The Beard Bunker

  One of my favourite things about the Drukhari are the various different flavours contained within. The army structure is even tailored to encourage you to take maximum advantage of the three flavours with multiple small detachments encouraged (kinda like stabby neopolitan ice cream). The flavour we are exploring today is the Wych Cults of Comorragh, part mercenary, part performance gladiator acrobat, all stab happy nutcase.  My particular sub-flavour of Wych cult is a classic, the Cult of Strife. I tend to default to the sub-faction that feels most like the quintessence of that army unless I've got a strong reason to do otherwise (like wanting All The Raiders so going with Flayed Skull for the Kabbalites is the smart move). I'd also decided that I would change the colours of the army between the three flavours (Kabal, Wych Cult, Haemonculus cult) because it'll make it real easy to remember which one uses which rules: "Oh, a red one, that's Wyches". I knew ...

 By Taal, it's like slipping on an old boot. I haven't painted an Empire mini in just over three years, and it was an absolute pleasure. I'm still painting orks for my own 40K army, of course, but I just started running a Fantasy roleplaying wargame campaign for Jon and Drew. Jon's not into painting, so he picked a mini - the old Forgeworld unit champion for the Nuln Ironsides - and I painted him, under strict instructions that said champion should be ginger AF. Where the BFG campaign I ran for him was like Hornblower in space, this is Sharpe in fantasy. Except that Sergeant Albrecht lacks Dick Sharpe's charm, and is in fact a sot. Will he clean up is act? Or drunkenly fail upward? Or die ignominiously? The future knows. Along for the ride is Drew's wizard, just two weeks past her graduation from the Bright College and full of all the optimism of youth. In their first scrape, a policing action against a gaggle of goblins, she triggered the ambush too early, and ...

Sirrus Bizniz believes rok is for everyone, even grots, particularly if they're going to spend teef on rok merch. After all, that touring fleet isn't going to build itself. 40K crusade demands that I track individual units, but honestly I just see the grots as one amorphous pool of fangrots. Mr Bizniz mostly sees it the same way, but occasionally one grot or another might catch his attention for doing something uncommonly metil. Where most runts flee at the first sign of a loud noise, grots of kultur are instead drawn by the sound of rok. They become highly animated, headbanging and scampering about underfoot, although most avoid the orks' mosh pits. Some orks make fangrots feel unwelcome, claiming rok is proper musik for proper orks, whereas others are either indifferent or oddly charmed by the wee screeching loons. Either way, one thing is certain: having a small army of fangrots scrounging teef to buy rok merch has only swelled Mr Bizniz' coffers, and provided an a...

The clanking three-piece outfit Grötley Crüe got their start in Runt Hill. It's just out past Skid Row, where the speed freaks test their dragstas. There at the periphery of Mek City, on a dusty hill too rubbish for proper orks to bother living on, the grots roam free. It's undoubtedly the least impressive neighbourhood on Boff's Rok , and yet it's the hometown of a truly unusual little grot. Nikkit Stixx was originally an oiler working for Krom Bignooz, but after one too many unfair slappings he scampered off for the hungry freedom of the outskirts. Somehow surviving the journey out of Mek Town, he took to salvaging parts from the wrecked dragstas littering Skid Row. He could never quite replicate Krom's ability to create actual working machines; nothing ever seemed to come together right. Frustrated, he took to drowning his disappointment with shroomgrog. He was soon hopelessly hooked, and didn't care. His little workshop fell into disrepair. One night, blaste...

No one, not even the boss himself, can remember what his original name was. He'd move from campfire to campfire, telling the lads to "pay attenshun" to Da Plan for the next raid. He'd tell them it was "sirrus bizniz." So after a while, that's what they called him. "Here comes Sirrus Bizniz," they'd chorus. The lads didn't know what was wrong with drinking and rokking out the night before, and then winging it on the day. Of course, they conceded, that was probably why he was the boss. But who is Mr Bizniz, and where does he come from? The artist latterly known as Sirrus Bizniz hails from  Boff's Rok . A populous and comparatively advanced ork world, all sorts of subkultures await listless yoofs. Among them: Goff rokk. As soon as young Sirrus heard the wailing of atonal guitars and the pounding of the drums he was filled with a sense of awe. He got obsessed, spending all his time in drunken mosh pits and immersing himself in the subku...

Sometimes a second album really is just refining the theme laid down by the debut effort. Similar riffs, but beefier; more assured. Such is the case with this second mob of idiots. While I'm sure there'll be further refinements, this post will outline the (generally simple) methods and colours used to paint them. This scheme takes me about 60-90 minutes per ork, depending on the ork.

 As promised in the last Admech Post I've got the last model in the initial 1000 point Crusade Roster for you today. It a big 'un. We have K-44/4, an Onager Dunecrawler. As with all GW naming I ignore about half the name and just call it the Dunecrawler, or Spidey Tank. Which whenever gets mentioned on our Discord chats is automatically followed by at least 3 different and simultaneous renditions of the old school Spiderman theme tune. This has not stopped being funny yet. Following the standard template painting pattern for Akaros units the painting called for a mostly bone/white scheme. This was best achived using subassemblies. The legs, hull, commander, and shooty bits where all kept seperate and undercoated in the most appropirate colour. The hull was basecoated black and then sprayed Wraithbone, the legs black then Leadbelcher, the rest just got black. It means the bulk of the work is already done to a standard far higher than I can manage with a brush.      T...

  In the last dying gasps of 2021 we were all virtually sitting around our discord and musing that it would be nice to do one of those "new year, new army" deals. Fresh from painting a horde of Chaos and a huge whack of Genestealer Cults you'd think I'd be in the mood for something friendlier. Something light and fluffy perhaps? Nahhhhh! I'm having way too much fun being evil at the moment to go good-guy so soon. Time to double down on the evil and go the the nastiest faction (citation needed) in the 41st millenium: The Drukhari. I'd loved the range since the moment it was released and knew that one day they would be mine. I just couldn't figure a paint scheme that I liked... Then I remembered that Charlie had speed painted a unit of Drukhari in, like, an evening . And that was Charlie managing that in an evening. Plus they looked good. After winkling out his secrets (more on that later) I now had an idea of the look. But there were still some other idea...