Warhammer Fest run down

[haywiregrenade]

Hey all

So I attended the new Games Day format now known as the Warhammer Fest on Saturday only.

The weekend was split in 2 with the Golden Daemon part now on Sunday only. I can't really comment on that, but head to Tale of Painters as Stahly and Garfy both went and a write up will be forthcoming.


So the venue itself, the Ricoh Arena - home of Coventry City Football club was the place chosen. No we were not on the pitch, but they have a conference venue thing on the side.
Parking - plenty of car parking, and all free.
Queuing. Doors opened at 10, we got there at 09:20. While in the queue we got our FW seminar tickets, lanyards for our tickets, event programs, and new FW catalogue. Not a bad use of time. Once the doors opened we were in within 5 minutes. 

Three floors of activity.
The ground floor had a couple of food vendors - nothing exciting - burgers, coffee and soft drinks kind of thing. Not overly cheap, but what can you do?
the ground floor also housed the "Jaguar suite" which was a large room that hosted the sales area for GW and FW, plus some side boards for participation gaming. There were 4-5 boards including a lovely Egyptian themed one for a Nagash/Setra fight.

Sales was the first area we hit so we can bag all the shopping, ditch it back in the car then spend the day looking at the other things. We were in, shopped out to the max and ditched everything in the car by 11am. That was pretty good, and would have been quicker if I was not blowing a months mortgage money on resin goodies. I speeded things up by having a pre-prepared shopping list with product codes on them so the guy got everything I needed pretty quick. Some things needed mail ordering which was fine.
Straight to the tills, no real queue here either. Handed over the goods, the mail order list and a bucket of vouchers. (We buy vouchers through our local GW store to keep our manager happy, the offload at WHW/events!)

Back in we headed for the second floor. This had lots of cool art to go look at, plus all the studio painted models seen in the mag recently. Nagash and armies of undead, the new Nurgle stuff, some knights etc. You got to see real close up these models which was awesome. Again no real queues to get round here.
Also present were WD guys< Jervis and some games designers and the studio painting team. Plenty to ask and chat about here without feeling jostled.
The seminar room for FW was also here.

Third floor was the FW floor (and Golden Demon glass cabinets iready for Sunday). Here were the model makers and designers, painters, and art guys who do really cool things with photos of real models and then draw in all the backgrounds to make them look awesome in the books. This was truly fascinating to chat to Rhys as he showed us the magic of Photoshop to render a shot taken from a display board and turned it into something awesome with rain, shadows, bases removed from models, machine gun fire etc. 
Had a good chat with the FW dudes about the Titans, the new models coming up etc.

There were some stunning display boards here too. Last years Zone Mortalis had been expanded a little containing the Fists v IW
A new board containing a monorail, train yard with huge cranes etc. Looked amazing! Mechanicum v Alpha Legion on this.

Attended a couple of the painting pods. One on Zenith highlighting and one on vehicle weathering. Also attend the FW Seminar. The pods were cool. A nice big TV and close cam while the guy had various staged models or parts you could look at and see what was being achieved. We saw the progression of a Sicaran tank side skirts being weathered over 4-5 stages. Very clever idea. Seating for about 20, but plenty of standing room too.

All in all very impressed. Only 1500 or so people there, over three floors meant no over crowning and queues to get around to see various people.

So whats new?
Well FW have showed us the WIPs of Sevetar and Konrad Curze
Concept art for the new Heresy Ultramarines. Very Roman esque with lots of gold bling.
Heresy Book 4: Conquest. Contains 4 battle zones, rules for Somes of Horus, Deathguard, Fragments of the IW, Sallies and Fists post Istvaan (not sure how Fists fit here!), Mechanicum, Dark Mechanicus, Solar Auxilia, more Knights and more Titans

Heresy Book 5: Tempest - Calth wars so Ultras v Word Bearers. Saw a couple of concept art models for the Bearers.

New weapons for the Reaver titan - Volcano Cannon and a Chain Fist
Imperial Fist models - Sword Brethren and Shield dudes - look TOTALLY badass
A Leman Russ with a Volkite Cannon
Solar Auxila lasrifle section, volkite and flamer units too
The Knight Cerastus pattern is now finished (Lancer, Castigator and Acheron version). A new chassis will be coming out that is likely to be smaller, but more stocky with a bugger gun on!
A new Heresy Masterclass book is near completion. I love the first 2 masterclass books, so this will also be amazing.

Hobby love restored!

[Brassaxe]

Good write up, sounds like you had fun.

[haywiregrenade]

Yeah I was impressed and had a great day out! So much cool stuff. The new Ultramarine stuff is going to be awesome. I would put pics here, but there are so many on Facebook from various groups its easy to find them!

[jason1977]

Oct 13, 2014 14:32:44 GMT haywiregrenade said:

The new Ultramarine stuff is going to be awesome.

Would you know if the UM stuff you mentioned here is the same UM stuff mentioned here at BoLS that comes out b4 some DA stuff??

www.belloflostsouls.net/2014/10/gw-designer-q-horus-heresy-more.html

[haywiregrenade]

He was at the same seminar as me, so this is the same info.

But the comments are bang on. This is Warhammer Fest. Where was the public arm of GW with the direction of 40k and future stuff? Its all FW who have a public face to them. And its not an underling either, its the boss Tony Cotrell and the chief write, Alan Bligh taking Q&A. And being FW, its predominantly 30k stuff, which holds the mega interest to most attending to be honest.

I hope the new CEO of GW does something to shake this up on the plastics front.

[Farseer Kyladras]

Great write up thanks Nick, how would you say it compared to previous games days? Yeah I know technically it's not games day but it's obviously the new 'counts as' games day...

FK

[paladin7221]

From the write-up, it sounded more of a Forge World Open Day no. 2!

[haywiregrenade]

Well while GW themselves seem content to hide behind the mask as it were, the likes of FW are taking full advantage of transparency and a road map of products which means more write ups as people have something to report!
GW had nothing. The usual past and present stuff from Space Hulk, the DE codex, to show how things have changed. Stuff straight from the museum at WHW basically.
They had their own pods but they were specific on pretty much DE stuff. How to basic paint, how to build. Migh thane been some orky and nurgle stuff there too.

But with FW doing more advance painting skills, and talking about their plans, it does become a FW take over.

For me it took the best parts of GD2013 - like making the team behind the company more accessible, resolving the retail side of things, and making it less crowded in general. It felt like it was aimed at the older gamer and not the kids. Getting rid of participation games is by far the best thing they did.