Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from January, 2012

Wyrd Science! Or: How I Learned To Stop Looting Tanks And Love The Warpstone

Good evening and welcome to my inaugural post on the Beard Bunker and my very first unaccompanied foray into the blogosphere! Unlike Charlie, (a self-confessed hobby butterfly, whose Dark Eldar stand around all day, wandering what will happen first: will their souls be devoured by Slaanesh or will they get an undercoat) I am a hobby monomaniac. I am happy to indulge in all sorts of long term, ambitious and lengthy projects, on the strict proviso that the project concerns Orks. Hence, the sort of thing that I will usually be working on will look something like this: So when the Warhammer challenge came along, I viewed it with some trepidation – it wouldn’t involve Orks, Tanks, or Orks driving Tanks. Hmmm. However, I did have a box of Skaven from Island of Blood hanging around, and I was reasonably excited about them. Whilst the Skaven   weren’t Orks, they had the benefit of erratic contraptions, good looking miniatures, a horde army and a reckless disregard for thei

Batch-painting Empire soldiery: it’s inherently Buddhist.

The Buddha said that all life is suffering, and let me tell you, one thing about painting a [CENSORED] Empire army is that [EVEN MORE CENSORED]. No, I love ’em really. I’m doing a thirty-stage paint scheme for six-point models, so I must do. Either that or I’m a masochist.* Some may wonder: why am I painting a new Empire army, when I already have this one? Two reasons. One: you can never have enough silly moustaches in your display cabinet. Two: because about three months ago, my friend John bounced up to me with the sort of childish glee that only a burly, six-foot Kung Fu teacher can, and asked if I’d team up with him to take part in GW Oxford’s doubles tournament on 7 th February. Each entrant was allowed to use the contents of any one Warhammer Battalion box. I swear I spent at least three seconds contemplating the purchase of a battalion box with the attribute ‘not Empire’. The Hochlanders in this battalion will form the basis of the army I’ll be painting up for the Beard Bunk

First Nurgle Models!

Greetings fellow bunker dwellers, 'tis I, the Pirate Viking, with the first models of my "Insert cool campaign name here" Nurgle army. The first thing that should strike you is that the armour looks a bit, um, ragged. This is for a reason, I want these guys in corroded armour and by attacking them with a dremel for a while I create texture for the Jeffrust to work with. The second thing might be the lack of a banner, shields or a couple of heads. The first element is just to make it easier to paint the standard bearer. The solid plastic banner is a big ol' slice of win but it is somewhat large and gets in the way of the brushwork. The same problem informs the leaving of the shields until later. The lack of heads is because I am eagerly awaiting a parcel from a Polish company by the name of Puppetswar . This will contain some suitably gribbly-wibbly heads to adorn five out of 14 models in each of the units. Should provide some icky character. With the banner

A Slightly Icky Backstory...

Greetings all, I have been musing about the units in my army and how they relate to one another. From this I have built the backstory of my Nurgle host. Essentially it breaks the army down into two parts, a cultist host and a classic Northern wastes warrior contingent. The (slightly icky) backstory is as follows: There were two elements of the plague ridden army that choked the Old World that year, the worshippers of the Flylord and the elite followers of a Nurgle Warlord Gyles Pestilens. The Flylord was the many blessed former Sigmarite priest in Averland who saw the truth of Nurgle during an outbreak of the red pox. He had lost faith in Sigmar's power when first the Orc raiders had swept across the region and then the plague followed. He began to preach not the mercy of the hammer and the two-tailed comet but instead the acceptance of fate and the tolerance of the afflicted. His words and the passing of the plague from the region swayed the people and a plague cult began

How I avoid hobby burnout

Many hobbyists imagine creating an army this big... ...and end up creating this instead: If you just had a twinge of recognition, I feel your pain. Or rather, twenty-one unpainted Dark Eldar models and three discarded Tyranid Warriors (amongst many others) feel your pain. New projects: they're great, unless you have too many of them. I can get excited about many many things, if I let myself get carried away. I’ll have what some call ‘Hobby Butterfly’ syndrome, and develop Sprue Blindness (when you have so many unassembled models populating your house that you can no longer decide where to begin). Clearly, this is unacceptable. There must be control. CONTROL! Control is good, unless you assert too much of it. I can do an amazing job of making solemn promises of army monogamy. Quoth the army selection techpriest, “Do you, Charlie, take this Space Marine army to be your rules-compliant list? To have and to hold, ‘till death do it sunder on turn three or thereabouts?”

Throwing shapes in the church of words...

When Jeff first suggested a long term project based around the idea of building an army over a year then playing a healthy 7 day long campaign my mind was lit up with ideas and possibilities. However, the organized part of my brain took over and I was full of questions. Which system? What points value are we aiming at? What stage in the time line? What is the narrative? Is there any way of including lots of tanks? After a series of emails going between us we came at the conclusion that Warhammer Fantasy is where it’s at. 2000pts is a good solid army size, you can have some epic games at 2k but it isn’t too large that the fatigue sets in. After all this was decided it was fairly late in the day and my head was full of ideas and schemes and plots and tea. That night I couldn’t sleep, my mind was too full of ideas. However, the one central theme to these was that I didn’t actually know what I wanted to do. I had recently started on the Island of Blood Skaven, partly as a way to introduce

Selecting an army, the Jeff way

Once we had decided on Warhammer as our campaign I had to select an army. I always go about this the same way. First, I grab a list of all the armies to remind me of all my options: I then go through and eliminate all the options that I have either done recently or am simply not excited by: Now each army needs to be thought about in more detail. I have a look through the model range, imagine colour schemes and see which ones light my fire mentally. With that done the list looks more like this: I was left with a choice of Vampire Counts, Daemons or Warriors of Chaos. I eliminated Vampires early on as the idea of the campaign for me was that it was going to be a wholly new army. I had already started painting my vamps and had put them aside to wait for the rumoured new book (now confirmed of course). I was therefore left with Daemons or Warriors. I love the idea of Daemons, have even thought of doing the 40k crossover idea using some Litko round base movement trays to facilitat

Nerd transmogrification 7% complete...

As the newest recruit to war gaming by a long shot I fear all I can offer this blog is my somewhat bewildered observations of an unfamiliar and mystifying world. My knowledge of Warhammer races and the realm in which they live is somewhere between scanty and non-existent. I do love fantasy in general however (Tolkien, George RR Martin, Robin Hobb etc) and I inherited the model railway gene from my Grandad so the leap into miniature armies full of orcs, dragons and elves shouldn't strain too many muscles. The sum of my Warhammer experience so far is a handful of trial games against seasoned generals who at first went 'soft' on me. Then they started to play properly (darn) and jolted me into an uncomfortable realisation that if I want my ponies to live, (and I do, I really do), I might actually have to pay attention and not rely solely on lucky dice rolls. Splitting an Island of Blood set as a first purchase seemed an economical choice - the High Elves were shiny and m