The story so far...
The Space Bastards is my 18mm scale Chaos Space Marine Chapter. This webpage is a log where I will share photographs and thoughts about the project.
A friend and I entered into the whole âweird scale 40kâ thing to ease us back into wargaming after both taking a long time out due to ill health and real life. Itâs a game that we both know like the back of our hands, and weâd do it in 18mm scale for ease of modelling, transport and storage. The idea was that itâd be an âcasual, casual easy thingââwith my force literally being âBilly Bob and the Space Bastardsâ and theirs the âPoncy Space Elfsââwhere we wouldnât get all perfectionist and could just model and paint for the fun of it again, like back in the good old days.
I started posting about it on the Lead Adventure forum in 2024, although I honestly did not have much to show for my efforts posted there. When Imgur had itâs spat with the British government and nuked all of my image links, I looked for an alternative place to share my images and whatnot. I tried to start a blog via Googleâs blogger, but something about what I was doing (Iâve no idea what!) was causing Googleâs algorithm to repeatedly misidentify my blog as a bot account, and disable and delete it â so Iâve given up on that. Someone far more hip and happening than me suggested that I give Tumblr a try. It does seem that Tumblr has all the features I need â really just text and stable, free image hosting. Honestly, before this-morning Iâd never been on Tumblr, initially tried to spell it with an âeâ (like a glass tumbler), and it was just a place where people ran fan clubs for dirty stories about Harry Potter.
Anyway, Space BastardsâMy enthusiasm for the project picked up again in late 2025; or rather, my health got back to the point where I could actually start sitting down and modelling and painting again around then.
Iâd actually been twiddling away with the project the whole time, just without much to physically show for it. What I had done is daydreamed about The Space Bastards an awful lot, and chatted on a weekly basis to my pal about them. Iâd come up with a whole background story for them, and Iâd spent more hours than I care to admit looking for just the right models to play them on the battlefield. Although I was not able to sit down and paint at all, I did learn enough about 3D modelling to be able to twiddle with some models. It has been quite the godsend to have something to idly fiddle about with in the back of my mind through what proved to be some pretty rocky months and years. Iâmâ'touch-woodâ, and all thatâat a point now where Iâm hoping be able to do some actual modelling again. Iâm still getting tired pretty easily, and having to take a lot of ârest daysâ, but even on those Iâve got the acuity to something, so I thought Iâd try to write down some of my daydream background fluff on the very off chance anyone should care to read it, and I suppose, more than that, to have something concrete to show for this whole business.
So, that's where we're at.














