Preview to Warhammer Fest Europe 2018
With the Warhammer Fest Europe returns the former Games Day in a new form to Germany. But not like in the past events to Cologne, but to Duesseldorf.
On the 18th and 19th August 2018, so the coming weekend, Warhammer Fest Europe will be held on the European mainland. The Warhammer Community page covered the Warhammer Fest UK in an extensive post over here: Warhammer Fest Live Blog.
Why am I looking forward to the Warhammer Fest? For that, we have to first take a look back to the years of 2008 'til 2010, the last times I was to Games Day Germany in the famous Guerzenich. Imagine entering the grim dark world of Warhammer in a gothic building, in the heart of the old town of Cologne.
The new venue for Warhammer Fest Europe is the Maritim Hotel in Duesseldorf, so there will be plenty of room and parking (which was kind of a problem at the Guerzenich). You could even get there by plane due to the proximity to the airport, if you wanted to. Just make sure you land at Duesseldorf Airport (DUS) and not "Duesseldorf" Weeze (NRN).
Warhammer Koblenz Store Opening Party
Today, on August 4th, was the store opening of the new Warhammer store in Koblenz, Germany. I did a preview to this event two weeks ago, A Warhammer store on my door step. The store is located quite central in the city, right next to the shopping mall Löhr Center, so you can get there quite easily by public transport, train or car. I could have gotten there by foot, back in the day when I lived in Koblenz.
Around 10:45 I arrived at the store and there was already quite a queue, some even had brought along their camping chairs, like on the release events of Apple or other large companies. Among the crowd were a couple of cosplayers, resembling the Imperial Guard and troops of the Inquisition. I'm sure you have seen them at events like the RolePlayConvention in Cologne or former Games Days.
A Warhammer store on my doorstep
Earlier this year I saw an unexpected advertisment by Warhammer Recruiting on my facebook feed. They are looking for a Store Manager in Koblenz. Wait a minute? Koblenz? That's my (former) home town. That would mean ... that can't be ... a "real" Warhammer Store right on my doorstep?
I've lived in Koblenz, the beautiful city at Rhine and Mosel, for 7 years and if you would have told me, we would get a Games Workshop store in our city, I'd laughed and said no way. But on August 4th Warhammer Koblenz will open up. A bit strange feeling for me, the last time I've been to a Games Workshop Store Opening was almost 20 years ago. That was the Games Workshop in Darmstadt on June 26th 1999! I was there with my oldest friend, with whom I started wargaming back in the day.
DREADBALL EPISODE 1 – Team presentation: Marauders
Until Monday, July 9th 2018, Mantic is giving a 25% discount on all Dreadball teams. For us enough reason to launch a series of Dreadball focused articles, where we will introduce some of the teams and review both editions of the game. We`ll start with Darkhand's Disciples, a team of Marauders.
The Disciples are made up of ex-pirates and convicts. It is named after the notorious Orc general and raider Darkhand, who took so much pleasure in the game that he quickly set up an own one. Although Darkhand is no longer the owner of the team, the name persists.
Playwise Marauder teams consist of Guards and Jacks, while they don`t have Strikers at all (the type of player who is most likely to score points). While in the first edition of Dreadball they were able to keep up relatively well with the better teams, they find themselves more in the midfield in the second edition, as the Jacks got better, but with the amount of beafier teams, the Orcs got a little weaker.
Mantic Games Studio 2018
As mentioned earlier, we combined Salute in London with a day trip to Nottingham. First stop on friday morning was Mantic Studio. As with the Warhammer World, this wasn't the first time visiting Mantic. It was quite impressive to see, how Mantic has grown over the years.
My first visit at Mantics was 2010, back then Ronnie and his crew was located at "Mantic Towers" with roughly the space that the new front area covers. 2013, for the first Warlord Games Day, I was the second time at Mantics. They already moved to the outskirds of Nottingham then, and moved from an apartment to an independend office building with enclosed warehouse. Now Mantic has moved again, into an even larger office building, roughly twice the old building, covering a front desk with visitors area, multiple studio offices, production facilities and a warehouse.
In the front is a gaming area, with couple of tables and a front desk. Several games from the Mantic range were displayed, including the board games. On the front desk was a loose assembly of the new and upcoming terrain crates, along with announcements to the new Hellboy Kickstarter.
Salute 2018 Haul
The concluding post to our Operation Sealion 2018, the haul, the loot, the gathered goodies and shiny stuff made from metal, plastic and resin. If you're going by plane, make sure to have enough empty space in your luggage to cope with your buying. As mentioned before, I was quite happy about the shipping services of some of the companies (and that is the reason, why this post was postponed in comparison with the other coverage, as I was waiting for the remaining miniatures and kit to arrive).
But let's begin, this pile of boxes and blister is my yield of our trip to Nottingham and Salute. Let us begin with the main event, the Salute 2018. The South London Warlords did once again a great job with the show, and I made sure to get my hands on the 1918 memory event exclusive vignette, sculpted by Perry Miniatures. It shows a trio of Soldiers from World War one, a french, a british and a german soldier. The always have further souvenirs at their booth, so I made sure to grab two sets of dices (with a poppy on the six), a badge and a copy of last years female russian standard bearer miniature.
Warhammer World 2018 – Exhibition Centre Part 2
With the Old World covered in Part 1 of the Exhibition Centre article, this one focuses on the next two areas, with the (grim) dark Sci-Fi setting of the Warhammer 40,000 world, including the horus heresy and the main piece of the exhibition, Battle for Angelus Prime.
And be sure, the grim dark future of Warhammer 40,000 is not under represented. Indeed quite the opposite. The setting has outpaced the former bigger, fantasy brother in the last decade. This has many reasons, one of them surely the popularity of the Horus Heresy, which is although shown in its broad beauty, both in the newer plastics and extended Forge World resin range.
As promised above, Horus Heresy era World Eaters getting ready for battle, boarding several thunderhawks.
Warhammer World 2018 – Exhibition Centre Part 1
The exhibition hall at Warhammer World has a long tradition and has been redone in a couple of variations. For a short amount of time before the last huge overhaul, it was a medium sized room with show cabinets on all walls, covering the different armies from the Warhammer Fantasy and 40,000 ranges.
But that room is history and was replaced by a much larger installment. The new exhibition centre covers two floors and 4 areas, along with a huge centre piece, The Battle For Angelus Prime, that will be shown further below. Entry is 7,50 GBP per adult, 5 GBP for children from 12 to 17, younger kids are free. There are group and family tickets available as well.
Games Workshop has gathered some of their first products, released back in the days when they were a publishing company, along with going through their archives to bring back some of the first models. Some of these pieces were shown on Games Days (those are called Warhammer Fest now), but are now presented in the first cabinets you see when you enter the exhibition centre.
Warhammer World 2018 – Hobby Centre, Gaming Area & Bugmans Bar
As our "Operation Sealion 2018" was not only build up on visiting Salute on Saturday, we did a tour to the lead belt of Nottingham, and I was eager to see the renovated Warhammer World, the head quarter of Games Workshop.
The entrance has been redone and the venue is now barrier free. The Rhino is still in the front, and yes it is functional, there are videos of it driving around on facebook.
The main office got its front re-designed. The Imperial Eagle was replaced by Sigmars Hammer during the release of Age of Sigmar. There are a couple of pictures from the old front in my 2004 coverage of Warhammer World. They even took down the Space Marine, guarding the office front and replaced it with the statue of a Stormcast Eternal. The old Space Marine can now be seen in the yard next to Bugmans Bar.
Salute 2018 – Part 3
As Salute being such an important event for the wargaming community, lots of companies schedule their announcements and releases for that particular saturday in April. Some of them are just teasered, some proudly announced in the newsletter before the show and others are huge surprises.
And as a enthusiast you have your hopes, what will be released or what is coming in the near future. Before the show, I hoped to have a chat with Perry Miniatures and ask them about the chances of upcoming Agincourt cavalry in plastic. And what can I say? I got lucky, there will be a plastic kit for the mounted knights, but it still heavy work in progress and we might see it towards the end of the year. It is always good to keep an eye on their workbench (there are three, one for plastic, one for metal and one for resin). Another surprise were the announcement of US infantry in desert gear as an addition for their North Africa World War 2 range. Below you can see the 3-Ups (The masters for plastic miniatures are sculpted 3 times the size of the final product and are scaled down during the production process).
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