Waking Dead

So, I went to Games Day on Sunday, and had a thoroughly geeky time. Lots of cool stuff to see spread across three halls at the Birmingham NEC. My friend Si took a whole bunch of pictures but he’s not sent them to me yet, so here’s someone else’s shots instead:

Images from Games Day 2007 at WarSeer

In terms of all-new exciting stuff on display, there was plenty to look at. The big event of the show is the soon-to-be-released Codex: Apocalypse, dealing with 3,000+ point battles. I missed out on getting my hands on the rulebook (they sold out in the first hour) but did see enough of it to get excited. The GW design team were running an 80,000 point battle (!) all day long between Orks/Chaos and Marines/Eldar/Guard; the terrain was both massive and awesome, using a set of islands connected by bridges that was about the size of your average living room.

There’s plenty of new models out for Apocalypse, but nothing too exciting. The best new models were scattered across the floor, and can be seen in the link I posted above. The new Reaver titan from ForgeWorld is suitably impressive, and due to cost around £500 sometime around Christmas – start asking Santa now. There was some new Chaos Marine minis, including some Slaaneshi demonettes and a brand new Juggernaut that doesn’t look like a sit-on lawnmower any more.

Rules-wise the big push was for Apocalypse, but they also had the new Ork Codex for 40k (which I didn’t get chance to look at) and the new High Elf army book for Fantasy. This in particular looked very cool, and the miniatures they had on display – particularly the Chrace Chariot – also looked nice. There’s a summary of the High Elf rules in the following thread… I can smell the Brie from here:

High Elf Rules from Games Day 2007 at WarSeer

The reason I didn’t pick up the Apocalypse book was that I was queuing to get a copy of the new Talisman board game. Not only was I one of the lucky few, I also got a special Games Day adventure card for it, and had the cover signed by Ralph Horsley and Jeremy McHugh! I’ve had a brief look at the new version and everything looks familiar but much prettier – looking forward to giving it a spin some time as Talisman is one of my favourite board games.

There was also plenty more to see including the new Squad Command game for DS (which looked like Dawn of War – very impressive graphically) and of course the Age of Reckoning MMORPG. I also got a chance to meet Rick Priestly, John Blanche and Jervis Johnson – although I got a little star-struck and didn’t actually talk to them. Bless.

All in all, if you like your wargaming, this was a grand day out. The scenery on display in the Arena from GW staff and gaming clubs was amazing, and I even had a look at some (semi) proper war-gaming in the form of Warhammer Historical.