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!