Forge World Open Day 2012 - Part 1: The FW bit.

This is my brief overview of me and my mates trip to Nottingham for the annual Forge World Open Day. We went last year so we kind of knew what to expect. We set off around 6:30am and arrived at half ten. As usual the retail queue was huge so we bypassed that and went straight to the display section. I didn't really ask a lot of questions but did a lot of looking and taking photos so here we go!

Chaos Dwarfs have been a dream army of mine for as long as I can remember and these two models are from the army list in Tamurkhan. They are the Skullcracker and Iron Daemon.

I had a leaf through the Throne of Chaos book and it is amazing. The general look and feel is of such quality it was very tempting to buy it there and then. The Chaos Dwarf army is actually quite a small part of it, with the only core unit being the infernal guard, hmmm.

Also on display were loads of monsters from the Monsterous Arcanum book such as a giant squig.

These are the new Tartaros Pattern Terminators which look unbelievable in the flesh. What was a surprise was that they were holding thunder hammers or lightning claws. There's going to be a character and weapon upgrade pack coming out soon.

Next to them were the new Mark IV Assault marines. Not only did the torsos look great but they had single exhaust jump packs like the Blood Angels.

Next to the cabinets were two display boards. The first was from the Imperial Armour 11 Mymeara book and was covered in Imperial Guard and Eldar. The centrepiece in my opinion is the Phantom Titan which towers above everything else. Also the skimmers like the Cobra just look fantastic and make me want an Eldar force!

The other board was of an Ork Settlement for the Raid on Kastorel-Novem. The amount of weathering was astonishing and the look and feel of the scene was spot on.

Then it was on to the main event, the Storm Eagle! This had been leaked on the net a couple of days earlier and the hype was huge. It turned out that only about 25 had been made to sell on the day but they had a few on display.

It's a full kit that incorporates parts of the Storm Raven and turns it into a much bigger gunship although no where near the size of a Thunderhawk. I was quite impressed with it and would've got one if they had any left but was a bit underwhelmed by it to be honest.

There was a large Zone Mortalis board set up which looked very impressive. Plenty of awesome details to see but I can't help thinking it's a bit of a luxury to spend at least ninety quid for a 2'x2' board. That said, there are plans to start bringing out more Realm of Battle board sections with specific races in mind which I really can't wait for.

Also in the pipeline is Imperial Armour 12. I had a flick through the file with some pages from it. Looks like it's going to be Minataurs and Necrons. I'm very excited to see what they do for this, hopefully inventing their own dynasty with loads of flavour.

To finish off here's a shot of the Tigershark they had on display on the painting and modelling table. It looks stunning and I can only hope that mine (when I get one!) will turn out anywhere near as good as this. They had quite a few models out that featured in the new Model Masterclass Volume 2 which looked like a really well thought out book. Just like the Storm Eagle it had sold out fast.

So  there you have it, my round up of the Forge World open day. There's probably not a whole lot of revelations but I really enjoy just looking at all the cool stuff they have on show. My only minor criticism was that not much was painted, but then I'd rather see lots of brand new unpainted stuff than hardly any new things but have them painted. Stay tuned for part two of my report this week which is going to cover the overall visit to Warhammer World.