Made-to-Order Classic Bretonnian Characters
With some of the last waves for The Old World Games Workshop offered some models as made-to-order. I used this service in the past, for example with the Skaven characters or the Halfling Blood Bowl Team. Production time in the store is usually stated with 180 days, but they arrived within a few days after ordering, pre-brexit sometimes even the tuesday or wednesday after ordering them on a saturday.
Are they bargains? It depends on what you take as a baseline. They are certainly not cheap, but usually less than buying them on eBay and you don't have the remaining risk of buying an overpriced recast.
What is new about these, is that they actually have clam shell blister packs and not as often in the past, just the white boxes from the Mail Order. This leads me to believe, that at some point, we might see this in store and not just as a made-to-order / mail order exclusive product.
But what did I pick up? Under the new names they are Paladin with Hammer and Shield, Paladin with Sword and Shield and a Lord with Sword & Shield on Pegasus. The Paladins were 12 EUR each and the Pegasus 32,50 EUR. Certainly not cheap, the 12 EURs for the characters on foot is above what I would usually pay for these (about 6 Euros, maybe a bit more if unpainted and a pose that I really like), as for the Pegasus Lord, this one is rather uncommon and I have seen him usually above the 50 EUR bracket on eBay, so that was a reasonable offer and complete.
Warhammer World 2023 – Exhibition Centre Part 1
Part of the Warhammer World experience is the Exhibition Centre, which covers large dioramas and walls full of display cases with vignettes, armies and individual miniatures very early ages of Citadel Miniatures until the most recent releases.
The exhibition centre spreads across two floors and four areas, and ticket prices are 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. You can buy a softcover book, which covers professional pictures and additional information on the larger dioramas for 18 GBP onsite, which is a perfect souvenir. The book is updated regularly and currently in its third edition.
As we already have covered the new exhibition centre in extensive articles from our visits in 2018 (Warhammer Fantasy / Age of Sigmar, Horus Heresy / Warhammer 40k) and 2020 (Warhammer Fantasy / Age of Sigmar, Horus Heresy / Warhammer 40k), the focus this time is more on some spotlights and novelties, as some of the larger setups were replaced and / or updated.
Bring out your Lead 2023
Last weekend we were in Nottinghamshire for Bring Out Your Lead 2023! And that gave me the opportunity to cross two items from my bucket list, visiting BOYL and visiting Foundry, as we never had the chance to do the later, not even in our initial Lead Belt trip in 2010. Brief warning - this article covers about 90 images.
What is Bring Out Your Lead?
Bring Out Your Lead (affectionately and unfortunately known as 'BOYL') is a celebration of all things Oldhammer; old games, old miniatures, old ... well, people too! We get together once a year to put on amazing narrative games surrounded by these old rules and miniatures - just like the pictures of the games we stared at in those various gaming magazines all those years ago before there was an internet.
And, whilst it gets harder to bring any more definition to BOYL, you can rest assured: Bring Out Your Lead is NOT A TOURNAMENT!
Wargames Foundry is kind enough to provide a venue for this event, the Carriage Court Stoke Hall, so we put on proper boots due to the weather and went from Nottingham towards Newark.
Warhammer 40,000 – Through the Ages
The 10th Edition of Warhammer 40,000 was released with Leviathan in Summer 2023 - 36 years after the initial release of the game. And a lot has changed since then.
It hit me with a lot of nostalgia, for multiple reasons. About 25 years ago, I picked up my first Warhammer 40k starter set in 1997, after I initially started tabletop with Blood Bowl. And in 2008 the first review I wrote covered the release of the 5th edition starter set "Assault on Black Reach".
So, please let me take you on a journey through the ages and give you an overview of the different editions and starter sets.
Imperial Fists – Supremacy Force
With the last puzzle piece added to the collection, I have the core of what I "need" to recreate the Imperial Fists Supremacy Force from the very last moments of the 2nd Edition of Warhammer 40k.
This bundle was 65 GBP / 249 DM back in the day (that massiv uppricing in Germany, as the 65 GBP were only about 190 DM - anyhow the German price was EUR 127,31, or EUR 179,39 with inflation) when it was released in August 1998 and introduced in White Dwarf issue 224.
Oldhammer – The Hunt – 2021 status
While consolidating and taking stock, I made the decision that I wanted to keep the scope of my collection to the mid to late 90s Games Workshop miniatures. I narrowed it down to certain projects and evaluated, which to complete or sell off.
The original idea was to write about "the hunt" for Old- and Middlehammer, which I started in 2019 with a brief introduction on how to start your project and to scope it. The ongoing process of sourcing your stock / the needed miniatures was covered in two more articles, one rather generic with basic information and another focused on the Imperial Guard. From there I went on and covered the progress, introducing the individual units, with detailed information on design, alteration, prices and so on - for example with Chaos Space Marines. And all that went more or less well until early 2020.
It is not that I lost interest on continuing the series or stopped the projects. It is primarily due to the fact, that the circumstances have changed so much, that it is rather difficult to write about something, like price values or suggestion, that aren't reliable or useful at the moment up until the unforeseen future. And it is not a single incident, more a rather unlucky combination of multiple things, that lay heavy on our small niché hobby.
August 2021 review
Parental leave is over and since March 2020, I went back from remote to physically being in the office in August. That certainly is a different situation, among others "loosing" an hour a day on commute.
It feels a bit weird to say, that with having reached September, it is only 4 more months until 2022. Times moving insanely fast. With that said, one of the gaps in my limited miniature collection could be closed, with an 10 year old miniature, the 2011 Salute event miniature sculpted by the Perrys. Quite happy about getting my hands on this one.
Wednesday is my new streaming day. A new Marvel What If episode, along with updates on Warhammer+. I did a recap on the animated series on here, but todays update, that "only" covered a new episode of Angels of Death didn't really have that much of an impact. Only 17 minutes long - incl. intro, but revealing the foe of the narrative. It didn't really develope the story and the sound composing issues are still there, along with some weird clipping of the shoulder pads on the Blood Angels themself. Looking forward to a new episode of Hammer & Bolter and hopefully some throwbacks in the vault.
Imperial Space Marine LE2 1986 and 2016
Finally found it! I was looking for the LE2 Space Marine from 1985 for quite a while and last week I got the miniature for my collection. And he completes the duo, along with the first LE1 Space Orc (Yes, with an C and not a K).
The miniature was released with a hexagon base as the second miniature from a limited edition series, and later released as a regular Space Marine from the Rogue Trader era, and seeing the material on my copy, it is most likely a Mail Order cast from the late 90s. It was sculpted by Bob Naismith back in the day.
Looking back on August 2020
I ordered Knightmare Miniatures retro-style miniatures through Battlefield Berlin in April and after a lot of reminding and pushing, they finally managed to send the few casts to Berlin and it was quickly forwarded to me. I am aware of the situation in Spain and that it is niché, but seriously, 4 months and that amount of pro-activity necessary ... annoying.
The few models will be added to my greater Realm of Chaos collection, along with the bat swarms by Reaper and Masquerade to be included in the small undead warband.
Realm of Chaos – Hooves and Fur Part X
I have finished the first and second block of Hooves and Fur, and now going for the third and final batch of beastmen.
As the scope of the warband was defined and set to 16 miniatures, I need two more to tackle the summer project challenge of 18 miniatures in 3 months. So set this project into perspective, the beastmen are the undivided part of my greater Realm of Chaos project, which covers a mixed warband for each of the four chaos gods. Mixed meaning, not only covering chaos warriors, but all kinds of servants of the dark gods. Unfortunately there are only a few proper banner men for the mortal chaos, so I had to be creative about this.
And I thought, that two ungors would be a good fit for the Nurgle warband, as a banner bearer and musician. But I couldn't keep them like this. So after preparing the miniatures, taking care of the mould lines and putting them on a base, I went on to prepare a conversion.