With September drawing to a close, we’re recovering from another awesome Warlord Games Open Day! This is always our favourite day of the year, as we get to welcome our wonderful community to our headquarters, and this one was an extra special event, serving as the launch party for Bolt Action: Third Edition! Let’s take a look at the festivities and exclusive reveals from the big day!
As always, a huge thank you has to go to everyone who joined us on the big day, first and foremost – the best part of our Open Days is getting to share how passionate and excited we are about everything we do with our dedicated community. You even brought the good weather with you!
All guests received the customary goodie bag, packed with awesome products, from miniatures (including the exclusive ‘Nuts’ 2024 Open Day figure) to hobby supplies, and especially for this year a set of ‘Bolt Action Launch Party’ dog-tags – it was great to see so many people joining the ranks and wearing theirs with pride throughout the day!
The courtyard was dominated by an enormous marquee, hosting dozens of fantastic demos of our many games systems, with both our staff and friends of the company showing off just how much fun you can have with miniatures and dice, as well as a fantastic Battle of the Bulge display board assembled by our Customer Service and HQ Store team – a real labour of love! Inside, the store was packed with guests taking advantage of the awesome Open Day offers to stock up on all their favourite goodies, and enjoying the ‘make-and-take’ station.
Our ever-popular tours were packed all day long, with guests getting an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at every aspect of our business, following the life of a miniature from its first conception and design in the Studio, through production in traditional resin, metal, or Warlord Resin, and out of the door in your orders. Our fantastic team were on hand to explain each department, and the Studio portion of the tour featured plenty of ‘reveals’ of upcoming unreleased miniatures.
Another perennial highlight of the Open Day is the seminar series, and this year was no exception! John Stallard and Rick Priestley delivered their usual blend of wisdom and excitement, accompanied by a cheeky preview of an upcoming kit or two – did anyone clock the mention of new plastic Bolt Action Soviet Infantry?
As befits a Bolt Action Launch Party, we also saw a special seminar from legendary games designer Alessio Cavatore, the mind behind Third Edition, and Beth Walsh, author of the upcoming new series of Armies of… books. We also got an exclusive look at the Bolt Action Release Roadmap, setting out the new edition’s trajectory and letting players know when they can expect new rules and miniatures for their favourite factions.
The final seminar was of special interest to everyone who likes their warfare a bit… weird! Andy Chambers, the lead writer for Konflikt ’47, was joined by fellow writer Roger Gerrish to discuss the huge developments currently ongoing for our weird World War II wargame – we’ll be looking to upload the seminars over the coming weeks so you can hear all the good stuff for yourself, but suffice it to say that it’s a really, really exciting time in the world of Warlord Games!
The Open Day also saw the return of our painting competition, judged by our expert Studio Painting Team – check out this gallery of some of the awesome entries and winners in each category!
With our site packed from start to finish, it was a long day for our dedicated team, but one that was, as always, absolutely worth it – we love what we do, and we love sharing it with you! Now the only question is – how do we top it for next year? To find out… you’ll have to come and see us!
4 comments
“We also got an exclusive look at the Bolt Action Release Roadmap, setting out the new edition’s trajectory and letting players know when they can expect new rules and miniatures for their favourite factions.”
Unless you’re Italy it seems lol.
Ah well with the slow burn I can see if you’ve made GWs blunder with 40k and made it tourney focused (See ruined) before I invest, every cloud.
Woah Jonah, that’s pretty negative. Give them a break, the fact is that when you think of WW2, you think of Germans/Japanese vs British/American/Russian. And so warlord games are catering for the demand. The Italians struggled against Ethiopia even, let alone facing off against Britain/America. They just weren’t a big player in the war.
I for one think the way the rules are going is a very good decision and will decrease the amount of so-called ‘sweaty’ lists that are ‘meta’. People are encouraged to take whatever they want in their army now without worrying about whether it’s a competitive list.
New plastic Soviets are exciting but 4th Quarter 2025 when the Soviet Union book releases is October of 2025. If the plastics come out with the book they will likely be previewed at Open Day 2025. Still nice but a wats off muting the excitement some.
I’m rather hopeful. I have some nerves about this, but I’m still hopeful. It’s certainly going to be an odd spot about v3 for a good while, but I am cautiously optimistic. I think my biggest hope with the new models is to unify the scale. I don’t know the whole list, but I understand there are some notable differences of scale across sets.
I think I most look forward to Konflikt ’47 stuff. I’m holding off on expanding my collection for now, but I hope to snatch up the expansions by the summer. K’47 is what introduced me to Warlord, I hope to see it continue to inspire!