The Beard Bunker

One of the most enduring and interesting things about the Blood Angels is their flaw, the terrible Black Rage that dwells within them. As a result of their having to use the preserved blood of their dead Primarch and the Primarch's ability to store their memories genetically, the Blood Angels that succumb to the Rage find themselves reliving Sanguinius' terrible last hours.

Rather than let them slide into degredation, the Blood Angels mark those taken by the Black Rage out with black armour and the red saltires of Sanguinius' wounding and let them throw themselves into battle. Within my army there are already 5 jump pack Death Company marines and these 10 bring it up to quite a lot of them for a single company. I'm justifying this lore-wise by the fact that my Captain is apparently the Master of Sacrifice, a nebulously defined role that I've chosen to mean: Finds opportunities to spend the lives of the afflicted. The 3rd Company are on a constant war footing to have these opportunities.

The painting for these is quite straightforward, my standard scheme for black armour is to drybrush grey - very dry brush - until it looks like a concrete statue. Then a couple of thin washes of black wash over the armour to shade and darken it to black. The red elements are painted same way as the normal blood angel armour I do.

Some might be wondering: why a bolter-armed Death Company? Well, given that they replace their bolt pistols but not their chainswords with bolters they stay just as combat effective. But I always saw Death Company less as berserkers and more as deranged. They don't know where they are and see all enemy forces as Horus' marines. There's no reason that they can't be fighting as normal tactical marines. So what I have is a unit of bolter firing, objective holding, difficult to winkle out of cover chaps. Who ignore a sixth of all damage coming in and if you get close they turn into minimum 3 attack psychopaths rising to 4 attacks if you are unlucky enough to be charged. I can see value in that!

I'm liking how these came out, the nice rich gold (I'm using purple shading these days) and the deep red gemstones are pleasing. Top tip: use water effects rather than varnish to gloss gems. It self-levels out brushstrokes and seemingly has a higher refractive index than gloss varnish so creates a deeper effect on the gem. All in all, a pleasing bunch of nutters and another step along the road to having all my Bangles painted. Huzzah! Till next time...

TTFN

When Gee-Dubz brought out their Munitorum Armoured Containers, I was (I thought justifiably) scornful. If your shipping containers have been fitted with a gun, you have strayed from the path of the sane. When that gun is a storm bolter, generally reserved for veteran astartes and the like, you are a swivel-eyed nut enthusiast. When there are two such guns attached to each container, I lose the capacity for words and can only laugh. Uncontrollably.

As with so many GW kits, though, once you dial the thing back down to 10, it becomes great. The preposterous storm bolters are an optional extra, not mandatory, so when the Killzone: Sector Munitorum box came out the sheer discounty goodness made me look again. I then realised I could double down on the deal by picking up the Tempestus Scions kill team - five dudes and another two Munitorum sprues at a discount? I'll take two, thanks.

So now I have a squad of ten ~~Tempestus Scions~~ storm troopers for my Inquisition warband AND a sexy new heap of terrain. Win.

One thing I didn't build from the kit was the crane - it's not quite big enough to move the shipping containers around, so I've saved it for future projects. Since the carriage has been designed to fit shipping containers as well as the crane, I use it to create moving terrain in games of Kill Team.

The only adjustments I made to the servo-haulers was their enormous antennae; those got replaced with hazard lights from the Sector Imperialis bases sprue. I love the comedy detail on the tractor unit of the totally excessive controls. It radiates the redundant, byzantine nature of the Imperium wonderfully. I've been imagining a hapless trainee in a Departmento Munitorum stockyard being asked to program a simple task into the servo-hauler only to be suffering a total psychological meltdown three hours later as the 59-step ritual of activation leaves him baffled.

The Painting

The crates, barrels and containers were painted and weathered in a bunch of different ways so that they all look like they have different points of origin. Generally speaking, all these methods are extremely quick, since... well... that there's a lot of boxes. Here are some of the salient points in case they're useful to anyone else:

For the basic bare metal containers, just drybrush a mid brown (e.g. Mournfang or similar) over a black primer, then drybrush with a dark metal (e.g. boltgun or similar). Follow up with painting some watered down orange (e.g. Ryza Rust or Mig rust effects) into the recesses where water would gather, and you're done. Very basic, but very quick.

For the coloured boxes/barrels/containers, basecoat the thing with the colour you want, then if desired, drybrush a slightly lighter shade. For example, the fieldgrey containers were basecoated in Vallejo WW2 German Fieldgrey then drybrushed with Vallejo Green Grey. Next, on the edges and places that would see more wear and tear, sponge on some dark brown (e.g. Vallejo charred brown) followed by some dark metal (boltgun or similar). I used spare foam from a GW carry case. This basic method is described in slightly more detail here, albeit with different colours. Finally, I sloshed some watered down Army Painter Dirt Splatter over the whole thing, then wiped off the excess with a kitchen towel.

For the containers with stencilled company names, I started them off as per the bare metal containers. They were then handed over to Mark, who gave them a layer of hairspray, then airbrushed on a layer of colour, then airbrushed through some custom stencils. We then used stippling brushes and busted up drybrushes to chip away at the paint sitting atop the hairspray (best exemplified by the green container). Mark then sealed everything to prevent further chipping. The names Mark used in his stencils are of companies that have appeared in our games; BXK is the corporate acronym of Betancourt-Xing-Kerensky, a Rogue Trader house, whilst 4Sight is the company owned by the family of Siveter Lund, Mark's Inquisition Agent. The green A is for Ardex, another sector-spanning conglomerate that first appeared in an Inquisitor story Mark ran. I particularly love the logo he designed for Ardex, and the stencils as a whole really bring the containers to life I think. Well played, Assistant Kogz.

The Storm Troopers

The Tempestus Scions kit left me cold for a long time. The bling trim forces you down certain routes when painting them; since it only makes visual sense if painted in a metal colour, any camo or military-type scheme just looks silly, so I was never going to use them in my Guard army. But then, it occurred to me that all that bling works brilliantly for the Inquisition when they're looking to intimidate people with more overt operations. As such, I gave them a paint scheme similar to my Inquisitor. Mmmm, elite minions.

Since the introduction of the Primaris Marines with the new edition I've been itching to get my hands on some. I know some people do not like them, I do however. I feel that they are better proportioned than the old marines. I much prefer how they do tower over many other models. I'm not bothered by the scale creep so much as it's all made up anyway. I've also been wanting to try and up my painting game and because of such I decided to start a new project rather than add them to my Dark Angels and have the different levels of painting stand out.

Kill Team Cozen

So why the Blood Ravens? It's a fairly even split between the visual and the fluff (as always). The think that the red/bone colour scheme is rather handsome and somewhat striking. I also like their background, not knowing who their parent legion was. Although I choose to believe one of the theories that they are in fact The Corvidae, a fellowship of the Thousand Sons that was sent into hiding shortly before the Space Wolves' assault on Prospero during the Horus Heresy. Which ties them in nicely with my Thousand Sons. They are notorious for 'aquiring' relics which often puts them in conflict with other chapters. I also enjoy their somewhat fracture relationship with the ordos hereticus. All of which makes interacting with other Imperial forces interesting.

Brother Sergeant Ikaros

Comms Specialist Bother Anderz

As I said above I wanted to try and up my level of painting and I feel that I might have actually done that. If it shows through my bad photography. I wanted to keep it simple but do it well. The main red armour is Mephiston Red, Nuln oil recess shade, Evil Sunz Scarlet, and Wild Rider Red. No fancy blending, just trying to keep it smooth and neat. The black was Abbadon Black and Eshin Grey. Metal was Leadbeltcher, Nuln Oil, and Ironbreaker. Bone is Ushabi Bone, Agrax Earthshade, and Screaming Skull. That was pretty much it. The squad and chapter markings are decals from Chapter Customizer. These where applied using the same method I use on scale models. A layer of gloss, Micro-set, the decal, Micro Sol, another layer of gloss, then a layer of matte varnish. All with lots of drying time in between each stage.

Brother Helios, Sniper

Brother Deni, Demolitions Specialist

The basing is where I made a higher than normal amount of effort, by my normally lazy standards. I went for a forest floor basing scheme stolen from Em's Wood Elves. It turned out to be easier than I imagined, once I got over myself and stopped worrying about the placement of every single leaf. The bases where sanded, sealed, and painted brown. I then stuck some bits of stick from the garden on a couple of them. A couple also had a hole drilled through the base and some more upright type plants added. I think these are from a Hornby trains scenics pack (You'll have to ask Em, she's in charge of the scenery stuff). Next I made up a mix of a couple of different static grasses, some moss type stuff (also from the garden), dill & oregano stolen from the spice rack, green tea lifted from a tea bag, the ivy came from Army Painter, and a few big brown leaves from a bag I found on the scenery shelf (again, not a clue where they came from now). I spread down a decent layer of PVA and literally threw the mix at it. Then sealed it all down with PVA. I did deliberately have some that was either ivy or dead leaf heavy for variety, but I was really surprised just how easy it to get some interesting looking bases without too much special or expensive stuff.

Borther Isembold

Brother Thaddeus

I still have the rest of the box of Intercessors to build and paint, so I'm going to finish them and see what takes my fancy at that point. I'm going to try and not get too hung up about sticking to a list with these. Just paint what ever takes my fancy next and see if I can keep up the neatness.

Today we look at two individuals upon whose transhuman shoulders rest the very future of the Blood Angels, especially the 3rd Company. Lets start with the one with arguably the biggest job. Sergeant at Arms Radueriel.

The eagle-eyed among you will be saying "now Jeff, you can't fool us, that's not Radueriel, that's Telion..." and you would be right. It has long infuriated us that only the Ultramarines get a character scout to lead a reconnaisance army. It's daft. There should always have been an option to put a character in scout armour and indeed in an older Space Marine codex Telion was considered an archetype and you were supposed to rename him and use him in your successor chapter. Well. I'm taking that one step further and changing him to a Blood Angel. I'm swopping out his Chapter Tactics and calling it good.

Uniquely among my scouts, Raduriel has his face on display, partially to help him stand out, mostly because I just love that sculpt. He looks so perfect as the aging mentor. I used the old (badum tish) trick of using light grey as the final highlight on the skin rather than something more bone-toned which makes the skin automatically look older. The beard was an experiment that worked wonderfully with baneblade brown as a basecoat with grey highlights. Gives an impression of the former colour under all the grey hairs. I see him as a fearless leader and mentor. His progenoid organs long matured and removed, his genetic heritage already serving in the chapter.

At the other end of the spectrum, while Raduriel is ensuring that much needed aspirants become Space Marines; Lt Thekla Antergo is ensuring that the 3rd Company has a smooth transition of leadership planned. In the Blood Angels, Lieutenants are paired in each company, one is the Sword of Sanguinius and is there to inspire heroism. The other is the Warden of the Blood and is the annointed successor to the current Captain, there to provide solid leadership and council. With the 3rd Company being a traditional tactical company and the last two Captains having come from the 1st Tactical, Antargo has been raised up from the Sternguard. The passing of Tycho left a long shadow on the Company and the reforms that have brought Lieutenants have met with much relief for the Blood Angels.

Speaking of the passing of Tycho, I came up with another bit of headcanon while painting Antargo. Those cords tied around the legs and arms of some Blood Angels, what might they be? I figure that they are mourning cords in rememberance of a brother fallen to the Black Rage. Space Marines are supposed to fight and only in death does duty end. The Black Rage is not death. It is not honour and bravery, it is insanity and delerium. That is an end to mourn. Just another page in the big ol' book of Blood Angel Angst.

The Blood Angel fever still seems to be upon me so there will certainly be more soon, not least our other Lieutenant, the Sword of Sanguinius, Tryfon Salinov. But until then

TTFN

It can be hard to make the shift from the skull-filled world of our hobby to the organised jollity of Christmas. In the hopes that it might help, Mark and I teamed up with new Bunker denizen Andy and revised thirteen famous Christmas stories to fit the 41st millennium. Have fun figuring out what they all are. Some of them are REALLY VERY SUBTLE. Very subtle indeed. Tuck in.

Three old navigators are lured off-course by a false astronomicon, which leads them and their ships to an unsanctioned infant psyker of incredible power. Believing him to be a new incarnation of the Emperor, they proclaim His rebirth to the authorities. The child is taken away by the Sisters of Silence and never seen again.

A Necromunda Gang are trying to steal treasure from a vault, taking a rival gang hostage in the process. A single member of the hostage gang is free and works to thwart the theft culminating in the throwing of the opposition gang leader out the window of the hive spire.

III

A lone, unarmed juve is left behind in a hive gang's main base while they go off on a jolly, and has to defend it from a pair of bungling thieves by jury-rigging an assload of traps and obstacles.

The ancient bloodletter Shan-Tar manifests at the feast of Candlemas and rewards those who have spilled blood in the last year with gifts of lethal weapons and supernatural rage. Those who have been nice get decapitated.

A lonely match Grot dies alone in the snow. No-one cares. The end.

A skaven clan moulder engineer is constructing a Hell-pit abomination. One night it animates of its own accord, and takes the engineer on a journey to visit the great horned rat, they return and the following morning the abomination has fallen apart. The only reason the engineer doesn't think its a dream is he still has the warpstone given to him by the great horned rat.

VII

An inquisitor is investigating potential deviance on a world, but is unsure whether what they have discovered warrants intervention. They are visited by an avatar of the emperor that shows them visions of the heresy, 41st millenium, and a period in the far future. Upon waking he realises the folly of his ways and orders exterminatus.

VIII

A group of upper class twits in a hive city discover a secret route to a magical realm in the back of their wardrobe. They enter Commoragh and are tortured for eternity. One of them gets to eat Turkish delight.

Good Average Bad Moon Nob Borkseslass looks out and sees that the local Deff Skulls are pitifully short of Dakka. He goes out and remedies this by giving them both barrels of his snazzgun.

An Inquisitor becomes so convinced he's not making a difference to the infinite well of human heresy that he decides to jump off a bridge at Sanguinalia. Before he can go through with it, he finds his old friend sororitas Sister Clarencia on the bridge thinking of doing the exact same thing. He talks her down, and in her renewed fervour she implores the Emperor to show the Inquisitor a vision of how much more heresy there would be without him.

A mouse takes a stroll through the deep dark wood and discovers a canifexalo. The mouse and all the biomass in the planet gets devoured.

XII

Two children fight over a nutcracker doll and break it in their father's mansion. The daughter retrieves the doll late at night and a load of huge mice and gingerbread men and toy soldiers turn up and start fighting a battle.

The inquisition burns the Mansion and the rest of the block to the ground and deletes all record of it ever existing.

XIII

Two warring Ork clans stuck in a brutal stalemate hear each other singing Gork-day songs in the middle of a winter night. They call a truce and meet in no-Ork’s land for a football match. After 10 minutes of playing football, they remember that fighting is more fun and hostilities resume with increased vigour and enthusiasm.

+FIN+

And with that flourish of literary brilliance, we wish you a merry turning of the year. Here's a picture of a creepy, baby-stealing Santa. You're welcome.

Here we are at the end of another year. It is a time to reflect on what we have accomplished over the year. Since this is a hobby blog I'll skip over all the silly adult stuff like jobs, family, etc etc and dive straight into the little plastic toys. I'm only going to cover things that actually got finished. There are a few in progress things that'll be covered in the plan for 2019.

The first part of the year was continuing with my Thousand Sons/Tzeentch project from the year before. I did receive some Horrors and the Acolytes as gifts and got stuck into those.

To finish off that project I went for a ambitious (for me) conversion of a defiler/soul grinder. It was far more sculpting and what have you than I've attempted before. I think it came out alright.

Next up was the super secret Iron Warriors project done for Nerd Thunder in July. Managed to bash that lot out in about a month. Which isn't too bad. I also actually made an effort with the basing beyond my normal standard.

So slightly out of sequence but I also managed to get the Blood Ravens Kill Team completed in November. This was just in time for a fun evening of dinner, drinks, and little plastic death!

Now for the other half of my hobby for the year was getting back into scale modelling again. I might have gone a little nuts with the aeroplane thing but I've been having fun. Below is the 14 completed models. I've got a couple in progress still. None of them are perfect but I'm getting better and learning better techniques.

In order of completion we have: Supermarine Spitfire Mk1a, Hawker Hurricane Mk1, Boulton Paul Defiant Mk1, Curtiss P- 40B Warhawk, Messerschmitt Bf109G-6, Messerschmitt Bf109E-4, Messerschmitt Bf110C-3, Mitsubishi A6M2b Zero, de Havilland Tiger Moth, North American P-51D Mustang, Gloster Gladiator I (in Swedish colours), Junkers Ju 87B Stuka, Republic P-47D Thunderbolt, Grumman F-14D Tomcat. Have fun spotting which one is which.

So that's my year in a nut shell.Now to start planning what I'm not going to get finished in 2019!

Howdo all!

A new year brings you all a new contributor to the Bunker. I'm Andrew, also Andy, and other less appropriate names on occasion. I'm not entirely new to this malarky, having been blogging for a decade now over at Iron Legion, but as life changes I find I have so little time to maintain a blog myself and so I'm in the process of shutting it down. You can however see a lot of my previous hobby over there, and soon there'll be a post of my own personal highlights in case you're interested.

Charlie and the Bunker crew were generous enough to give me a home here as an occasional poster, so you may or may not be seeing more of my progress.

As an opener, and in keeping with the idea of what I have done this year, here is what I have been up to - I made some pointy-eared tree huggers >:)

Obligatory core - Glade Guard and Dryads (I really like the Dryads - they are very good models and so very easy to paint, I plan to have more)

Lords and Heroes - a Spellweaver/Spellsinger (based on the Dark Elf Sorceress, a kit-bash as opposed to Charlies infintely more advanced conversion that is Amelia), and a Glade Captain who can also be a BSB.

Rare - Waywatchers (built from the High Elf Shadow Warriors - these are boss sausage!)

And in the pipeline there's a unit of Wild Riders, their magic battle stags are painted, I'm working on the riders...

... and some Wardancers (built from the Dark Elf Witch Elves) - I decided that I didn't like the thigh high boots look so have green stuffed in the gaps in all the legs so they look more like leggings now, massive overkill as I doubt anyone would even notice, but I know and ultimately thats all that matters.

I may have also done some other things, the odd miniature here and there, but I can't remember and definitely don't have pictures, so they don't count.

Toodle-pip

Greetings fellow bunker dweller! We're all doing a bit of a 2018 retrospective before launching in to the inevitable hobby glee that will be 2019, and now it's my turn! Casting our minds back to the early, early cold days of 2018 we were in the frozen depths of Frostgrave:

Critterwatch episode 1 took in these cuddly characters

While my borderline offensively bruising warband grew

Still very much enjoying Frostgrave as a game, it's ideal to pick up for a spurt of games. Advance the personal narrative of the wizards and then put it away again for a while. It's also a place for me to park random fantasy miniatures and monsters that I like the look of but have no other purpose for. Hurrah for collecting facillitation!

The oh-gods-why-so-long-to-paint bikers

The real meat of 2018 though was once again the Blood Angels, I had another burst of BAngles keen and this translated into a few new units bringing me ever closer to a full company of psycho vampire space marines!

Scouts!

Oh, yeah! More scouts, and...

...yeah, even more scouts...

...and for a change, some more scouts.

Yup, that was a third of a company of scouts, and I'm not done yet, there's bikers and storms in the future to help these guys get around. While we're on the subject of scouts, one of the models I'm proudest of this year:

Scout Sergeant at Arms Raduriel totes-not-Telion, honest.

Seriously pleased with him and indeed with his cohort in BAngles middle management the newly minted Lt Antargo:

I really ought to get his opposite number painted up for a wingey-Lt. Unbelievably, this was not the last of the Blood Angels for this year. We also had the poor doomed dudes of the Death Company getting quite the expansion.

Find their moody selves over here

Thankfully, that really is all the Blood Angels for this year, promise! For a total change of pace, if only a mild change of name, my Blood Axes also got a modicum of love prompted by the sparkly new codex in the form of the Speshul Ork Service:

Da baddest hombres who evva flew in a chinork

And in another sharp change of direction I started another Inquisitor warband:

The early doors members of Inquisitor Hinzer's mighty band

Phew! That's everything that I've finished. There's a ton of prep work in assembling scenery and Necromunda gangs (more of that later) that I have no photos for. Believe it or not, I still think I've had quite the quiet year hobby wise. These models were painted in the brief, intense bursts of activity that I found the mojo for. I had some wonderful gaming this year but wasn't able to achieve as much painting wise as I might have hoped for. That having been said, when I lay it all out here... it's still quite a lot! The main reason for the bursts, I think, have been the redirection of a lot of my creative energies, first into the game that Charlie and I wrote. (Find all about that here!) Second it's gone into building my day job which has me making stuff like this:

See, I'm a freelance leatherworker in real life, a job that needs quite a lot of creative energy poured into it each day. As a result, I'm occasionally a bit tapped out when it gets to the end of the day and where the time to paint would be found. I'm getting better at managing the ol' creative flow though so hopefully I should be able to balance hobby mojo and business mojo a bit better in 2019.

So what is the deal with 2019? What are my plans? Well, as is always the case, no plan survives contact with the Jeff but one thing looms larger than all others at the moment:

Yup, we're going to the Underhive. Spring 2019 will see me running a Necromunda campaign for the Bunker dwellers. It's going to be bang tidy as we say in my neck of the woods. Really looking forward to it. As far as other projects go, I imagine more Blood Angels and Inquisitor are in the future, I'd like to do some fantasy painting but that will have to wait for the mojo to strike.

I wish everyone a wonderful, creative, productive 2019 and may your dice roll better than mine!

TTFN

The beast looms large, but hides in crevices. It is found in the darker depths of the house. If one digs too deep and sees its true scale, the knowledge can crush one's spirit. Often it is best to run. Only the mightiest of brush wizards can jump into the abyss and emerge triumphant, but I'm no wizard, I'm just a hobbyist, and there's only one way for me to fight a Backlog of Morgoth: cut off little bits, again and again, until I smite its ruin upon the hobby station.

Hmm. A tad overblown, that. Let's get prosaic.

When 2017 began, I took an oath to focus almost exclusively on eroding my hobby backlog instead of buying new stuff. Boy did I pick a tough time to make that decision. Little did I know that Games Workshop were about to drop 40k's 8th edition all over our collective faces, and then follow it up with a relentless tide of new hotness that made me feel like a crack addict being thrown into the stock room of Drugmart and being told to keep my hands in my pockets. I suspect for many of us it's been like a story from a few thousand years ago in which this famous Jewish dude took a desert hike without any provisions and got offered some high-end trail mix by a guy with a scary smile. Except, of course, that the vast majority of us haven't gone on to be arrested by the authorities after disturbing the peace for suggesting people should be nice to each other, and that we've got dads in high places.

Hmm. If that was prosaic, then Piers Morgan's a heartthrob. Let's just move on.

In terms of model count, I haven't produced vast amounts this year. Even so, I'm actually feeling rather pleased about what those things were, and what they mean in terms of gaming and backlog.

Stuff I finished this year.

All the scenery

The cathedral in the image above is something that's been sitting on a shelf for about a decade. It was half-done in grey and was covered in cobwebs. Armed with an old brush I took it outside and dusted it off. I had to dig through sedimentary layers of dust. Sedimentary layers. That's when you know you're digging through the backlog.

Fun fact: the cathedral took precisely one can of Zandri dust spray. It literally guttered and ran out as I sprayed the last piece.

I also painted a giant pile of Munitorum supplies. I actually finished more shipping containers than what appears in the photo, but Mark also did a lot of work on them, so I don't feel I can take all the brownie points there.

Mechanised Imperial Guard army finished

The arrival of 40K's 8th edition gave me the shove I needed to finish off the mechanised Ankran army I'd been working on. It's unabashedly a paint scheme brought to you by the question, "how quickly could I paint Cadians by using some Caliban Green spray cans?"

The answer is "err pretty quickly I guess? An olive green spray would've been better though."

That said there are some things about the paint job that I like. Having proper unit markings is both useful and satisfying, and I did actually put some effort into the commissar and the techpriest. As per the image above, the things needed to finish the project were: two Russes, a chimera, 10 storm troopers, a techpriest, a commissar, and a shadowsword.

Inquisition stuff

Having painted some of the old kasrkin storm troopers for my guard, I went on to paint 10 Tempestus Scions to support Inquisitor Drake's warband. Plus a model for one of my Inquisition characters, Nadiya Zelenko.

Deathwatch kill team

Deathwatch are pretty much my favourite 40K thing, but somehow these guys spent actual years in a box awaiting the tender ministrations of a Windsor & Newton Series 7. It's really pleasing to have painted everything I built. There may be more of them in the future, but the Deathwatch backlog has been smacked down and I'm happy with the results. Each marine was painted to the standard I usually reserve for characters - a decision that felt practical with such a tiny model count. Here's some closeups of Elias, the squad sergeant:

Painting speed vs. quality, and odd ends

Lately I've been drawn towards getting stuff finished, but as a result I got a little overly obsessed with doing things quickly. In 2017 the final ork units and my guard army both suffered as a result. Thus, in 2018 I focused on regaining some old skills that had grown rusty. Whilst I may not have achieved a huge model count, I did produce a bunch of models I'm proud of. Here's a couple of closeups:

Nozz Brewsnik, goblin shaman, possibly done at the end of 2017 but I can't remember, and I only blogged about him in January. Whatevs, I love the little bastard.

Celhelas, elven captain for Frostgrave

An engineer from the famous gunnery school of Nuln

Of course, sometimes it's satisfying to bang out a serviceable paint job in what (for me) is very little time. This year I acquired Jeff's fledgling undead army. I figured they'd be useful as a GM resource when running narrative games, but I didn't want to get pulled into the rabbit hole of having another army on the go, so I forced myself to just buy the stuff he'd painted... for the most part. Even though it wasn't fully assembled, I couldn't resist the varghulf. I really like the model, and reckoned I could get it done in a few hours. It would've been silly of me to waste loads of time on it when I had so much else to do, so I set myself the challenge of getting it from semi-built to finished in under three hours... and I managed! Just. So long as you don't include drying time for green stuff or PVA glue.

Plans for 2019

Experience tells me that I shouldn't be overly ambitious here, or I might depress myself into doing even less than if I had no plan at all. The Backlog of Morgoth has been injured, but is by no means slain, which means I'll stick to the rule of doing more of that than new stuff. I've already finished a few more bits of the backlog over January, including a block of 20 Empire greatswords. Maintaining momentum is the key. When I feel like I'm getting stuff done, it pulls me back to the workbench, and the endorphins just keep coming.

The one specific milestone that'll really please me is finishing what's left of the Empire stuff I've built but haven't painted, and at this point I'm really quite close: 10 crossbowmen, 5 outriders, a general on a griffon, and a regiment of free company. Once that's done, I want to renovate my hodgepodge collection of orcs & goblins and dark elves, at which point everything in my cabinets will be complete rather than WIP. I'm really not expecting to get the greenskins and the elves done this year, though, not least of which because I'd like to do more 40K and get involved in some Necromunda.

To everyone out there battling their own backlog beast, keep at it, and have a cracking 2019.

We've begun a new year, and what better time than this arbitrary milestone to turn over a new motivational leaf and ~~do some exercise~~ clear more hobby backlog?

Every time I post pictures of some newly-finished Fantasy minis, I feel the need to justify the square bases. This is clearly a self-imposed need brought on by years of staying current with GW's games; it's not like the Warhammer Community team send ninjas to round off my bases in the night and torch the movement trays. That'd be uncharacteristically aggressive of them.

Today's helping of square bases provides further reinforcements for my Empire collection. As usual, I've attempted to distract from the very basic techniques used on the troops themselves with an ambitious banner. (Hints on doing your own can be found here.)

Of course in order to figure out what to paint on the banner, I had to figure out who these guys are. On maps of Hochland, there is a military base right in the middle of the Weiss Hills called Fort Schippel. These guys are the cream of its garrison; even if some of the regiment leave on campaign, there will always be some of the Weissguard defending Fort Schippel's walls. To emphasise this role, I shaped the design on the banner like a shield.

The giant 'you are here' map they keep in Fort Schippel.

You may have spotted that the unit champion is one of the previous generation of greatsword sculpts. I've had this model since waaay before I got into Warhammer. No idea how or why I had it... presumably some kind soul donated it to me. Tragically I didn't take any photos of him prior to re-priming... my teenage self had painted his skin with Bronzed Flesh and Chestnut ink (imagine the worst, most blotchy artificial tan possible) and painted his beard with Sunburst yellow (i.e. neon). Bloody magnificent.

When I got to doing this regiment I looked past my neon horror show at the model beneath, and like many sculpts by the Perry twins, it's a nice, toned-down mini that deserved a fresh lick of paint. I might honestly prefer the metal sculpts - they have more armour, and look more, well, real. But let's face it, not having 10 copies of the same 3 models is an improvement to the cinematics, and plastic is so much less prone to chipping and other nonsense, plus the plastic greatswords kit has been a wonderful source of components for my army as a whole. Anyway, point being... shout out to the Perrys.

Probably not old enough to count as Oldhammer, but still charmingly dated.

In my ongoing mission to finish off any assembled but unpainted minis loitering in my cabinets, I also painted a unit of crossbowmen. These guys have been awaiting paint for at least three or four years. It seems when I sprayed them I'd neglected to note the epic mould lines still on the models... oops. I got rid of some, but didn't spot everything. Ah well, they're hardly a centerpiece unit so I doubt people will notice in-game so much. Still... I did a little dance of shame, then pushed on.

Two potentially helpful notes on the (quick and simple) paint jobs here: the metal is very quick to do... it's a basecoat of Army Painter Gunmetal followed by a coat of Nuln Oil Gloss, then a quick highlight of light silver on the most pronounced edges. I'd do more work on a character model, specifically I'd line in the shadows with something more matte, but for rank and file dudes I'm finding this really fast.

The second note is the filth wash. I used to do this with a 50:50 mix of Graveyard Earth and Scorched Brown with an load of water, but since those paints were retired and current Citadel/Vallejo paints don't like being turned into washes, I was at a bit of a loss. Then I came upon Army Painter Dirt Splatter. Add a little water, slosh it over the model, and the effect is almost identical.

Having got these done with surprising speed, I kept up the momentum and started on the similarly neglected outriders sat next to them. Suddenly I'm in danger of having painted all the stuff that's been sat around for so long; there'll be just the griffon and the free company to go.

If there's a point lurking somewhere in this post, it's this: when your finish a unit (or perhaps while the first stage of the basing is drying), don't stop painting. Immediately do the first stage or two of the next unit. Psychologically, once something's been started, it often seems less daunting, so it's easier to maintain that momentum you've built up.

Happy painting!

So it’s 2019 (It’s been 2019 for a while – Ed.) and what better time than the ~~beginning~~ sort of the beginning of the year to reflect on all the wonderful things that happened in 2018.

Like many in the Beard Bunker, 2018 was the year of getting some of my bigger projects off the table and into the display cabinet. In particular, and following my moderate success with a Panther, I could finally start seriously using the airbrush – and for me, 2018 was the year of the airbrush.

First up, I got two ‘Nauts finished.

Dorkanaut

Borkanaut

I also gave them something to carry around and effectively started a Blood Axe faction for my Ork army at the same time.

Mek

My first Camo

Skorcha & Doc

Dakka and Dakkaer

Overheat? Never?

The Badmoon Nobs / Flashgitz are conversions I built for a campaign that finished in 2010. There's nothing like finishing something just in time, and this was nothing like finishing something just in time.

Later on in the year, I painted two fantasy models that have been sitting around for years waiting for a coat of paint.

Warpfire Dragon

The Bloated Pig, Free House

I then went completely mad and painted something that was neither an Ork nor a Skaven (Madness) and completed an Astra Militarum Kill Team. The team is a commercial mining team led by squats and mostly consists of hired combat engineers.

L-R: Bodyguard, Commander, Pitboss

The Squats were given to me by my cousin and were some of the first miniatures I ever owned. I chose a muted paint scheme with a hint of 90’s dayglo for the nostalgia factor

The Squat with the 12 Gauge (my pitboss) is a Heresy Miniatures dwarf miner I’ve had kicking around for an age.I painted him in working orange coveralls, HiVis tabard and a Black Hat*.

I made the hat look plasticky by giving it a coat of gloss varnish after painting and I spent a little longer than usual on the gun – trying to make it look a bit more like a Purdey than a mass-produced weapon.

In case anyone is interested, I’ve included the homebrewed weapon stats I use for the shotguns below. They seem to be roughly on par with their las equivalents in terms of balance i.e., I still lose all the time.

Weapon	Type	Range	Strength	AP	Damage	Notes
Combat Shotgun	Assault 2	12”	3	-	1	Ignores modifiers for shooting over half range
Hot Shot 12 Bore (Purdey)	Assault 2	12”	3	-2	1	Ignores modifiers for shooting over half range

And that was it for me for 2018. I did make a start on a pretty massive project which I won’t reveal yet, but here’s a sneak peek…

In terms of 2019, my first goal is to nail the big project. After that, I intend to get my neglected Gobbo Bloodbowl team finished.

*In the Dark Grimness of the 41^st Millennium, Build UK still dictate hat colours on construction sites.

In this post, I’ll be questioning the value of having a special rule for (almost) every unit in a wargame. This is intended largely as constructive criticism of Games Workshop, and specifically the 8th edition of 40K now that we’ve got pretty much the full set of codexes. Let me preface this with saying that I’m a fan of the current edition - it’s had me playing a game I’d not really been into since 5th edition!

I imagine there will be many who disagree with my overall point, and I’ll be happy to discuss at length in the comments section if that’s the case - much like the surprisingly impassioned (and, in one anonymous instance, straight up troubling) responses my post about female primaris space marines. Of course, the odds of this post being as divisive are essentially nil. See what you think.

What do I mean by special rules?
I’m making the assumption that anyone reading this knows what I mean by the term special rules, be they ‘universal’ special rules, faction-specific rules, or unit-specific special rules. I’d define them as any rule a unit of troops or a weapon has in a wargame which is not covered by their statline.

Why special rules are good
They can achieve two things. One is to allow for effects which are too niche to incorporate into the basic mechanics of the game. Since not all units are terrifying supernatural monsters, it makes sense that you’d want to have a special rule which you can apply to anything that’s unusually scary.

The second thing is that they can add flavour. In 40K, the small weedy gretchin have a special rule called surprisingly dangerous in large numbers, where big units get a bonus to hit. On the face of it that seems flavorful, but I’ll return to this example later since it’s a good one.

Why special rules can be bad
The more rules you have, the more complex and bloated a game becomes. If every unit has its own special rule, then a major component of being able to compete and make intelligent decisions lies in simply remembering more rules than your opponent, which some people (including yours truly) find to be a less compelling challenge than developing an understanding of strategy and manoeuvres. Obviously you want different factions to be distinct, and for players to feel like they've learned how to combat the challenge offered by those factions, but if the only challenge is learning the synergies of certain rules then the actual gameplay starts to run on autopilot after a while.

As such, any ruleset is trying to strike a balance between clunkiness and blandness.

They’re also a double-edged sword, in that if a special rule is badly written, its attempt to create additional flavour can backfire by having an effect which makes no intuitive sense. Let’s return to our gretchin example (surprisingly dangerous in large numbers). As soon as you have 20 or more grots, they all gain +1 to hit. I can understand a large mob being braver (safety in numbers) but why are they suddenly more accurate?

Another example would be your basic ork boyz. If the unit has at least 20 models in it, they all get an extra attack. This is clearly intended as a way to encourage some big units of footsloggers, but it seems strange that as soon as the 20th model in a battlewagon is the army’s warboss, the whole unit gets less fighty since there’s now only 19 of them.

I get that the rule is probably intended to reward big foot-slogging units, but wouldn’t it be simpler just to make boyz cheaper so as to make it tempting to take them without transports? That way a Goff player won’t feel gypped when losing one or two boyz to overwatch won’t literally cost them 20 attacks in the coming fight.

The flavour debate
Having a unique army with its own character and charm is one of the most satisfying elements of wargaming. It’s argued that one of the ways to achieve this is through special rules. I'd argue it's one of the least important ways.

Let's take the aforementioned surprisingly dangerous in large numbers rule mentioned above. In terms of flavour, what does it tell us? That they're individually feeble and that people might underestimate them. This is not conveyed by the rule, but by the name of the rule. The actual rule gives a group of 20 gretchin, on average, an extra 3 Strength 3 hits compared to a unit of 19 gretchin.

Now, what does their stat line tell us?

Their low strength and toughness tells us they're diminutive. Their comically poor leadership tells us they're cowards. Their decent ballistic skill tells us they're not idiots. That, to me, conveys a lot more flavour than the special rule, and since the SDILN won't make much difference to the game, why is it there? What purpose does it serve? I have to confess I'm not sure. Were it up to me, I'd probably just remove it.

This is not an argument against all special rules, it's just an argument for careful editing. Furthermore, I think a heavy focus on special rules, faction rules, and all that jazz can take the focus away from what I consider to be much more important factors when it comes to flavour: visuals, background, and units.

If, overnight, all the space marine codexes were suddenly merged into one army list, and there was no rules difference between the chapters, could you still build something that looked, played and felt just like an army of Space Wolves? Or Imperial Fists? I'd argue yes. Unit selection, play style, details on the miniatures, and the paint job all do a lot more than some special rules. Don't get me wrong, I love that we have all these codexes, I'm just trying to illustrate where special rules really sit in the hierarchy of flavour.

Injecting your own flavour
Another thing that greatly affects how the army’s character comes across is how you play them. If you're into matched play then fair enough, you're always going to be looking for the ‘optimal’ units. For more narrative gamers though, you are free to have your army act in line with their characterisation, rather than being forced to do so by a special rule. A wargame where the flavour happens automatically is in danger of creating very homogenised interpretations of particular units. I think it would be perfectly reasonable for a rifleman to be a devotee of Khorne, realising that he can kill far more people with a gun than an axe, and taking pride in his horrifying kill count, and the martial efficiency of his work, but if (hypothetically) the rules say “Khorneate characters get +1 attack in melee” then that naturally encourages a more simplistic interpretation while also adding an extra rule to remember.

By contrast, Frostgrave has no special rules relating to its wizards or henchmen; all its flavours are delivered via stat lines, and yet I've never struggled to end up with believable, entertaining characters and flavour. I’m not saying 40K’s a better or worse game than Frostgrave - they’re very different beasts - but I have to wonder if we’ve got to the point where we don’t feel like a unit has sufficient flavour unless it has a special rule, and I reckon the imagination of wargamers doesn’t necessarily need that crutch.

Final thoughts
In closing, let me reiterate: I’m enjoying 40K, I just wonder if it’s starting to accumulate some of that 7th edition bloat. To be fair, there’s no way the GW studio could’ve cranked out so many codexes without one or two bits of fat than needed trimming, and when have we ever had all the game’s factions packing a codex of such similar vintage? It’s undeniably impressive.

Hopefully that all read as food for thought rather than whining! Now, I’d better get back to the paint station...

Good day Beard Bunkerers. Winter is a great time to get some hobby done. The outside is either filled with rain or cold enough to make your face hurt. It's best stay inside and build little plastic models. Where the heating makes your basing dry faster and there is always tea available. My January has been filled with just a single model, but it's a biggie. The mighty Flying Fortress.

Amazingly I actually managed to remember to take some in progress photos. Some of which were to share, some of which was just I would have proof that I have fully painted the interior.

It started with the bomb bay. This part is actually visible from the outside if you have the bay doors open. Each section was built up and painted separately, then joined up to form the completed interior.

The cockpit has a lot of details. Full control panel decals, included where even flight log and warnings on the door. All of which are more or less totally invisible from the outside. You have see the seats, the tops of the control columns, and just a bit of the turret workings behind.

We also have a reasonably detail radio/engineering station as well. This can sorted be seen through some of the windows. I've kept the painting clean and simple. Mostly because I knew a lot of it wouldn't been seen and what can been seen isn't really seen in detail.

The waist gunner and nose section. A few simple details here. I could have done a bit of work here as the kit left these two sections pretty sparse however they are the two area's that could have been seen. There are plenty of after market parts that could have gone into detailing but I'm cheap and still learning so want to keep the first big kit as simple of possible.

Once the interior build was done I could get on with building the rest of the aircraft. It mostly fell together pretty well with minimal filler needed to get it smooth. I did splash out on a masking set, a sheet of pre-cut masking tape shapes to fit the windows. These protect the glass work when painting the exterior.

You can see on the red patches above the pre-shading showing through really nicely. This works on most large areas and looks good on tanks and things. in fact I can see it working really well on the smooth panels of T'au or Aeldari skimmers (still getting used to the new copyrightable names). It's a great way of getting mottled finish on panels.

The red and green patches were added after the main silver finish. This required yet more masking. The yellow tape is a fine, flexible tape from Tamiya which is great for getting good clean edges between the colours. The rest is super cheap masking tape from a diy store, where you just need to protect the paint underneath. Tip, always de-tack it first. I normally just stick it to my jeans and then onto the model. It doesn't need much stick and you don't want it pulling the paint off from underneath.

The main painting is done. This was mostly airbrush, but I went in with a hairy stick to do the little details where it would be too much of a chore to mask it all up for a tiny area. I gave it a couple of coats of gloss varnish (I actually use floor polish, it's cheaper and air brushes really well). Then on to the decals.

The decals are done using my (now) standard method, gloss coat followed by Microset then the decal, microsol over the top, then sealed in using more gloss coat. I didn't bother with the matte coat on this one as it's supposed to be shiny metal.

The matte green panels where there to protect the pilots from sunlight reflective off the nose/engines and blinding them.

What American bomber would be complete without some form of half naked woman painted on the nose?

By the later stages of the war the Americans had given up completely on painting camouflage on their heavy bombers. They didn't really need to worry about raids against their own airfields as by that point the Luftwaffe was fighting a purely defensive war. It was also futile to try and hide the massive bomber formations that these aircraft flew in. It was far more advantageous to have them clearly marked up so they could easily maintain the defensive formations that they flew in.

The paint was also heavy, so heavy that stripping off the paint made the planes lighter, meaning they could fly further and faster. As the paint was a matte drab it caused more air friction, slowing the plane down further still. So taking the paint off simply outweighed the benefit of having it.

Once the decals had had a few days to properly dry. I set about the model with some oil paints to weather it up. First was a thinned wash that got applied to more or less every surface and left to dry off for a few hours. After that it got buffed off with some kitchen tissue, this just left the recessed panel lines more defined as well as helping pick out details. The heavier exhaust stains where done with more oil paint, unthinned, and blended in using a large soft brush. The joy of oil paint that is actually takes days for it dry properly, even once it's been thinned. So you always have lots of time to come back and work it some more. It's very forgiving, much for forgiving than trying to airbrush on those stains.

The final step was just some light chipping using some silver paint. It just adds a little something.

As with each model I do I learnt something new, got a little better, and found a few techniques that I would like to try on the next model. I will be using some of these techniques on whatever 40K project I end of up on next. As I said above the pre-shading/mottling would look great on T'au or Aeldari and the oil weathering/chipping would look really good on anything Imperial really.

Maisey

It seems I owe Gee-Dubz an apology. When their textured paint range first came out, one of the smurfs at my FLGS let me try them out and I was… less than impressed. “You can just paint it on!” he boasted (you can’t).

Celhelas keeping it frosty

Cut to several years later, and I tried applying that stuff with their texture spreader (which, I think, they released some time after the texture paints came out). It's like a tiny spatula. Suddenly, everything made more sense. Shovel it on with the wide end, do some fine tuning with the pointy end.

You have to be so careful when applying the texture paint around the feet of a painted model that I think it's probably quicker to use sand and glue if you’re doing a big batches of bases, but I've taken to using this stuff when I just want to base one or two dudes and can't be arsed to fetch the PVA and sand… and then sit through three long drying times.

Of particular charm is the snow effect, Valhallan Blizzard. You don't have to fart about mixing baking soda, PVA and white paint, you just take the stuff straight out of the pot and get, I think, a better result. That said, it's a lot more expensive than baking soda. I used damn near an entire pot on this scenery piece, and while I'm happy with the results you might need to budget carefully if you're planning a load of scenery. For your minis, though, this would cover a fair bit of an army.

To break things down to bullet points:

The good

Easy to apply of you have the texture spreader.
Has finer texture than sand, so looks better in terms of scale.
Snow needs no mixing/preparation, unlike other snow methods.
For your underlying base textures, there's only one stretch of drying time compared to PVA → PVA seal → basecoat colour.
With the spreader you’ve got pretty fine control over the finished results.

The bad

Possibly prohibitively expensive for lots of scenery, depending on your budget.
If you're going for melting snow, the final look is inferior to Secret Weapon’s crushed glass snow effect (much safer to work with though!).

Hopefully that's helpful to someone. If nothing else, I’m just pleased that I finally have some snowy scenery for my winter board besides the trees. I’ll need more scatter scenery if I want that board to be more serviceable, though.

General Rikarht von Hess and the Weissguard Greatswords peer over the battlements at Volgin's approaching siege towers.

Today's post is a (very) short story from the World that Was if you're an Age of Sigmar player, or the World that Still Is if you're that way inclined. It's set during an event that we actually played through years ago in the Hochland campaign... not that it's necessary to know the context for the story to make sense. Enjoy!

* * *

The Greatest Achievement of Jonas Ostkamp

When the recruiting sergeant had told Jonas Ostkamp about the armour, pay and food given to those who served in the Weissguard Greatswords, the concept of standing one's ground under any circumstance had been abstract, and the hunger had been very real.

Now it was the other way round.

Fort Schippel, the Empire’s last bastion in Eastern Hochland, was surrounded by a throng of Norsemen. Attempts to destroy their siege towers had failed. There was no relief column coming. The Norse drummed out rhythms on their shields and screamed praises to their gods.

As the Weissguard formed up on the western curtain wall of Fort Schippel, Jonas made a point of joining the front rank in Karl's usual spot.

“What’re you doing?” Karl hissed, forced to line up behind him.

Jonas replied over his shoulder, “You've got kids. I don't.”

He looked out over the Norse army. The two siege towers were within a hundred metres now, and the details were clearer; the hides stretched over them seemed to twist and flex of their own accord. The bodies of Imperial soldiers hung from it, such that they'd be crushed when the tower connected with the wall. From within the towers came guttural Norse war chants.

There was a quiet clatter of armour as men made way for General von Hess. He took his place in the front rank too, the symbolism obvious: the time for strategy was over. Now they had to keep their nerve, and hold against whatever came running down the ramps of those towers.

The whistle and krump of mortar shells created momentary holes in the barbarian ranks that vanished all too quickly. Handgunners and crossbowmen fired from the cannon ports set into the walls, but they couldn't do anything to the towers. Neither could the cannons themselves, corroded beyond use the night before by the enemy's sorcery.

Fifty metres.

Jonas had never really known what he'd wanted, beyond not being hungry and finding someone to warm his bed. There was no point wishing he'd stayed at home on the farm; that had been burnt down, his parents now living in the Tussenhof refugee camps.

Thirty metres.

He'd never been this scared in open battle. Fleeing was a good way to get killed, but still, knowing you had the option of retreating if things weren't going well… this felt different.

Twenty metres.

To his left, facing the other siege tower, stood a regiment of elven swordsmen. One of them seemed sensed Jonas’ stare and looked back at him. If the elf was making a facial expression, it was hidden by their helm.

Ten metres.

Not one for rhetoric, the general simply opted to give Jonas and the others a final word of advice. “They'll want to break us with their best warriors. That means heavy armour. Aim your thrusts carefully,” he said. Jonas and many of the others in the front rank shifted their grip on their zweihanders, holding the leather sleeve above the crossguard as though they were holding spears.

Five metres.

The empty eye sockets of the cadavers tied to the tower seemed to stare at him just before they disappeared from view, then as they were crushed, the ramp slammed down on the crenelations.

A single figure stepped unhurriedly onto the ramp. He was a giant, made bigger by his armour, the fur mantle over his shoulders, and the horns on his helmet. This had to be the Norse leader, Volgin. He held aloft a weapon that any man of Hochland would recognise: the Blade of the First Knight. Von Rüdiger's sword. So that was the fate of the Silver Drakes’ grand master, missing all these months. If Volgin had triumphed against Hochland's finest warrior, no-one present could stand against him in single combat. He drew his own blade, and issued a challenge against the hopelessly outclassed General von Hess.

The General had anticipated something like this, and had no intention of making life easy for the Norseman. Behind the curtain wall stood three wizards waiting to influence this clash, and amplify the abilities of Fort Schippel's defenders.

Von Hess readied his zweihander.

Volgin began his charge down the ramp, and behind him came heavily armoured warriors: his elite. Volgin crashed into the front rank and knocked von Hess back, out of Jonas’ site, and Jonas looked to his own defence.

Strength flowed into him - the wizards’ doing, presumably - and he braced himself as the nearest warrior charged at him. The sheer armoured bulk of the Norseman, combined with the frenzied speed of the charge, meant Jonas had no chance of stopping him, and that’d mean an enemy penetrating deep into the ranks and getting up close, where the reach of the zweihanders would be of little use. That would be disastrous for Karl and everyone else.

With the warrior's neck and armpits hidden from view by a tower shield, and the ramp atop the crenelations giving the Norseman a massive height advantage, Jonas’ options were limited.

Jonas aimed the point of his zweihander carefully, and made his thrust, accepting the consequences.

The tip of the blade went through the warrior's boot and bit against the wood of the ramp, turning the warrior's charge into a fall.

Even as he fell, the warrior aimed his sword point, using his momentum to drive it home. Jonas felt steel glide into his neck. He tried to scream; no sound came.

The weight of the falling warrior crashed over him, and they both fell onto the flagstones. Jonas’ last hope was that he'd given Karl and the others the chance they needed to kill the warrior and face whoever came next out of the mouth of that siege tower.

With no blood reaching his head and his vision darkening, Jonas would never know.

* * *

Jeff announced he was planning a small Necromunda campaign, and so I took it as an excuse to buy a pile of Sector Mechanicus scenery. For reference, the images that follow were built from the following kits:

2x Mechanicus killzones (that's the stuff in brown plastic)
2x thermic plasma regulators (2 regulators per kit = 4 in total)
1x sacristan forgeshrine (that's the Imperial Knight maintenance bay kit)
1x galvanic mangavent (mostly to increase the amount of available walkways)
Oh, and a spare crane I didn't use when I made the munitorum scenery.

Jeff will also be donating his walkways, as he has no use for them. Here's everything laid out:

When Tom and I assembled this, we focused on flexibility. See, everything there comes apart. The kits, designed by Ray Dranfield, are astonishingly modular. Tom and I kept finding new combinations of parts that worked together during construction and were pretty much blown away as a result. The level of detail is similarly nuts. That's not to say they're perfect; I'm not wild about the design of the railings, which look more like a sci-fi picket fence, and there's also the question of cost. I've spent about £200, but saved a chunk of money with the killzone boxes. Had I not done so, it would have cost me at another £80. Even with this much stuff, it'd take a lot more to have a vertiginous 4x4 Necromunda table, so I'll be supplementing it with more cost-effective buildings and suchlike.

I think the main reason for the added expense is that cylinders, when broken up, take a lot of space on a sprue. It's why walls are such an efficient form of scenery. Clearly it's a price I was willing to pay, but now that the Sector Mechanicus Killzone has been taken off the GW webstore I don't know if this lot would be worth £280 to me. Of course, these things are all subjective... from my partner's perspective it's probably not worth one crisp fiver. (Don't worry, she accepts my love of plastic crack.)

Behold, it all comes apart:

By way of demonstration, here's another quick layout:

It turns out there are raised rivets atop the walkways which are specifically spaced to help locate parts placed on top, which means you can stack the terrain without having to glue it - perfect for changing up layouts from game to game, and for tidying it all away when not in use. So yes, it's pretty expensive per square foot of board covered relative to other GW kits, but it is delicious. Just... try not to think to hard about what any of these things actually are. They're clearly designed to be "generic industrial MacGuffin" rather than a particular thing. That does make their use more flexible, so I get it.

These days I don't tend to post much WIP stuff... the painting effort begins tonight. Rather than painting the whole thing as one big job lot and driving myself insane, I'll probably try and complete little chunks. Honestly this much unpainted terrain is kind of intimidating... wish me luck!

The magnificently bearded bastards populating this post were actually painted back in January, which means I finished three Empire units in the same month. Ooosh.

These guys represent one of my most epic procrastinatory fails; I built them, thought about painting them, remembered how long it took me to paint the other cavalry in my Empire army, and then stuck them in the box of unpainted shame. For seven years.

Well there comes a time when one simply has to sack up and throw some paint at the problem, and since I didn't want to spend ages on the project I decided to see how much of it I could do with drybrushing. The answer: quite a lot. I figured bay horses would take best to this treatment, with only the white bits needing to be wet-brushed. The outriders' capes were also fair game; the metal was similarly quick as it just got a layer of Army Painter Gunmetal followed by Nuln Oil Gloss. The whole unit got knocked out in... I forget how long exactly, but it was an evening or two. Which is fast. For me, at least.

With their capes I went for a German/Prussian fieldgrey; I imagine these capes are issued to them by the Pistolkorps, rather than something they bought themselves.

There's just one conversion in the unit. By default, the musician doesn't get a repeater handgun, but just carries a repeater pistol and a bugle. Given that in rules terms he still fires at full effect, this seemed a bit unimmersive in such a small unit, so instead I trimmed the hand down to resemble a loop he's used to attach the bugle to his belt, thus letting me build him with a handgun.

Here they are, all lined up, with the light cutting straight through the top layer of drybrushing (as is standard when I was too goddamn lazy to put some paper over the light... good thing no-one's paying me to write this blog).

I used to take all my photos against a white background, but my camera doesn't cope well with that, so these days I've taken to photographing minis with scenery as a backdrop. I didn't want to go to the trouble of getting the board out, so just grabbed stuff off the scenery shelf.

In the glorious tradition of five minute jobs, looking at said scenery revealed a problem: the scenery was dustier than a mummy's happy parts. In fact, the scenery had been gathering dust for about the same amount of time the outriders spent in the box of unpainted shame, i.e. longer than anything should go without dusting. I found myself heading off in search of the vacuum cleaner.

What am I even doing

SERIOUSLY LOOK AT IT THOUGH

So that happened. Right, back to drybrushing Sector Mechanicus scenery. Or failing that, another five minute job.

Sometime perhaps in the not too distant future, I believe the Bunker will be returning to the Old World, to continue our adventures beyond Hochland, Fort Schippel, Hergig, and the comically named Bergsburg.

On their return, I'm hoping there may be a delicious added threat to venturing anywhere near a tree, because of course anywhere in the Empire really needs more reasons to fear woodland other than Beastmen, Undead, Skaven, etc, etc. Coming soon to a forest near you, the very definition of proactive environmentalists; pointy-eared, super-snipering tree-huggers who consider armour to be an affectation of those too slow to dodge whatever the others throw at them.

The Wood Elves (WElves) are a force with a very nice theme and some extremely good looking and evocative models (I'm looking at you Dryads, Wild Riders, Treemen...); Wardancers are not part of that list however.

Very much a product of their time, and with an amazing dynamism, their proportions don't quite work and the weapons seem drastically oversized. I considered a lot of alternatives before finally settling on GW's Wych Aelves (or something like that). They've got the dynamism the unit deserves, are suitably un-armoured, and I quite like the whips as a physical representation of some of the Shadow Dances of Loec.

What doesn't entirely fly is the thigh-high boots and underwear bondage look. My green-stuff skills are just about up to fixing that, so hopefully now they look more like they are wearing leggings. The right paint-job (basic though it is), and I think they're now ready enough to take to the field.

So far they've had their basic colours applied, Death Guard Green for the cloth, Rhinox Hide for the leathers, Some-Very-Old Orange as a spot colour, and a selection of skin and hair colours. They then receive an all over drybrush of Terminatus Stone BEFORE a wash of Athonian Camoshade (GW always get this wrong in their painting guides if you ask me). The skin then gets an extra wash/glaze of Reikland Fleshshade to richen their tone. It's the same recipe I'm using over the whole army - quick, simple, and should provide a degree of unification.

In time, I'll return to improve the highlights, fill in the details, and generally bring them up to higher level that I'll feel happier about, but in the interests of achieving a playable army shortcuts have to be made. Although they'd previously been spray basecoated with Death Guard Green, it took only a few hours to get to this look which I'd say is acceptable for gaming, and pretty efficient time-wise.

Right, back to the basing mines, because leaving it till you've got ~100 models and movement trays to do is definitely the least soul destroying way to do your bases... FML.

Tinkety-tonk (& DWTN)

Like a bad rash that keeps returning no matter how many times you visit the GUM clinic, I’m back.

In my last post, I showed how I’d built my Chinork. It basically said 'I just built it'. The time came for me to paint the thing, a slightly tougher feat.

The plan for the nascent Blood Axe contingent of my army is that each vehicle will have its own camouflage, so the first thing I had to do was pick a camouflage pattern. I wanted to pick camo patterns that suggest that the Blood Axes understood how camouflage looked, but not necessarily why it worked. The 'Unifying theme' of the army will be its various gaudy patterns.

So I trawled Google looking for inspiration. I didn't start with much hope, I mean what modern military service would pick a truly stupid camo pattern for their aircraft?

"Biggles, They'll just think you're a tiger"

Turns out the RAF would. Presumably this is the camo they use when fighting in a tiger infested war zone?

Having selected the paint scheme, I painted it. Rather than write out in long hand all I did, I’ll just do it in list format and expand on one or two sections.

- Primed with Chaos Black rattlecan

- Sprayed with Calthan Brown
- Load bay masked off
- Sprayed with black (top colour)
- Camo pattern and engine masked off (1)
- Sprayed with orange (50% mix Jokaero Orange and Blazing Orange)
- Underside sprayed with eggshell blue mix
- Sprayed with Vallejo gloss varnish (2)
- Chipping with non-homogeneous mix of grey, Calthan Brown, Abaddon Black and Scorched Brown (3)
- Sprayed filter / pin wash with dilute brown (4)
- Oil / powder rust weathering (5)
- Dirt weathering – load bay (6)
- Painted pilot, gunner and other miscellaneous bits

1. Camo Pattern and engine masked off

I masked the camo design with Panzer Putty – a seriously great product for masking non straight camo patterns, which is pretty much everything with the exception of more modern geometric designs and ship dazzle camo.

It is important when using Panzer Putty to work relatively promptly and to prevent the putty from getting too warm, as it will move a little under its own accord, especially when warm.

When masking, it’s important to remember that you’re effectively masking in inverse, so remember to put your ‘top’ colour down first, and then mask what you want to keep. Also, take the time after spraying the top coat to make sure you’ve got all the Panzer Putty off – its easy to miss bits here and there as it snaps when removed.

2. Sprayed with Vallejo gloss varnish

Airbrushing creates very thin layers of paint and these can be more delicate than layers of paint that have been brushed on. Gloss varnishing after applying base colours goes a long way towards protecting the paint. It also helps with subsequent steps that require flow or capillary action like pin washes, washes and filters.

3. Chipping with non-homogeneous mix of grey, Calthan Brown, Abaddon Black and Scorched Brown

This basically involves using a small section of sponge dipped in paint to create a random 'chipped paint' effect.
On darker models, the Calthan brown improves visibility. Keeping the mix non-homogeneous also helps to show different ages of chips. The grey ones suggest bare, un-oxidised steel (these will be the newest) and black and dark brown ones will be those which have been around longer and where the metal has fully oxidised. For lighter (as in less heavy) or more technologically advanced vehicles consider chipping with a very light (nearly white) grey or dull silver as this will suggest the underlying metal is aluminium (or titanium, I suppose) rather than steel. Mad props if you can convincingly suggest carbon fibre (with its weave pattern) underneath.

N.B. It’s important to focus chipping on high wear areas. Models with lots of even chipping everywhere or very heavy chipping in certain locations can look stupid – there are parts of a vehicle that receive more damage over time than others. Take a domestic car: the front splitter / grill surround, front quarter panels, sills and protruding wheel arches will receive most wear and damage over time from flying stone chips, small road debris, careless cyclists etc. In contrast, It’s pretty uncommon to get stone chips on the roof of and on the boot lid. The same is true for tanks and military vehicles.

4. Sprayed filter / pin wash with dilute brown

I’ve found that by diluting commercially available oil based filters (I used AK 263, dark wood wash in this case) and airbrush spraying them, you can kill two birds with one stone and do both pin wash and filter with the same application, particularly where you have a lot of detail (like on most GW and FW kits and components).
Also, if you let some darker oil based washes pool they leave behind a residue that looks a lot like rain washed dirt and mud – particularly effective for the underside of models, although practice this in moderation!

5. Oil / powder rust weathering

I tend to do rust weathering by spraying an area with white spirit then flicking a mixture of weathering powder and oil paints onto it with an old (and cheap) brush. I then blend some of the ‘splodge’ in by either re-spraying with white spirit or manually moving or blending it with a brush. When this dries the weathering powder gives a dusty and dry appearance to the rust spots and any accumulated rusty run-off.

The difficult part of this process is not over-doing it – something I don’t always get right. It’s easy to end up with a very powdery, chalky appearance on the model which doesn’t really look anything like rust decay or weathering and that obscures rather than promotes the main paint job .

6. Dirt weathering – load bay.

I tend to do ‘light’ dirt weathering with a mix of matt varnish, weathering powder and water; which I apply in thin, watered down coats. Be careful with this as I’ve found that using water as a carrier can occasionally turn the finished effect a bit ‘weird’.

For ‘heavier’ accretions of mud and gunk I’ve traditionally used dilute PVA to stick it all together but more recently I’ve moved to AK’s pigment fixer.

And this is the finished item. I had trouble photographing this model partly because I was out of practice but also because I struggled to get a lighting level that both illuminated the core of the model but didn't obliterate the rotors in the exposure.

With (somewhat shonky) Flight Stand

I painted a couple of Deffkoptas that had been hanging around (for six years (Erk)) in the same pattern as escorts.

Now to paint me some Kommando’s to ‘Get to dur Choppuh!’ Do I follow suit on their choice of camo pattern?

Ride of the Valkorkries

Oooh, what a nice-looking soap box. Rolls up sleeves.

The following sentiments were something I often heard back when I used to work in a GW:

"[Partner's name] will never let me get that."
"I brought my own carrier bag so I can sneak this purchase into the house without him/her knowing I bought more plastic crack."
"My partner will be annoyed if I start painting again, so I'd better not. Do you mind if I just look longingly at the cabinets for a while?"

One time I remember a man in his fifties bought a £100 box of space marines one day, only to bring it back the next day looking sad because his wife made him take it back. As a comedy aside, we'd had a freakishly quiet day at the shop, and so after the refund ended up making £-1.50. The minus symbol is not a typo.

Of course, on the flipside, we hobbyists often behave a lot like drug addicts. With the release of the Sector Mechanicus scenery, we can even buy a plastic crack pipe.

So today I'm going to make some suggestions around the subject of spousal disagreements brought about because of the hobby. Some of them might be a bit uncomfortable.

My partner is angry when I spend money on toy soldiers
The only reasons this can happen are: (a) you suck at budgeting, or (b) your partner is being an asshole. Or, (c), the dreaded space issue (see the next section).

Assuming that you earn money, any reasonable person would agree that if you have any left over after you've met your financial obligations, you can choose how to spend it on entertainment. If you have spare cash but are only allowed forms of entertainment that your partner approves of, they are being a controlling asshole, particularly if they spend money on the things they enjoy. If you don't have spare cash, because houses, cars, children and life are all horribly expensive, then either you have to get more efficient with those things, or you have to not buy plastic crack.

Finally, if your entertainment budget isn't big enough to buy that Battleforce box you really want, then guess what? It's time to start saving up. I don't know about you, but if I have a good hobby month I'll get like ten dudes painted, depending on how detailed I'm being, which means a £100 box will last me multiple months as a hobby project. If you're buying more stuff than you actually have time to build and paint, you are literally just farting money into a bucket, and then throwing away the bucket. If that's the case, your partner is right to ridicule you.

Personally, since my partner and I have our own bank accounts, there's no need for us to police each other's fun. So long as the bills are being paid, we're saving a little, and no-one's going into debt, why would we care what the other spends?

My partner doesn't like how much space the hobby takes up
Now this is legitimately tricky as the hobby does take up space. My dining room has five display cabinets in it, plus a shelving unit purely dedicated to hobby stuff. There's still plenty of space around the totally coincidentally 6'x4' dining table for guests to enjoy a meal, so long as they don't mind being watched by hundreds of tiny plastic eyes.

My rule is that hobby stuff is only allowed to be in that room, or under the stairs. It is not allowed to spread into other parts of the house like a metastasising plastic tumour, because one must give oneself limits. That also forces me to keep things somewhat tidy, or else we won't have anywhere to serve up a meal.

Experience tells me that I can't keep my stuff tidy if it doesn't have a designated place with sufficient storage. When I first moved to Oxford I tried to keep it all in my wardrobe and under my bed, and it was such a faff to get everything out that it rarely got tidied away, and the whole thing was a train wreck. So for me, living somewhere with enough space to accommodate my hobby is actually pretty crucial, but assuming you don't have a randomly unused room (and I don't), you're going to have to find a way of allowing the space to serve two functions.

If your partner is still unhappy, because they don't like how hobby stuff looks, then in might be worth investing in some presentable furniture so that it's all out of sight when tidy. The key thing is that it should be easy to get out again, or it'll descend into a bomb site.

In closing
Whilst my comedically blunt tone indicates that I think these are relatively clear decisions, I can only assume they're not universally accepted truths given how often I heard the complaints I wrote back at the start. If any of this does apply to you, and I've hurt your feelings, then I'm sorry.

Ultimately, though, neither you or your partner are obliged to put up with their other half being a dick, so if you're having these arguments and then confiding in GW shop staff afterwards... maybe a calm, reasonable conversation is the thing your hobby (and I guess your relationship) needs.

In Death, Redemption

Sector Munitorum Scenery

Blood Raven Primaris Kill Team

The Future of the Company - Blood Angels

Grimdark Christmas Micro-stories

2018: A Year In Plastic

2018 - I hardly new year

A Jeff-flavoured 2018

2018: the Backlog of Morgoth

The New Year Hobby Spurt

2018: Japanese Year of the Airbrush

Special rules: delicious or bloatsome?

Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress

Valhallan Blizzard texture paint review

Short story: The Greatest Achievement of Jonas Ostkamp

Making Sector Mechanicus terrain modular

5 Beards... 25 Gun Barrels

Wardancers

Build a Bigger Choppa (Part 2)