#ArmiesOnParade2025 - Warhammer Liverpool in-store parade

Afternoon #Warhammer Community as I didn't share my #ArmiesOnParade2024 pictures until March this year I thought I better crack on with my in-store photographs from Warhammer Liverpool. First up we have what I think is a Blood Ravens army.

Nice little battleforce.

With some terrain.

This Kill Team Gallowdar board was by Umaya, who has been doing AoP since 2022 at least. It was nice to see him again. 

Last year he brought 4 individual Kill Teams on custom boards. I think some of them have helped evolve this board alongside quite a lot of additional models and scatter terrain alongside the board sections.

There's detail everywhere and I love how his AoP journey has brought him here. To go back to previous years and see this grow, exactly as I believe AoP should champion.

Helping people start out small and celebrating the growth of their hobby. 

I think all the walkway and board sections have been scratchbuilt, with card for the floor plates. Another side to the hobby on show. 👏

Such a great escalation in his parades.

A nice Seraphon board.

With individual holes for all the figures' bases. 

Cool ziggurat in the background.

And these flesh/muscle trees were downright disgusting!

A Nurgle/Death Guard/Chaos Knight parade.

Chaos Knight.

Mortarion and banner.

The Death Guard alongside the mark of Nurgle glowing from the ground.

With previous in-store 'musters' where folk brought in their army to secure a participation plaque I'd already seen this Chaos Titan/Knight/Dark Mechanicum army.

But I wasn't quite prepared for the quality on display.

The painting standard was top notch,

Just look at that accursed verdigris 🗽!

You have to admit, Legio Fureans have got style.

The Armigers also had LEDs built into the heads and windows on the carapace hatch.

So glad I got to see these in person.

The board was really detailed too.

With so many cool models, even hidden way in the back. This went on to secure second place in the public vote. 🥈

Last year a father and son duo created a quartered board with two different Tau armies, Space Wolves and Tyranids. 

The Dad was back this year with mostly Space Wolve and a few Tau for them to savage.

I particularly liked the ruins. Obviously I love a good red building!

It was nice to catch up and chat about AoP.

Maybe the Tau will come back fighting next year?

There was another Tyranid board, featuring Leviathan.

Plus the Tyranid Kill Team terrain I had wanted. At least someone got to parade it.

Plus some valiant Imperial defenders.

I think this is Darryn back with his Orks and a new board.

I mean the whole thig was just awesome.

The scrapmek workshop, like something out of Mad Max Fury Road. The clever use of cheap battery operated push button lights, painted red to add glows underneath the walkways.

This was the worthy winner. In a change to previous years entrants were not allowed to vote. With the amazing terrain this would have probably got my vote if I'd been able so gold was well deserved. 🥇

And my own entry. Now you would be right in thinking this is a bit 'stripped back'. It's my original board from year's ago, few pieces of terrain and no backdrop. 

Well, I decided not to have the backdrop as it was just too big, under the circumstances and I didn't want to overshadow any entry either side.

I did include Mr Pink's gift of one of his terrain pieces. Which was convenient as he's featured in this month's White Dwarf, which I was able to share with anyone who was willing to listen!

So I finally paraded my Tyranids in Liverpool Warhammer. All of them were new, or repainted, except for the base and Matt Black: Former Hero of the Imperium.

You're probably tired of me saying the competitive element of AoP is something I could do without. That being said, I have always wanted a bronze medal. Whether it's my brassy/bronze proclivities they look the best to me and I was fortunate enough to finally secure one. 🥉 I think the Void Shield Generator might have made the difference as apparently the votes were very close between all entries.

That being said I was pleased to hear them say everyone was able to get a participation plaque. At least I think that was the case. No participation pin badges, but if this is the replacement I consider it a massive investment in GW in rewarding the hobby, rather than just the 'winners'. This is exactly how it should be.

I've no idea what AoP2026 will be. I have my Goblin Town and my Adeptus Titanicus, but there's no a huge amount I will need to add to either, but we'll just have to see.

5 million

Afternoon #WarhammerCommunity another 7 months since I hit the 4 million mark and now I have 5 million on the clock... But as I mentioned the other day they're mostly bots and crawlers. I may have had 1.4 million views in the last year. But google analytics tells me I've had 16,000 'active' users and an 'event count' of 84,000. Not, 1.4 million but if I was so inclined 16,000 is still impressive for a hobby blog.

Anyway, as misrepresentative as that 5 million may be, blogger has been keeping track of it since day one. So, I'm not about to ignore it, whatever the milestone actually means. Just out of curiosity I nipped over to Faeit 212. This used to be the number one blog for news and rumours, and he used to have huge traffic. However, there hasn't been a new post since May 2023, but he's on 280 million 'blogger' hits! And you can see from the graph there's been a lot recently. Maybe I should just stop posting? Ha, ha.

#DreadTober Adeptus Titanicus - Warlord Titan 2 - Highlights

Afternoon #Warhammer Community it's the twelfth of #DreadTober2025 and my stretch goal Warlord titan is a bridge too far. I'm not upset about this, I didn't imagine it was achievable afterall. In fact I'm really pleased the momentum for the first one got me this far. And yet, I'm also slightly sad that that momentum evaporated all too quickly. I started with the dappled effect and it just felt tedious. Probably because I was much less concerned about it when I did the first Warlord. It was very messy and casual. Here I was more careful, which gave me a thrill while I was doing it, because I felt how much effort I was putting into it. But at the end I was just disappointed at my lack of progress and how much I still had to do! This painting malarkey is just riddled with emotional and mental challenges. It's a wonder I see it as fun at all! 🤪 

Anyway, there's an abundance of blue on this, as I painted all the weapon armour blue [except the left arm mount, which is for the personal heraldry]. So I wanted to minimise this a bit and put a diagonal line through the armour. This will be white eventually. The Apocalypse Missile Launcher has one too, but leaning backwards. While the Turbo Laser carapace weapons have checks on the front half. 

This goes some way to mitigate the excess of blue and gives me an opportunity to play around with freehand. You can see the left arm has the personal heraldry pattern. This will echo the knee plate from one of my Reavers, they're from the same maniple. They both have yellow lower legs too.

I think I added some more Basilicanum Grey to the grey panels too. I wasn't 100% happy with the heatbloom on the gatling barrels. It looked OK in pictures but not up close. So, I toned it down a little with Leadbelcher over the sepia and purple bits. Then subtly added a purple wash and I don't think it needs the sepia. But the blue is what was already there. I may have to tweak the Plasma glow too. Some other bits on the gun need some blue glows so I need add some of my blue to the airbrushed bits so it matches.  

Here's a close-up or the dappled grey. So much of that underpainting is rough, it's almost pink in places where the grey basecoat over the red oxide primer wasn't opaque enough.

This is after a glaze over the first set of dappled highlights. Again I was super pleased with my efforts. This felt awesome and exactly as I wanted it to be. Then I looked at the first one and the Reavers and realised I'd been less detailed about the blobs, so this felt like something of an anomaly. It shouldn't matter at all. I've already acknowledged there can be differences due to changes in the Forgeworld manufacture, hence the silver skeleton. 

So, whatever reservations I had were mostly put aside and I was left with the rather mundane task of repeating this on all the panels, grey, blue and yellow. Then I have to highlight the gold trim, two sets of highlights. Which might look unnecessary, but Warlord 1's brassy bronze isn't a million miles away from this gold. I'd rather it was clearly different and identifiable as gold, so it needs to be done.

I'll have one more 'official' DreadTober post this week. It'll show the current WiP as the month comes to an end - 'this is as far as I got'. I'll still be tagging it DreadTober afterwards but I've some other delayed posts to share too, not to mention my #ArmiesOnParade2025 post!

15 year blogiversary

Afternoon #Warhammer Community  I've been blogging for 15 years now!

That's right, 15 years! I've said many times over that I do the blog purely as a record of what I've achieved. A year ago I was commenting about numbers at 3.6 million views and now we approach 5 million. I said then I didn't hold any store by them, and I distrust them even more now. September was my best month ever but I've researched [Googled] how accurate Blogger's own counts are and it literally said they're bot and webcrawlers. So, no I have not had 1.4 million view in the last year. google analytics tells me I have had 16,000 'active' users and an 'event count' of 84,000. Not, 1.4 million but if I was so inclined 16,000 is still impressive.

If I'm not that fussed about numbers why do I go on about it? Well after 15 years you ask yourself how is this contributing to the community, particularly when blogging has far less appeal than YouTube or Instagram? Knowing blogger's 1.4 million views are unrepresentative of the real people who are actually  making the effort to follow your progress is grounding. But I think it does mean that more and more bots and crawlers are coming to the site. Which from what I can tell has made the site more popular for search engines. Whether this translates into the new world of AI search results who knows?

But the blog will continue and I think this is going to be a good year. The battle records manage to keep track of the games I've played. I regret they don't always capture some of the hilarious things that happen, or cool tactics. But, if I didn't do it this way I wouldn't be recording them at all and that would be an even greater travesty. So I'm already up on last year's post count and DreadTober has resulted in a wealth of hobby content. I'm just really glad I am still motivated to share what I'm doing and folk are still interested enough to drop in, read it and comment. Thanks for all your support.