Games Day UK 2011 - Golden Demon - Things I Noticed

so intriguingly it appears the times they are a changing.  First of all it appears they have reduced the first cut field substantially, I noticed only about 30 green stickers for 40K single miniature this year, a trend that was continued throughout the cabinets.  This makes it much more significant to even place these days so adds a bit more kudos to your effort which is nice (even if I didn't make it lol).  Also a lot of very nice, but heavily sculpted miniatures were either ignored or purposely discounted by the judges.  It seems they favoured small conversions using available GW parts over sculpting.  This seems like a good change as it makes it more a painting competition and less a sculpting competition.  However this ranged to the ridiculous in the WFB single miniature category where about two thirds of the finalists where the new GW single character plastics.  There were still the usual WTF!! entries as usual too, like this:

Lord of the Rings seemed hugely under subscribed compared to any other year, I guess GW are banking on the Hobbit to turn the lack of interest around.  Overall I felt there was a lot of variety this year with lots of good ideas to be inspired by (rip off shamelessly) even if not always the best executed.

Games Day UK 2011 - Golden Demon

I just took photos of things that caught my eye, many photos were too blurry to be worth keeping due to annoying small children fidgeting.  Also no photos of armies on parade due to the lighting and distance to the entries making it impossible to get even a mediocre photo.

Thats it for photos i'll put some commentary in the next post.

Games Day UK 2011 - Forgeworld

First up are the ubiquitous Forgeworld loves dreadnoughts photos

The Khorne Contemptor is a conversion not a new kit but showa what can be done with a few bits of brass etch and some Bolter chain-bayonets.

Now into the new stuff we have the Rapier Laser Destroyer up first though the crew haven't been started yet.

The new Phoenix Lord for the Shadow Spectres with some kind of pimp-cannon

The Space Wolf character Bran Redmaw (can't say i'm keen on the axe head), his Wulfen form is WIP but wasn't shown to my knowledge.

We also have some pic's of the re-imagined MK1 Land Raider

And finally some Boarding Marines with a Macharius Omegon (sp?) in the background.

Games Day UK 2011 - Warhammer Forge

So onto the photos though there will be the occasional bit of dribble inserted seemingly at random.

First up Chaos Dwarves.

The first Elemental incarnation, one is planned for every lore of magic.

The following big fellow is for an upcoming supplement that seems to build on Storm of Magic featuring  fifty odd or so more obscure monsters of the warhammer world.

They also want to do some frogs for all the races for any magical mishaps.

I have to say despite my bad photography this Wight Battle Standard Bearer is an absolutely gorgeous model, top notch and great value IMHO.

And last but not least a Skaven Doggy for Whoretongue Hook

Games Day UK 2011

Over the next few posts i'll be publishing the photo's I took yesterday at Gamesday.  It has to be said there wasn't an awful lot of new stuff there this year compared to previous years.  GW only showcased products already on sale/advance orders that were Fantasy related, there was nothing at all for 40K and no hints at all were given, not even a tease.

  Forgeworld brought some new things but again not on the same scale as before, though still nice to see they made an effort for their customers.  Once again Forgeworld were the most fun/interesting to chat with, it's always worth taking the time to chat with them.

Fantasy Flight brought plenty of product and had some good but limited demo games going on for people to try their products.  These guys really needed more room though did the best they could with limited resources.

As far as Golden Demon and Armies on parade went there was good variety and generally high standard though LotR single mini was woefully under subscribed.  The Armies on parade were also let down by how they were displayed, very difficult to see detail (let alone photo) due to being a long way behind barriers and low to the floor.  The trophy ceremony is a joke every year due to the too small and awful resolution screen used to display the winners, sometimes it was difficult to work out what a miniature was let alone see the paint job.

The retail areas were a mixed bag, the queue to get in was horrendous (i waited two hours) probably due to combining all three retail areas into one space.  Though once inside actually getting the product (barring very odd stock levels) was very quick due to plenty of staff and the new till area was a vast improvement over having the staff handle cash at each stand.

Anyway time for photos!

Well I'm back

Well as you might have guessed I'm back from my annual sojourn to the states. I'll be off to Gamesday UK next weekend so expect a big photo update after that. I should be trying to get something painted or tidied up from a previous year to enter Golden Demon and although the mind is willing the flesh is weak.

So keep your eye's peeled and see what develops.