Warhammer World

After 30+ years (! Good god that’s frightening) of playing GW games, last month I finally managed to make the pilgrimage to warhammer world. It was a bit of a whirl wind trip as it involved dropping the kids off, a 3 hour or so journey, 3 hours there and then a 3 hour return trip to get back in time to pick the kids up again.

Was the effort (and expense) worth it?

Short answer, yes.

Let’s be honest, like many, my main reason for going was to see the exhibition hall (or series of rooms). This was both amazing and a bit of an anticlimax for a number of reasons. Confused? Let me explain.

You start off in a short corridor going through the origins of GW and some of their older ranges. This was amazing. It’s here that you can see all the early dioramas such as Mike McVeys legendary pieces, as well as limited models from the old world (as you can imagine, this was a highlight).

From there you go into the first of the exhibition rooms. Each room displayed a variety of dioramas and army showcases. As you can imagine more than a few of them were incredible and I properly geeked out. You’ll find a few of my favourites below.

The disappointing things to me were: lack of old world models. I of course understand that AOS is a thing and I love (and have bought) quite a few of the recent releases but the lack of models from discontinued armies/ranges was disappointing. I would have liked to have seen more than just the sample models in the first corridor. Though unfairness there were a number of additional classic dioramas in the first room and the still amazing giant siege diorama that they retained.

Now I also know that this will be partly down to space. The fantasy offering on display was only in 1 of the 4 rooms (and this included a small but excellent LoTR section). The rest was dedicated to 40K. I understand they are currently working out how they can expand, to add in another room (that should be dedicated to LoTRs).

There was also a show stopper diorama with a staircase descending round it. If you’ve ever been to see the Harry Potter studio tour in North London, it was very reminiscent of the hog warts castle model set up. The detail on it was phenomenal. I had one small issue with it though. They had constantly changing ‘mood’ lighting. I get the point but I would have preferred it to have been more brightly lit. Now admittedly this is partly down to issues with my own eyes but still.

Minor gripes aside, the exhibition tour on its own was worth the trip. The detail and quality in all the displays was next level. The store was really well stocked with standard stuff, forgeworld and mail order only items. It’s what you wish every store had in. I even managed to pick up a realm of chaos book, (sadly they’d run out of the slaves to darkness book) as well as a few other bits.

If you are in the vicinity, I’d definitely recommend the detour!

I was so happy that they hadn’t removed this!

Seeing it up close, I noticed details that had escaped me before, such as the arrow in the wizards hat

Another Mike McVey classic

This necropolis was one of the most impressive of the AOS displays. It was massive and included ranks of undead masses in the tombs beneath it

Even the cases showing the various armies had great bits of detail such as this.

This was vying for my favourite display

Burning of Prospero

This display had multiple thunder hawks but I loved the simulated motion on this one. It was probably my favourite model on display.

The way they swarmed over the landspeeder was quality. This also had loads of little details such as tyranids scaling the canyon walls to get into air ducts.

The ‘show stopper’ + mood lighting. The vehicles you can easily see are a thunder hawk gunship and land raiders. The models on the bridge are bikes and attack bikes. That should give you a sense of the scale of this thing!

Black Hawk down?

Their rules may currently be a bit ropey but the IFs appeared in more than a few displays. As they are my favourite chapter, I can’t say I was disappointed!

Hobbits in barrels. This was actually in the store. There were a number of displays on show outside of the paid entry exhibition area which was a nice touch.

The compulsory smug shot by the Rhino!