Lead Belt Trip

I traveled to Nottingham the weekend before last to go to the Mantic Open Day and play in – and win – a DreadBall competition.  As I was in “The Lead Belt” I also squeezed in a couple of visits to other toy soldier places.  A visual record composed of ropey phone-photos follows.

Lovely miniatures in Foundry Cabinets. They make me want to snap all of my paintbrushes.

After spending a few hours meeting some of the Mantic people the day before the DreadBall event, I visited Wargames Foundry.  Marcus and I had a chat and a cup of coffee while I considered giving up painting altogether as I looked at the beautiful miniatures in the cabinets.

Kevin Dallimore Paint Jobs.

I have visited Foundry a handful of times over the years but it was 2005 or so the last time that I was there.  Its always worth a visit.  I hope to get there again in 2014 for one of the Oldhammer events.  theottovonbismark seems to be finally getting himself in gear hobbywise, so I am hoping that he will be Goose to my Maverick at that.

Some of the DreadBall tournament.

The following day I went to the Mantic Open Day.  Highlight of this from my perspective include the DreadBall tournament (above. I didnt play in that due to a conflicting schedule), the Judge Dredd demo game where I met the nice Warlord guys…

Warlord Games Judge Dredd Miniatures Game demo table (using Deadzone terrain)

… a trip around the Mantic studio with a chance to chat to their new in-house sculptor and in-house miniature painter…

DreadBall miniatures in the Mantic Studio

Deadzone miniatures in the Mantic HQ

My primary reason for making the trip to Nottingham was to take part in the Ultimate DreadBall Regional game.  Ultimate DreadBall is the multi-player version of the game and in order to take part in this particular game a participant had to have won a Regional event in the last year, of which there have been six (Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales plus England which was split into two regions).

The Regional Ultimate DreadBall game in play. Note the Zegema beach Zephyrs in the foreground.

I won this particular event with my new Zegema Beach Zephyrs team, making me “The UK & Ireland Ultimate DreadBall Champion“.  And all of those teachers never said that I would amount to anything.

Beastsofwar.com covered the game as part of their open day coverage (16.42 in the video above).  It isnt exactly in-depth commentary, but I am the guy with glasses wearing the hat (it was very cold in there) who looks like he has an unconvincingly coloured prosthetic nose (it was dark in there as well as cold, so the light on the camera did weird things.  For better or for worse, my nose is my own).

A Tau themed table at Warhammer World

I had all day on Sunday to kill before I flew home, so I went to Warhammer World to look at more staggeringly well painted miniatures, eat at Bugmans and generally arse around for a while.  Conveniently I found out that some Gorkamorka enthusiasts had scheduled a meet in Warhammer World on that day, so I got in touch with them and was kindly lent a mob that subsequently got beaten up and run over.

GoMo Trukk

Trundling through the lonely wastes.

Nothing really creates shenanigans like Gorkamorka.

Lastly, I took a look in the Citadel Miniatures Hall.  I have been there a few times before, but it was still worth a trip.  Whether you are a fan of the modern miniature ranges or of the older stuff you cant really argue with the skill shown by the paint work on display there.  I took a few snaps of some of the old dioramas that featured in White Dwarf in the nineties, which is a bit pointless as they were photographed better and put in print years ago.  It does serve as a memory aid for me though, for when I come back to this post in years to come.

The Rock

Space Hulk 2nd Edition

The Emperor confronts Horus.

I managed to squeeze a lot of somewhat varied hobby stuff into a weekend, so in that sense it was a good weekend.  Winning the DreadBall event that I played in didnt hurt either 🙂