Warlord Open day 2013

A few of us picked up tickets to the Warlord open day at Salute earlier in the year, and today we wandered over to Warlord and had a good mooch about!

I didn't know what to expect but as soon as we walked into the hall I was very impressed!

so one end of the hall, 

And Lee photobombing the other bit,

we had a good walk around to see what was about and started chatting to the mantic guys about dreadball season three and they are doing a special club league pack where the winner gets a medal that will get them free entry to a show and they can take part in the dreadball superbowl!

I then stopped to have a look at the warlord studio stand where a nice Polish chap explained about sculpting and the detail that he went into was terrific, another Polish chap the once closest to the camera was showing weathering techniques, and the lady in the back explaining about the molds that they use, all very interesting stuff.

I then spotted this...

Kris about jizzed in his pants at this point, I moaned in joy, we looked at each other and started planning the 4x4 that we could fit it on ;) Due to the fact that we were frothing I forgot to ask price & release date on this one, but I'd say about £80 (ish)

the greens that I was interested in were the us marines,

and the next sexy plastic kit....

I was mulling over what Nation to collect for bolt action next and the plastic halftrack has done it for me, Americans it is!

Mr Dallimore was also there, his painting style isn't to my taste but the man has got talent so it was good to share a few words with the man,

and just some pics of the tables that were at the open day, some real crackers on show,

Kris moaned that the berets were too red, it gave me a wonderful opportunity to call him a old git at that point!

The Perry brothers with the "usual" outstanding terrain and models!

Some dodgy bloke who was following me around...

Yea that's right Kris keep your hands in your pockets...

Blokes on camels, its gotta be a game winner!

but MMG on a cart is even cooler!

Lee & Coops actually playng a game of witchfinder general, and we managed to tag onto the back of a factory tour, so we started off in the resin room, and the process was explained, and its quite simple, now if warlord can make good quality kits in whats effectually a double garage why can't forgeworld?

a nice chap explaining more about the process and the drying times, what surprised me was that the bigger the mold the quicker it dries as the mixture warms up and also with the air tempture that also affects the cure time, so the last month or so must have been a right pain in the ass to work in!

loads of molds! the chaps showing us around said about 280 I think?

mixing the pour and the round thing is the vacuum machine that removes air bubbles,

  A look of surprise as we dived into the metal casting room

 

and another nice chap explaining the process and the basics of making models in metal, 

 

just a bit of the huge section that they've been casting up

I bumped into Sharad  and he was recruiting for the sealed knot, (right)

showing me how good the plate armour was with my able assistant Kris.

the GCN stand with a cracking looking German army, really nicely painted

superb work of the big cats, as well as the infantry and transports

We got chatting to the chaps at 4ground and this is a preview of whats going to be coming up, and according to the chap we was talking to the models will come prepainted!

So overall a cracking day, I even managed to have a chit chat with Allessio and kindly signed my Bolt Action rule book, however the rest of the guys called me a fan boy but eh I don't care at least I know which on is mine now. Only drawback on the day was the heat, with no aircon in the building and a room full of gamers it got very hot very fast!

Back into the breach... Painting the Warmachine Convergence of Cyriss starter set.

I picked up the new Cyriss faction book and starter box set with the intention of selling these on however I thought I'd have a flick though the book and was very impressed with the fluff, feel and rules of the army.

As usual the quality of the book is tip top and the artwork within is superb, I'm not a mathhammer player and tend to go with the rule of cool with picking a force, however if your a rules junkie and like all that jazz then Beasts of War have done some cracking vids.

and their is plenty more on the website to wet your whistle, has been quite an eye opener for some of the units and vectors.

So after spending some time at "work" reading the book, I decided to crack open the battle box when I'd managed to escape from the GC & the searing heat of the UK (at the moment!)

This is what I was presented with when I opened the box....

2 bags of bits and no instructions! This starter set is not for the "novice" gamer with the amount of bits. However Privateer Press has done a "how to" for the box set on their website this will save you a lot of headache!, why they didn't just print instructions is beyond me!

so the two bags opened up,

the heavy vector

the 2 light vector and warcaster, place in bag add glue and shake!

I spent some time pondering how to paint these and decided to avoid the silver as I remembered how much of a pain in the ass they grey knight test model I painted, Bronze it was to be!

So after sticking and undercoating I started with tin blitz

Brassy Brass on top of that,

I then added some gunmetal and dry brushed the models, once this was done I did some extreme highlighting with just the silver with a bit of bronze,

a close up of one of the light vectors with the extreme high lights, I could have stopped here but I wanted to tone the models right down and make them less toy like and more "evil" looking

I banged some army painter strong tone and after leaving for about 7 minutes it dried like...

So onto the secondary colour after consulting my muse's Red was the one that was "suggested" as well as teal! After messing about with the red the box set is ready for basing & marking of arc's

so the usual mix of basing done, and the Cyriss are good to go!!

Overall I'm liking the paint scheme dead easy to do, but what do you guys think?