August 2023 review

Half of the things that I promised in the preview on August actually happened - and we were in Nottingham for a prolonged weekend, including all the things we had planned beforehand and a few things more.

Our main reason for being there was BOYL / Bring out your Lead. I wrote a sum-up on it here - Bring out your Lead 2023, and it was a lovely day. And as we didn't have a tight schedule, as we had in our Salute trip in 2018 (Operation Sealion) or the prolonged detour in 2020, we had more time for other activies.

These included a bit more being at the pubs and restaurants, and some leisure time, that we used among other things to go Nottingham Castle and had a great time at the Lost City Adventure Golf. Very well maintained indoor golf facility, where you could not only have a beer while you play, you can order more on the course.

And it was great to meet some new people, especially at BOYL. I had the chance to talk with Gary Morley, among others, but this really special to me, as he sculpted the majority of the late 90s Blood Bowl range - my first tabletop miniatures game ever.

But I've met people again, that I haven't seen for while, like John Stallard and Paul Sawyer, who we met the first time on our 2010 Lead Belt tour. As we did the Warlord Games Studio Tour, we will give an update to our 2018 visit and cover the new headquarter.

Obviously such a trip wouldn't be without a haul. And I grabbed some things, that my air luggage would allow.

I got myself the Dress-a-Willy from TheStillTower, a few Foundry Miniatures along with the BOYL event miniatures. At Warlord Games I got the second Italian campaign supplement Tough Gut (we've covered Soft Underbelly already), along with the next Sd.Kfz. 250 variant (we reviewed the 250/1, /9 and /11 and 250/1, /3 and /10 already). I got the third edition of the Warhammer World exhibition booklet, and at North Star I grabbed the General Purpose Wagon by Great Escape (and ordered some more at Miniaturicum - but more on that later in September).

And as tools are quite important, and my current set of files just were done, I treated myself with another set. There are a couple of sets out there, Tamiya is reasonably priced with 3 for around 10 bucks, and a lot of cheap ones from Asia for 5 (but I didn't want to spend a fiver on crap), I went with the Revell ones for 6,50 EUR and they are doing a proper job so far.

During my vacation, we stopped at Steinequelle, an independent Lego store nearby who recently moved and we haven't had the chance to visit the new store. It was the first time for my son to be in one of the Lego stores, so while my daughter checked out the 4+ sets, junior was amazed by the vast choice of Duplo animals (and farming vehicles). Of course, you can't leave a shop like that empty handed, so we got a souvenir each and I had my painting buddy, assembling her first kit all by herself later that day.

I placed an order with MegaSonicPunch, as there are some items just too big for my Mono X 4k, for example like NinjaBread's Glorious 1990s Bunker Fortification. But that wasn't all in that box, with the upcoming release of Legions Imperialis, we will dive further into GrimDarkTerrain.

To prepare further content on the Warmaster series of the Dukedom of Gisoreux, I printed the remaining missing bits and pieces, the last knight units and some terrain to build a camp and add some depth to bases.

While I had the printer running, I put it into his intended use - produce some scatter terrain. In this case some sideline pieces for Blood Bowl and some nice scenic additions for the Old West.

What's up for September? Rhein-Main Multiversum in about a week, we'll be there on saturday the 9th - hope to see you as well!