Warhammer World

A slightly belated post, but during our trip to London I did manage to squeeze in a bit more hobby time than just Salute. The day before Salute I took the train to Nottingham for a pilgrimage to a place I've been wanting to visit since first picking up the hobby in the 90s and reading about the place in some White Dwarfs. Somehow I've never gotten around to visiting it even though I've had multiple trips to the UK close by to Nottingham.

Filled with boyish excitement I was a bit afraid that the place would be  bit of a let down with all the expectations that I had, but boy did it deliver. After dealing with the slightly overly friendly (at least from a Finnish viewpoint) staff I had my tickets in hand and was ready to embark on the adventure. And to be honest the first small entrance room already had me won over with a collection of classic 80s and  90s Citadel miniatures on show. It was great to see a diorama with Wood  Elf riders charging a necromancer from '97 that I'd seen in a White Dwarf and which had inspired me to start my first  proper Fantasy army, Wood Elves.

Of course the place was quite showroom like, with most of the areas filled with display cabinets showing of the different miniatures that GW makes, but still they are  amazing minis and are a joy to look at especially with all the 'Eavy Metal team paintjobs. Still the dioramas are what everyone comes there for and those didn't disappoint. An Age of Sigmar diorama actually even came close to bringing me to like the new Sigmarines. Dangerous thoughts these...

There were many amazing dioramas. Naturally the main display piece featuring a massive battle between Ultramarines and Chaos was amazing, but for me at least some of the smaller ones really came out on top. It was hard to decide my favorite between an Imperial parade or a rescue mission to save the crew of a crashed Valkyrie transport from the midst of an Ork town. Amazing pieces and both telling a nice story as well. An underground battle between Dwarves and Skaven was also very well done and looking at it from different directions you could always find a new tunnel piece or some details that you'd missed before.

A trip to Warhammer World can't be complete without a couple of pints at Bugman's and some greasy food to go with it. I was actually quite surprised that the beer was so good, but then again it would probably be a criminal act to make crappy beer in England. With a couple of pints down my throat it was time to go visit the shops. I did restrain myself quite well, but Forge World got the best of me and I bought some Alpha Legion upgrade bits and specialist weapons. I've been building plenty of 40k minis over the last few years as a way of relaxing by kitbashing stuff, but nothing has ever really gotten painted for reasons unknown. I guess it's starting to be high time that I fix that thing as well.

All in all it was a great day, and to be honest maybe even better than Salute. I've just been itching to see the place for over 15 years now and to actually finally get to see all the stuff fullfilled my childhood dreams. Now I just have to figure out when to get in the next visit as it felt like there was always something new to spot in the displays :)

To round it up a largish picture dump in the end

Fantasy dioramas

Fantasy display cabinets

40k dioramas

40k single minis
 

 

Hobby musings

It's been nearly a month since I managed to post anything on the blog and even before that there was quite a pause. After the painting challenge I had a massive slump in painting time and frankly didn't really get anything done the whole of April. Now with May having come in I've slowly been getting my gears turning again and minis are getting painted!

My painting station is quite a mess at the moment with tons of half finished projects in there and everything just randomly thrown in. There's a bunch of monsters for Frostgrave, loads of Flames of War stuff, some 40K chaos and yet more Epic 40k Space Marines that are all in a varying state of readiness. I really need to get my act together and start finishing stuff to clear the table as it's now in the state that it starts to feel a bit overwhelming at times! Luckily about half the Frostgrave stuff is just waiting for basing as are the Terminator units for Epic 40k (which actually have been painted for nearly a month now). I guess it's slowly getting there.

Even though I haven't been painting too much, I've actually gotten quite a few games in with multiple Flames of War games, as well as some Hail Caesar and the first games of our Frostgrave campaign. So all in all quite an active period, just not on the painting table. There was also a new event in the Finnish wargaming calendar with Porocon being held for the first time. The event featured the national championships in Magic the Gathering and also had a large 40k tournament running. My club was there to promote other aspects of miniature gaming with 3 historical games on show as well as an Infinity game. I was running Flames of War with a Market Garden scenario from Band of Brothers featuring the attack on Nuenen.

I also scored quite a nice find from the 2nd hand market there with a guy selling old Citadel stuff as well as boardgames. I bought myself a Leonardo di Miraglio mini that I'd been looking for for months already. But when I saw a Team Yankee boardgame from the 80s going for 5 euros, I couldn't help myself and had to get it. I've tested it playing against myself and it seems to be a pretty decent game even if slightly favoring the Americans. Still it's funny to throw that in when other are playing the Flames of War variant :)

I've also finally managed to go through the last pictures from our trip to UK and edited all the hundreds of pictures from Warhammer World. So stay tuned for that :) Hopefully the wait won't be as long as it was between the last couple of posts.