the Imperial arsenal? At any rate, another fine entry in the long list of "heavily armoured Imperial things extremely vulnerable to headshots." I also changed ...

Since UK restrictions eased I've been playing a lot of 40K, and this has had the UNSURPRISING YET DELICIOUS effect of making me want to paint more Space Marines, despite earlier declaring I was done with them. The army's core of 3x5 Intercessors always felt a bit thin, so my first port of call was to bulk out Squad Tyvus with another five dudes. The thing about Intercessors, though, is that beyond the sergeant and the giddy excitement of a few auxiliary grenade launchers, there's no variety in these modern squads. At least, not in the rules. I've always maintained you don't need rules to add flavour, so I'm practicing what I preach and have added a couple of specialists to the unit. They might not have any in-game effects, but I always thought the Helix Adept in the infiltrator units was a very cool idea, and this is just an iteration on that, with both Helix and Tech adepts present in Sergeant Tyvus' squad. To mark them out, I gave them a special pauldron a...

  Welcome, today we are going to be rebasing my entire Ogre army. The current basing is inconsistent across units. This is completely my own fault. The original basing I did in the dark days before I put any effort into basing whatsoever. Some of the units still had this original scheme, others had various different schemes but I couldn't settle on a single one. I settled in and did some research into an effective but low effort basing for them. Before I could get into the new scheme I had to remove the previous basing. Fortunately PVA can be reactivated by soaking it in water. Acrylic paints are unaffected by water which is great as I marinated my Ogres in a baking tray for roughly 60 minutes.   Once properly soaked you can see the PVA turn white again. This means it is ready to be removed.   Removal was nice and easy. First step is to simply scrape away the old static grass and tufts and what-have-yous. I used an old, blunt hobby blade and carefully just scraped it a...