Games Day UK 2013 Part Two - Forge World

Welcome to part 2 of my Games Day coverage. Once again Forge World really showed mainline GW up with the amount of cool previews they had on show. There's going to be a huge amount of photos I took on the day along with snippets of information I got from the seminar. Enjoy...

Horus Heresy -

First off we have the Myrmidons. Part of the Mechanicum force, these come in ranged and CC varieties. There's loads of different options, just like with the Magos kit.

There's also Mechanicum Thralls on the way in a few months. They'll be compatible with Imperial Guard Plastic Kits.

This is the Land Laider Achilles MkIIB. It's still very much a WIP but looks great already. No plans to do an all FW Phobos pattern Land Raider from what I could tell.

The Sicaran Venator! Should be out within a month. The model on show was an actual production cast.

The Vidicator that everyone should have seen already.

 Word Bearers Ashen Circle. These look amazing with the variant helmets.

Night Lords Raptor squad. These are expected in a couple of months.

Lorgar. He'll also be out in a couple of months. Sculpted by Edgar Skomorowski and looking very nice.

World Eaters Red Butchers. Way better than the Rampager squad.

Iron Hands Medusan Immortals which should be out 'shortly'.

Death Guard Grave Wardens. Almost done except for the heads.

Kharybdis Assault Claw. Zooms sideways, then hovers to land. Should have a capacity of 20-30 models. Will was trying to design the smaller Assault pod but it turned out too big!

The Legion Basalisk is almost finished. There will be a Marine Medusa soon too.

In other heresy news...
The next Primarch is going to be Horus Lupercal. He's about half finished. The top half, hence the small photo! Sculpted by Simon Egan.

Book three, titled Extermination is due in March/Easter. It will cover the battles of Phall, Paramar and Isstvan. There will be more Titan Legions, the Legio Gryphonicus (War Griffons) and Legio Fureans (Tiger Eyes).

The next trilogy will cover 1. Prospero, including Custodes and Sisters of Silence. 2. Signus, including Blood Angels, Demons, and Dark Angels. 3. Calth, including traitor Imperial Army. This should be released towards the end of 2014 with the following 2 the year after.

Salamanders models are on the to-do list but not started yet.

Mortarian also hasn't been started yet. They'll probably start him soon, maybe he'll be primarch 6 or 7.

There will be another Horus Heresy Weekender, but the alternate Fulgrim sculpt won't get released.

The other weapon options for the Thallax will be out early next year.

Someone asked about doing xenos as part of the Heresy. Tony was fairly blunt in his response, stating it's a civil war, and if you want aliens go and play 40k. I whole heartedly agree!

Imperial Fists should be getting a Breacher type unit and some Templar style ones.

Iron Warriors are in playtesting at the moment. Things like heavy support terminators with cyclone missile launchers. They should also get a heavy support siege squad.

Warhammer 40k -

No photos taken but got some information.
Imperial Armour Volume 2 second edition is almost ready. It'll update all FW Space Marine rules to 6th edition. Andy Hoarre is writing it. It'll be subtitled War Machines of the Adeptus Astartes.
It should include a relic version of the Sicaran Battle Tank. Expected around Christmas.

From speaking to Talima, the Badab Wars books are next to be updated to 6th.

I had a really long chat to Daren Parrwood, the genius behind a lot of the FW Tau line. He said rules should be out for the XV107 soon, in a week or so. And that he'd brought another variant riptide with him on the day but Tony had said not to show it. It's apparently got a huge shield and performs more of a protective role than an offensive one.
He also mentioned that he's had another variant suit hanging around half-finished for a few years. Somewhere between the XV2 and XV7 class. Hopefully in a few years they'll be doing another Tau Imperial Armour.

Bran Redmaw is still a WIP. Mark Bedford is responsible!

Warhammer Forge -

Battle for Black Fire Pass is pretty much on hold indefinitely. But Trish had brought a WIP of the Dread Saurian, it's huge!

There was a WIP of the K'Daii Destroyer. May be out in 2-3 months. Although Jan/Feb were also mentioned.

And there you have it. Tons of amazing info, and lots of lovely sculpts to look forward to. Cheers!

Games Day UK 2013 Part One - Overview

Hey guys, just like I did last year I'm splitting my Games Day coverage into 2 parts. This post will cover the general stuff, the tale of my day out, some mainline GW stuff and the Armies on Parade along with plenty of photos. Part 2 will cover all of the Forge World goodness, although by now most of it has already been seen. So on with the day...

My mate Dean picked me up before 6am and we drove up the the Birmingham NEC, managed to find the car park and got to the south entrance of the NIA by 8! There were only 10 people in the queue in front of us, but apparently a lot more round on the north side. Eventually they let us in to join the queue on the inside, and by half 9 the doors were opened properly, ahead of time.

We made a dash straight for the Forge World sales area, and got separated, me being quite a way ahead. I picked up all the bits I was after, the second HH book, the Fire Raptor, a X107 R'Varna battlesuit and the event only Lodge Priest. Dean caught me up after buying his goodies and we set off to get tickets for the FW and BL seminars.

There was time to kill before the first seminar so we had a good look around the FW design studio area, this will all be covered in the other post later along with what was in the seminar. After that we grabbed some lunch, went to the Black Library seminar. Nick Kyme, Guy Haley and John French were answering questions about writing about battlefields although some of the questions went way off topic.

After that it was a quick wander around the GW studio bits. Plenty more minis on show this year compared to last year but nothing mindblowing or previewing like the FW guys. One stand out for me was on the Limited Edition stand. They had all of the new LE books out on display, and tucked at the bottom of a cabinet were some models of what looked like a Warhammer Quest tile set. I asked about it and they were made by Tammy Nicholls. Those of you who read last years GD post will know she had some wonderful Blanche style models on show there, and had her Deathwing in a recent White Dwarf that I had shown. These tiles weren't for anything in particular, just a hobby exercise for fun that she'd thrown together out of bits. We had a great chat, and was one of the highlights of my day.

Later on we hit the Armies on Parade which was very underwhelming. There were a handful of stand out boards but most were shit, to be frank. A few models on a flocked tile a display piece does not make!

I was meant to meet up with my friend Jamie for a demo game of Netrunner but unfortunately our schedules never synced, therre's always next time! I did bump into my mate Lee again and had a good chat about the day, had a photo in out matching #Warmonger tshirts, awesome to hook up again!

That's about it for the overview. Stay tuned for the FW bit, cheers!