A random display at Warhammer World

 

Between the heat, work being busy, and deep unpacking, I've not got much done of late. So here's some photos of a cool army in the Warhammer World display cabinets.

It seems to be an undead / underwater kitbash theme, and I'm not sure what they're meant to be. I couldn't see a thing saying who made it. Please do let me know if you know!

The hermit crab with cannon was what got my attention originally. Maybe the army is "Cities of Sigmar" given there's a handgunner in a crows nest?

The person I was with an I spent ages trying to spot all the parts - I reckon there's an idoneth boat, gobin giant spider, Tyranid claws and an ogre cannon. Am I missing anything?

Wot I did on my holidays

We got back last night from a short holiday with my lovely wife, which included a few bits of gaming related stuff which I thought my readers might be interested in.

We dropped into Warhammer World a couple of times. Bugmans remains a reliable place to meet up with other nerds and chat nonsense. As is the way of things, various people we know from Twitter were present and we all only worked this out after we'd all left.

While I don't have any blog suitable photos, we also went to Cave Escape Nottingham with some friends to do their new Monuments escape room. We've previously done their other room, Carfax, and both are excellent. Monuments is a tough one, though - we were only the third team to ever escape, while it's been open two weeks.

Meanwhile, back at Warhammer World, Sim and I gave the 8th edition of Warhammer 40,000 a go. I've got a separate blog post coming up about my experiences with it. We decided to sort out the learning experience in two stages. The first was simply running a unit of Wychs into an unfortunate Guard infantry squad so Sim could get the differences from the last edition in terms of charges, attacks and so on. This, unsurprisingly, did not take long.

We then had a quick 25 power level game with Sim picking one of each of units she likes and me lining up some Guard to shoot back and be shot. It meant Sim got an idea of how a few different units performed in comparison to each other.

We avoided Command Points, Strategems and so on, and I didn't bother using Guard orders or anything like that. Sadly, as we were doing it in the evening at Warhammer World, we didn't quite get as far as we liked as they needed to close so their staff could sleep.

We also gave Warcry a quick demo on the other day we were in the store. I absolutely fell in love with it, but it didn't grab Sim sufficiently to justify her taking it up. I've definitely added a Warcry warband to my "to buy" list.

We popped into Chillcon on the Sunday for about twenty minutes before it closed. Didn't manage to do much other than buy a blister of Bones Black to see what it's like, and say hello to Annie from Bad Squiddo.

I've now got a week at home on holiday. I mostly plan on clearing down more of the massive eBay pile we've developed during the unpacking at the new flat. Lots of old abandoned projects need to move on to stop cluttering up the flat.

I'll also be aiming to get some painting done - I want to finish off my half finished bits and bobs and crack on with the next things in my painting pile. I'll report back next week!

Warhammer World: Some Battle Displays

In the last of the Warhammer World pictures from my January trip, here's the last of my photos. This set are the various "battle displays" in the exhibition areas. I don't have much to say about the different bits and pieces that caught my eye, so will just let you scroll through them at your leisure.

Warhammer World: A Creepy Armies on Parade Board

I absolutely loved this creepy Armies on Parade board that was on display in Warhammer World in January. The colour choices and conversions were amazing.

In the centre is a woman, who appears to be holding up a baby.

These dryad conversions seem to be a mix of daemonette parts and actual tree roots.

You then have these strange floating ladies on amazing bases themselves.

Sadly, I don't know the creator of the board, so please let me know if you happen to. It's a lovely display board and really inspiring for the sort of dark spooky stuff I'd like to be doing!

Warhammer World: Some Golden Demon Entries

More from the Warhammer World exhibitions - this time some Golden Demon entries. This Kal Jericho entry by Henry South won Silver in the Unbound category at the Horus Heresy and Necromunda Weekender in 2018.

This diorama by Michael Anderson won it's category at the Golden Demon Classic at WarhammerFest in 2018. Sadly, not really a great photo...

Another one from the Horus Heresy and Necromunda Weekender 2018 - this time an Escher Gang that won Bronze by Matt Wingrove - oddly enough, in the Necromunda Gang category...

And finally, the Silver from the Youngbloods category at the Age of Sigmar Open Day 2018. The skill level of the younger painters who enter Youngbloods blows my mind sometimes!

Warhammer World: Some Figures at the Museum

While I was at the Warhammer World Open Day in January, I took the opportunity to potter around the museum, on the grounds of it being free during events. I took a few photos while I was there, so thought I'd share for those of you who can't get to Warhammer World.

This isn't the usual set of photos from the exhibition. It's not an coherent or representative set of photos, but rather bits and bobs that caught my eye as a repeat visitor. First up were these lovely old monsters on the classic goblin green bases.

If we're talking about contrasts, the Idoneth Deepkin Avatar, with the massive cloak turning into a waterfall and clever use of negative space is the other end of the scale to the old style monsters. I hadn't realised just quite how big this model is!

There was a lovely mini diorama of a Lord of Change stepping through a realm gate.

Here, some mounted Stormcast face off against a dragon.

Ghouls versus Seraphon...

A giant having a little disagreement with a Kharadron Overlord airship.

A lovely Forge World knight. Mostly taken as I'd like one of the Forge World knights in the future but I really haven't decided which one yet.

Warhammer World New Year's Open Day: Staff Displays

Remember that New Year's Open Day I went to? There was a ton of cool staff hobby there, and I haven't posted the photos yet.

This is Andy Hoare's Space Slann army, which is rather obscure and pretty darned cool.

I think this is an early Confrontation / Necromunda playtest figure.

Some models from Jervis' collection, I believe.

Annoyingly, I didn't make a note of whose figure this was at the time, and now don't remember. It's a nice conversion I still wanted to share, tho!

Warhammer World New Year's Open Day - Painting Table

One of the things on offer at the Open Day was an opportunity to paint an already assembled Chaos Warrior and take them away with you afterwards. Having managed to paint nothing but scenery all last year, I was a bit nervous of getting back to painting, but I managed to get a bunch done and I was pretty pleased with how he turned out.

He's not quite finished yet, so I'm not ticking a figure off on the "figures painted this year" list, but it definitely enthused me to get more done - and reminded me what an hour or so of concentration and painting can actually achieve!

Warhammer World New Year's Open Day - All The Gossip

Without further ado, I'm going straight into the assorted pictures and nonsense I managed to pick up at the Open Day. There's no real revelations here - there's prettier pictures over at the Warhammer Community site - this is more about what I saw and what I thought about it.

Lets start off with Blood Bowl. The new stuff here was some additional Goblin Secret Weapons, including one with wings, one with a pogo stick, and an 'Ooligan with a bunch of noise making gizmos. These are the sort of thing I expect my darling wife may pick up at some point...

There's also an alternative troll sculpt if that's your thing. This one seems to be wielding someone's leg, which is pretty cool. Some extra variety is really nice to see.

Helmut Wulf and Karla von Kill had already been announced (and can in fact be ordered from Forge World now) but it was great to see them in the flesh. Karla is a bad-ass female character whose background is simply that she's a great Blood Bowl player. That she's sensibly dressed is a relief. Meanwhile, Helmut Wulf is a lunatic with a chainsaw. What could possibly go wrong?

On to Necromunda. If this figure looks familiar, that's because it was formerly available for the now discontinued Forge World Renegades range. The discontinuation inconveniently made it a little harder to get a Rogue Wyrd for your campaign, so he's getting a repackage and rerelease into Necromunda. Which is kind of sweet.

The Am-bot is a robot designed to look like an Ambull that any gang can hire. It looks like either there's more than one way to build the kit or more than one version going to be available. I love these to death, they're great.

Wait a second. A Blackstone Fortress expansion . . . called "The Dreaded Ambull". Surely not?

Apparently so! The Ambull is back in 40K as a monster in Blackstone Fortress. I cannot foresee a circumstance where I won't be buying this. It's amazing!

They also had an early copy of "Urban Conquest", a new campaign system for 40K. I really like this, it looks well thought through and rather clever.

You make a "map" of the city by dealing cards into a five by five grid in a wallet. It's designed for four players, with different starting map layout options. Each "campaign" turn can be after any number of games, including none if you've missed a round! You rank the players depending on how they did, then they do stuff like capture territory, select strategies for the next round of games, and accumulate their victory points.

This would be a lot of book keeping if there weren't reusable stickers supplied with the back so you can just fold the map up and get it out next time, with all the player positions and stratagems all neatly laid out. The designer also said it should work quite well for Kill Team. I'm not sure if it's designed for it or if it would need a little modding.

The pack is designed to handle the usual campaign woes of people missing weeks, or getting a drubbing and ending up near the bottom - it's intended to be quite forgiving of that and give people who are significantly behind ways to catch up. It's not just a case of winning the most games - if you outmanoeuvre the other players on the campaign board, you might win the campaign without having won as many games as them.
 

There were a bundle of other releases - this was a Mechanicus who'll be in a Kill Team expansion box. I'm assuming there will be 40K rules for them as well. There was also a ton of Genestealer Cult stuff, an announcement of a Ghoul vs Skaven box, and various other things I didn't have time to find and photograph.

The goblins, or "Gloomspite" were also out in force. Jes Bickham has been making an all troll / Troggoth army. I'm resisting things one for now - I had a few good talks about what I'm looking to get out of Age of Sigmar and I'm getting slightly more concrete thoughts about what I want to collect. I'm going to keep those to myself for now.

I'm pleased to say that a weekend away seeing amazing hobby stuff, and hanging out with awesome people has really ignited my hobby keen. I can't wait to get underway with various projects, and then tell you about them on here.