AoS Open Day - 13th August 2016

[Andy Talbot]

Hi everyone, First post of this type before. Hope you enjoy.

Last weekend I was lucky enough to attend the AoS Open Day at Warhammer World. It was a very long day for me, getting in the car at 5am to pick up my good friend Sparky and make the drive up to Nottingham.

The drive up was full of excitement in itself. Discussing the 3 ways to play from the General’s Handbook, what could possibly be coming in the future for AoS and what cool things we could possibly be seeing once we got there. It is safe to say that the drive went extremely quick; despite me going the wrong way.

We got there about 45mins before doors opening… Because we’re clearly fanboys! We bumped into Tim Fisher of Mierce Miniatures who was very happy about the announcement that a Fimir Noble would be available at the event. Tim then went on to inform us of the history and background of the Fimir as a race… It’s, interesting. But I’ll let you google that. Also in the queue was Dan Mitchell from the Tales of Sigmar podcast, enthusiastic as ever to buy everything on offer at the event. We spent pretty much the whole day wondering around fanboying with Dan and his love of all things hobby is incredibly infectious.

We got in and obviously we all went straight to the sales stand for all of the Open Day exclusives. This was especially important for me given that I had a list of exclusives to pick up for others unable to make it on the day. It’s at this point when I may have tripped into the Forge World store. To this day I still have no idea how I ended up with a Dread Saurian?! But I do know that it is the reason I am posting this way later than I had planned… It’s VERY pretty!!

So after I had dusted myself down after my trip we all headed over to the studio hall where we were greeted by numerous AMAZING sites. There were Forge World sculpts yet to be released, like the Khorne Daemon Prince and the Fimir Noble as well as some still in progress, like the quite simply RIDICULOUS Khorne Dragon. This things wing is as big as a Dread Saurian! 1 wing! I was not happy that my newly purchased dinosaur had just been dwarfed, but the dragon was undeniably cool. With the sculpts in progress for more Fimir characters also on show I think it’s safe to say that Tim was beaming at this point.

It’s probably worth mentioning at this point that I have added the photos I took on the day to the Age of Sigbrah Facebook page that you can find here: Age of SigBrah. So please check them out if you are interested in the photos or possibly the podcast

We also had a great chat with the guys responsible for building some of the amazing displays in the Studio Tour at Warhammer World. The new Sylvaneth display is made using actual trees… who knew!? It looked amazing. It was especially interesting to have a chat with them about what they had used to get such a realistic looking forest floor. You can see all the materials they used in one of the pics on the FB page. For someone who is still just used to sanding a base and adding static grass it opened my eyes to a lot more of what I could do on the basing front.

Next were the absolute stars of the ‘Eavy Metal team. Talking to these guys and picking their brains about how they painted some of the amazing models we see on the box art and in White Dwarf is absolutely priceless. Finding out that the smoke that is pluming out of the staff of the Orruk Wierdnob is done using mostly washes was something I wasn’t expecting. It was also the most nerve-wracking experience of my day as I was handed it by one of the team so I could have a closer look. I was worried that I’d forget how my hands worked… But I got threw it.

Golden Demon was next on our to-do list and although the number of entrants was smaller than I was used to seeing at the old Games Day events, the quality of entrants was extremely high. It also highlighted my need for a better camera as the shots I did take really do NOT do these models justice. Congratulations to Steve Wren and Andrew Burton for getting finalist pins, really well deserved; but the biggest congratulations for me has to go to Ben Foote for getting Bronze in the Young Bloods category with his very cool Skaven Warlord. I guess it wouldn’t be a war gaming event without one of the Foote clan winning something now would it

That left the Studio Tour for us to do. Now this was something we had all done before so our focus was really on the new displays in the hall and I have included some pics of these below. If you have not been on this tour and get the chance to I would highly recommend it. Given that this is the second time I have walked through there it’s still just nerd heaven; you really do get lost in there. Still couldn’t see that damn Vindicare Assassin that is on the huge Ultramarine/Khorne display in the middle of the tour though L

Big thanks to everyone I spoke to at the event, I had an awesome time. Also quick shout out to SCGT champ Rob Symes, who was the events videographer for Warhammer TV. We clarified that the effects of 3 Hurricanums do NOT stack; no need for that polygraph I don’t think

Andy

[Chris Tomlin]

Great post @Andy Talbot (I'm out of "Likes" for the day, but I do like it! ), glad you had such a good day, gutted I couldn't come with you. At least I got my sweet Ironjawz swag tho!  

I didn't realise they actually let you hold the models, that's pretty cool!

Definitely want to make it to the next one now!!