Sunday 5 June 2011

What a weekend!!!

Had a quite busy Saturday trekking all the way over Mansfield to get some pictures of some of the excellent Banelegion miniatures at the Maelstrom for a piece I'm planning on doing on them, I was just going to talk through them... but the Terror of Fortriu was starring at me and the Vagrant Knight demanded I take him home with me as well, so more toys:



Suffice to say they're both stunning pieces that I'd wholeheartedly recommend to any painter who just wanted really nice miniatures to do, but I'll be reviewing them and doing some painting guides for them at some point I'm sure, so enough of those for now. I also had to pick up some Nomads because I had to order some Tech-bases from Dragon Forge Miniatures for a review for you guys; see how professional am I, OK maybe that's a weak excuse for getting a load of gorgeous Nomad toys:



I still have the Bakunin Starter Set to turn up as well... seriously stop me buying more fecking toys PLEASE!!! Trundled all the way back home to Birmingham and started putting together the those Firestorm Armada fleets ready to review for you guys. Those will be up either Monday or Tuesday now.

However that's not all, because today (Sunday) I went to the UK Game Expo 2011 and spent yet more money than I should have this month. Mainly on buying chess!!! Yep you read that right I brought chess, but with a twist, that devious Italian Alessio Cavatore has found a way of selling me chess again... but it is a genius little game and I really didn't mind paying for it. Review coming up.


He also played another friend of mine who was at the Warmachine Tournament, we call him 'hobby killer' on account of the fact that if a game can be broken he'll find a way of doing it!!! Needless to say the wily Italian beat him at his game of Chess meets wargaming called Shuuro, honestly its genius.

Also bumped into another ex-Games Workshop staffer on the Mantic stands pimping out his excellent Dwarf Kings Hold in a 3 up scale, Jake Thornton. Not too sure how after 3 days of playing the game in a stuffy room he managed to be so jovial and friendly as he was, but he did. I don't know what happy juice he was taking but I want some. The 3 up game looked ace and it was just a shame I didn't get a chance to give it a go because of the queue, looks like it was incredibly popular, and given the news that Mantic have sold out of the initial run I think its fair to say it has been. Jake is always a top bloke to talk to and very knowledgeable about the hobby, again a review of Dwarf Kings Hold is coming up very soon. I also took a look at the Kings of War Miniatures on show and I have to say on the whole I'm really quite impressed with what I saw, the Abyssal Dwarfs, Dwarfs, Orcs and Undead all looked really, really good and especially good considering the cost and the quantity you get in a box! I'm starting to understand exactly what it is Ronnie Renton and Mantic games are up to, because at first I wasn't sure. I grabbed a copy of the rules from Alessio Cavatore and will look to give it a go to see what its all about, however its not all great, because I'm unsure of the Elves and Normally its Elves that I would look to do, but they looked a bit too scrawny for me, although I know some people like them. Those Orcs though I could see myself collecting as they're lovely.


Wandered around the rest of the show and realised just how much RPG and board game stuff there is out there that quite frankly I'd never heard of and will never have the time to play. An awful lot of the stuff was to be honest crap, I'm amazed at just how many games that were quite frankly poor clearly had enough support to keep going, all the rubbish made it quite hard to find the gems. But hey I did bump into some of the staff from the Maelstrom on the Banelegion stand and they very nearly convinced me to by more stuff... eeek... I also bumped into Cat Women, Bobba Fett, Supergirl and a few others. I was really surprised to see how well supported the Warmachine Tournament actually was, as there were loads of people playing it!!! Looks like it might finally be taking off!!! All in all not a bad day.

I came home and finished off putting together the 4 Firestorm Armada Fleets we started yesterday with my mate 'the cursed'... and we had our first rough game (no pics as they were unpainted), just to get used to the rules. Of course I won, because 'the cursed' can't win games when there are dice involved!!! I'll be popping my reviews of the fleets up some point during this week and I'll be doing my first painting guide on my Sorylians, I had an idea for a colour scheme weeks ago and in the rulebook there was a very similar scheme and now I know it'll sort of work. As for the game? It looks quick, fast paced, action packed, intuitive and above all else fun... so far it looks very, very encouraging. I'll have to get my space board and some planets knocked out quickly because I really, really want to play some more games now. Peace out!

2 comments:

  1. Ah cool, I had wondered what Jake Thornton was getting up to these days.

    If nothing else, GW is good for training up people so they can leave, and give their creative talents full freedom when they move to other companies :)

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  2. Yeah I always liked Jake, I know as a GW rules writer he would have been persona non grata for many I think much of that is more to do with how people who... how can I put this... are a little more 'involved' with the hobby view all GW rules writers regardless of the job they actually did.

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