GAMESDAY AUSTRALIA 2001 |
Background: Alright then I live in one of the most hospitable and comfortable cities to live in, in the world, Me,bourne, Australia. Or, so the melbournians believe. One major deficiency of our beloved city is that Games Days are not held here! So, finally, after four years of being involved in the hobby I was off to one such event. One of my proud achievements to date has been the induction of both my nephews in to the hobby. Although one has succumbed to the blood rage (choosing the Blood Angels as his first army) and later being tempted by the technical dazzle of that upstart race Tau while the younger one has shed all humanity and gone with the mechanoid Necrons, I still count it as one of my major achievements. As they lived in Sydney, it was just a simple task to fly there for the weekend and take the brats along with their dad to my first games Day. This GD also had special meaning for me as the Dark Angel rules had been recently revised by Andy Hoare who had been in touch with me via the Bolter and Chainsword forum for feedback. Andy Chambers was apparently coming down under, so I had made plans to meet the man, shake his hand and pass on a couple of B+C T-shirts.... |
So, leaving the quiet suburbia of Sydney we drove down to the venue expecting huge crowds. Initially I was pleased to see that the queue was not that long until I stepped inside the stadium and realized that most of the mob was already there. My initial enthusiasm on seeing many females crowding outside, with hopes of a reformed hobby spreading across the sex barrier were dashed when on close inspection these females turned out to be an entirely different species - Mothers! Much of the limited specials had already been swooped up by the mad throng so all that remained for me was to look around the place and see what made Games Day tick. |
The first thing I did was to head straight towards the glass cupboard containing works in progress and new release models. Having never beento such an event and being a firm believer in press freedom i pulled out my Olympus OM-10 SLR with its 210mm Zoom lens and started snapping at the models in the cabinet. After the first two shots i noticed one of the red shirst frantically waving to me from behind the cabinet and pointing to the "No Photgraphs Allowed!" sign. He didn't insist on removing the images from my camera, perhaps because I had an old fashioned SLR (not a digital camera) and he would have to remove the entire film roll... or perhaps i looked a lot older and bigger than him...As a result all I managed was the three up figure of the platic necron warrior. |
Another imposing figure that lured me was the 40K scale Warlord Titan. Unfortunately Mr Warlord was standing all by himself, devoid of any battle scenary to fill the table, making for a very lonely but menacing figure. On close inspection of course the creation simply fabulous. Entirely scratch built, it was a great achivement and a testament to many hours of toil by whoever the crazy lunatic was that ended up making it. The landraider by the right foot of the immense titan gave us a good sense of scale.. |
