The venue has now changed to the Ricoh Arena, attached to the Coventry City FC grounds, and it's a lovely building, way better than the NEC, and a bit better than the NIA from last year. The event was split over three floors. On the ground was the sales area, our first port of call when we arrived. The queue for Forgeworld was so small, and moved so quickly I ended up making the rash decision to purchase too many heresy mechanicum goodies. With that out of the way we grabbed our FW seminar tickets and headed to the 2nd floor to the FW area.
They had the usual layout of glass cabinets and tables, and it was really spacious, there wasn't much jostling to see into the displays, and there were a few new treats on show. Needless to say I was totally stoked to see the Ultramarines shoulder pads!
As well as all the bare resin they had a couple of new display boards, and the old ones there too. The Calth one blew me away, and even though the painting quality on the Ultramarines wasn't great, I spent a very long time staring and taking photos!
The mechanicum/Alpha legion display was also really cool too...
Stepping away from Forgeworld for a bit we had a look around the GW section on the 1st floor and to be honest I was very underwhelmed. There were a couple of cabinets, and I was never expecting any previews but they really could've done so much more. They had more boards and displays at the 40k open day.
We watched a few of the pods from the sidelines and the majority seemed to be aimed at younger ones, with topics such as how to build wracks. The one we did sit down and watch was Mark Bedford's how to speed paint an army. It was really interesting, and gave me a lot of food for thought, but I don't think I'll ever achieve five marines in an hour!
The golden demon cabinets felt a little empty, but they were well lit and there were some fantastic entries to look at.
Finally it's onto the Forgeworld seminar. This was rammed with so much good news and previews, most of which have already been spread far and wide across the internet. The Ultramarines plates made me wet myself a little bit, roll on next summer! And Alan Bligh was on top form with some hilarious quips.
And there you have it! It was well worth the £20 entry fee, and although it was a shame not to have book four in my hands I wasn't disappointed with what I saw. As always. FW put mainline GW to shame, I wonder if GW studio staff feel embarrassed when they see what they're allowed to do compared to their resin cousins. I'd recommend going for anyone that had been slowly put off by the issues the NEC events had.