Seeing Double

This weekend I headed over to Warhammer World for the Armies on Parade store heats (more on that later) and found the gaming hall to be packed with over 150 excited hobbyists taking part in the Warhammer 40,000 Doubles weekend. Seeing as I already had my camera with me I thought I'd grab a few pictures of the action to show you what was going on.

Remember Carl Dafforn's Black Templars from this blog post and July's issue of White Dwarf? Well Carl's been playing plenty of practice games with his army since then to prepare for the Doubles event, taking on various gamers from around the Studio and, occasionally, emerging victorious. This weekend Carl joined forces with one of his regular gaming opponents to bring the Emperor's justice to heretics, aliens and witches.

Glenn More and Matt Hutson, two of our Studio team, were also at the event with their combined army of Ultramarines and Imperial Fists. According to my sources (Servitor 13 and Smiler the Servo Skull), they've been concocting the nastiest, most beardy* armies possible with the aim of winning the event. Apparently they spent an entire afternoon trying to fit as many models behind an Aegis Defence Line as they could before realising that Techmarines could only bolster the defences of ruins and not emplacements. Never mind eh, guys.

There were also plenty of other miniatures to look at over over the weekend and, as always, some very curious costumes. I've included pictures of some of my favourite models in the galleries above and below for you to enjoy.

Of course, the main reason I was at Warhammer World this weekend was to enter my army into the Armies on Parade competition. Rather pleasingly a large number of the people taking part in the Doubles event also voted for their favourite entry. I'm also very excited at the moment because all my hard work over the last few months paid off and I actually won the store heat, which means I'll be taking my entry to Games Day on 23rd September. See, there is a good reason for painting yellow sometimes...

*The etymology of the word 'beardy' is a grey area. Some historians believe that the word was first coined due to an abundance of mid-game chin stroking indicative of devious tactical thoughts. Others believe that it first appeared during a game in which many Dwarfs armed with a vast supply of black powder weapons deployed on a hill, behind a wall at the very back of a gaming board as far away from their opponents as was physically possible and proceeded to shoot them to bits.