QueueFest 2023......

[broyston]

Sorry Hivers, but I failed miserably in my mission to bring you news and more information from WarhammerFest.  I must admit perhaps I was a little naive, I knew there would be queueing at an event with a couple of thousand people, but it was far worse then I expected.  The main attractions had barriers with the kind of signs you see at Disneyland, 1 hour from this point, 2 hours from this point etc.  We got there early but the lowest I saw the queue for the 40k 10th edition demo tables was 3 hours.  And there were 5 tables for thousands of people......  I was with my 8 year old son, and there was no way he was going to be able to stand in line for that long, and to be honest, if I had been on my own, I probably wouldn't either.  The painting tables had a couple of hours wait, the demo stalls for Boltgun and Space Marine 2 were over an hour, there was a queue of at least half an hoour just to pay at the store.  The Golden Demon cabinets had queueing, you get the picture. To top it off I thought I'd go 40 minutes early for the 2pm reveal for Horus Heresy and The Old World, but they had closed the queue, need to be there an hour before at least the nice lady told me.  The store was a disappointment as well, very little Forge World or direct only stuff.  

There were very few GW staff about, not any that knew anything about the new models and rules anyway.  So sadly I was able to find out diddly squat.

Having painted a miserable picture of it, and I doubt I will go again, there were some positives.  Just being around that many other hobbyists was a great experience, chatting about this and that, watching some of the tournament games and seeing some amazing cosplays.  But not enough to make a return trip likely.


What I did get is some photos of the new Nids in the display case, you've already seen better in the preview.  Edit: I tried to upload but the site has exceeded it's attachment limit, and I am not signed up with any image sharing websites so this has gone brilliantly.  Sorry.  Again.   

[trashcan01]

I appreciate the effort! Too bad you couldn't enjoy the event with the little one.

[broyston]

May 1, 2023 5:37:20 GMT trashcan01 said:

I appreciate the effort! Too bad you couldn't enjoy the event with the little one.

Thanks, I went into the Manchester GW store afterwards and chatted to the manager. He said he had talked to some of the event guys and they acknowledged there were issues and had learned some lessons.  Not like this is their first big event though.

After sleeping on it, to be honest I am not sure there was much to learn, about Nids anyway.  From what I could see the demo games seemed to consist of battles of a couple of screamer killers and some termagaunt squads against 2 dreadnoughts and the flamer guys.  If I am not mistaken these are the units we have already seen the dataslates for.  So looks like they were trying to keep the games simple and/or keep the other units under wraps still.   The security around the demo games was tight, you could take bags into the venue, but to get access to a table you had to leave bags behind, looks like they were worried about people trying to pocket the new models. 

[hivefleetkerrigan]

Thanks for the review of the fest. Sorry you couldn't see the demo. I hope your kid has fun however.

broyston, you can post pics on another site and either link them or embed them in the page

[joysan76]

let the little tiranid baby grow!!!! feed it with nice events and miniatures more then long boring queue!!! if your son had fun, at least this part of the event was a success!!!!