WarhammerFest 2017: Part I - All The New Things

Pictured: The Forge World Seminar, 3 people taking photos
on their phones, and an ear from someone from
Blood of Kittens

So, this weekend I was at WarhammerFest 2017. On the Saturday I dived pretty much straight into the Forge World seminar once out of the queues. I wasn't taking notes, as the Warhammer Community site and various news blogs do a good enough job that I don't need to do a blow by blow, and can just experience it.

The seminar opened with the sad news of the loss of Alan Bligh. It must have been hard for those who knew him well, but they soldiered on and did their best to make the event an enjoyable experience for everyone.

There was little new information for Age of Sigmar from Forge World - the Khornate Dragon is basically done, but a decision was made to re-do the Khornate Lord, which has held it back a bit. There's now a plan to start a dedicated Age of Sigmar team within Forge World - the applications for the manager role closes today. If the Specialist Games team are anything to go by, we can expect a lot of awesome stuff once they've assembled their team.

40K wise, the "Fires of Cyraxus" book was delayed because it would have come out too close to 8th edition. There will be four "Index" books to cover the new rules for all the existing Forge World models - price point likely to be £15. They're also releasing the Chapter Master of the Blood Ravens and re-doing some of the Tau fighters that were a bit hard to assemble.

For Horus Heresy, it was mostly Sisters of Silence and Custodes, with a few teasers of "Angelus", the next Heresy book. The big news was that Heresy will be staying with 7th edition, and a "red book" of 7th edition rules for Heresy released soon-ish.

The licensing area had a whole bunch of cool stuff. Pictured was the game Doomwheel, which involves a sideways scrolling Doomwheel dodging obstacles and running over clan rats...

Also around was Dawn of War III, Mordheim: City of the Damned showing off a VR rig version of their game, Man O'War Corsair and Mordheim: Warband Skirmish. I got to try Warband Skirmish (and bought it) and also tried Corsair, and love it and plan on buying it. ;)

Back to the miniatures! Here's a new Primaris Marine in a size comparison with a traditional Marine. It gives you a good idea of how they'll fit into a force together if you were so inclined.

Meanwhile, here's a Primaris painted up as a Blood Raven, which is pretty awesome.

Sim and I got to get a quick test game of the new Warhammer 40,000. I played some Primaris Hellblasters, while Sim picked the Foetid Blight Drone. The game itself was a score draw, but we got a good idea of the new mechanic and had a bunch of fun.

From what we played, the new game is fun, plays quickly and should be pretty quick to get the hang of. Now we're both really looking forward to the new release.

And finally for today, I saw the new sprues for the 40K objectives that are being released at the same time. I was impressed by the technique of casting one sprue with both clear and opaque plastic, and tweeted about it. Sadly, it seems at least one rumour blog has since re-posted it without attribution, but these things seem to happen these days.

The technology isn't new - Gundam kits and similar have been doing this sort of thing for a little while. But it's exciting to see GW doing it, and realising what it will mean for canopies and similar in future kits.