Forge World Open Day 2012 - Part 2: The Warhammer World bit.

This was my second visit to Nottingham to Warhammer World and I think I was even more excited this time. As soon as you pull round the corner you're greeted by huge Astartes statues and buildings with massive aquillas plastered on them, a very impressive sight. Parking was difficult but we found a spot outside the Eurohub and walked the short distance to the entrance. One of the staff handed us the FW programme and we headed up the stairs. The queue for the FW sales stand was coming out of the door so we bypassed that and headed straight towards Bugmans. The FW exhibits were in an area I'd never seen before in the Staff canteen. On the way we spotted a stand selling really old GW stuff like old issues of White Dwarf, the Journal and also boxed expansions like Idol of Gork and stuff. This was really cool however it's nothing that you couldn't find cheaper on ebay. The exception that I spotted was a pristine copy of Battles in the Underhive that I'd just bought for more, oh well.

After checking out the FW goodies we headed back into the main hall to check out some of the gaming tables.
The one that had most of my attention was the Tau themed one. The terrain is fantastic so I made sure I took plenty of reference shots for if I ever get round to building any. It's the same scenery that was featured in the battle report from last weeks vintage WD review.

They also have plenty of display cabinets around the edge of the hall with various armies in.
One really cool part was a Salamanders army. Although I'm not really into them he'd made some nice looking objective markers.

They also had the Dwarf Brewhouse on display from their modelling masterclass. Again I took tons of shots of that to one day create my own. It looks straightforward enough, just need to find the time!

After that we headed into the shop for a quick browse, my mate wanted some thunderwolves and I wanted to see if they had any old stuff hanging around. After narrowly escaping a grilling from the staff we thought it was time to head up to the miniatures hall.

For me the hall is a trip down memory lane. I'm not too bothered with looking at all the current armies as they're fairly standard. What I love seeing is all the old armies and models from when I first played in the nineties. They also still have all the old dioramas that Mike McVey and others had made. It was while I was posting a shot of the Exodite versus a Chaplain onto Instagram that A friend from Twitter, Jamie came over and said hi because he'd just seen it! You can find him here and I recommend that you follow him. We had a chat and went our separate ways heading in different directions around the cabinets.

There was even more cool scenery and I took a big shine to the regiments of night Goblins and the Lizardmen army. Having got into fantasy over the past couple of months I really like how flavourful the armies are and seeing beautifully based units is very inspiring. They also had the Golden Daemon winners in a cabinet. Some of them were amazing but I couldn't really see anything about them that set them apart. It must be so hard judging that competition.

We then decided it was time to get some food in Bugmans. I ordered the Fat Bloke burger. It's a shame that Paul Sawyer's legacy as the awesome WD editor has been reduced to the name of a huge burger but there you go. As we were debating what to purchase from the sales desk (some Grey Knights Land Raider doors by the way) I spotted some guys playing on the city fight board that had been reserved. It was only Ozrax from Twitter! (Follow him here). We had a bit of a chat about our days but he needed to get back to the war so my mates and I headed off to the car for the long journey home.

If you ever get the opportunity to visit Warhammer World I would whole-heartedly recommend it. The amount to see and do is great, and even if you're not there for a special event it's worth it just for the atmosphere. I'd love to hear your tales of visiting the HQ. Thanks for reading!