Warbooty (part 2)

Earlier this month I wrote an article here on the blog about a ‘Warboot’ style event I attended (essentially a hall crammed with folks selling mostly second-hand wargames/hobby stuff), and how I was going to try to get to a few more of them… and maybe even put together a small ‘army’ of sorts – mainly using models that I can find from these events (by giving them a new lease of life).

Anyway, a couple of days after releasing that article, there was another of these events that wasn’t too far away, so my brother an I headed off to that one as well.

Now, compared to the last one, this was probably twice the size (I think it spanned six tennis courts at a leisure centre), and there was quite a lot on offer (new stuff, second hand stuff, 3D print guys, dice vendors, etc.).

As usual, I forgot to take any pictures of the place itself… but I did take some pictures of what I purchased (with the biggest bargains being four part-used sprues… as they were only 50p each, and included 5 marine heavy weapons, and enough skaven parts to build 5 of the old night/gutter runners):

Anyway, as I had hoped, I was able to expand upon the metal Blood Angel models I’m painting/collecting – with these five guys (that cost £15).

Though, I already had the two with the bolt pistols from the last event – but my brother actually picked up a pack of metal scouts with sniper rifles, which also contained duplicates, so we were able to swap out the ones we had copies of – meaning that I replaced the following two guys on the left with the snipers on the right:

I also got these (£5 for the two scouts with bolters, £6 for the captain, and 50p each for the eldar):

And finally, I picked up some red d12s for 50p each (to match my blood angels – when playing Advanced Space Crusade), and an old metal LotR elf model for £3 (which I got purely for nostalgia purposes – as I remember painting this exact same model when I was a kid... it being one of the first models I ever bought).

Now, as you can see, some of these aren’t exactly ready to paint – so all the marines have been stripped back to the bare metal, and had new bases where needed:

And, while I would have liked to get all of these painted before the next event of this kind – I’ve only managed to get 3 of them finished...

...and seeing as how the next event is this weekend, it’s unlikely I’ll get any more done before then (but three is better than none, right?).

Speaking of that next event, Penkridge is the location for this one... 

...so, I’ve been really lucky so far with regard to the location of all of these – as, despite them all being in completely different areas, I’ve kinda been sat in the middle of most of the Midlands based ones – and I really do feel lucky for that to have been the case.

Anyway, I’m hoping that I’ll be able to expand on this retro Blood Angels project this coming Sunday (as I’m going to do my best to find at least one more model that I can add to what I already have), or at least find a couple of bargain/nostalgic models to add to my collection.

Wish me luck!

Warbooty

I briefly touched upon this whole ‘warboot’ thing in the last Patreon newsletter (which you can catch up on HERE if you like) – but I thought I’d go into a bit more detail here on the blog in regard to some of the models I picked up at the last event… and how that’s inspired a new project.

What’s a Warboot?

First of all, I should probably explain what a warboot is (for those who are not familiar)… though the term seems to have gone a bit out of fashion since someone tried to trademark the term (though they promptly backed down when they faced a lot of backlash from the community).

Anyway, I don’t know how common ‘car boot sales’ are around the world (HERE is the Wikipedia entry if you want to know more about them) – but the term is commonly shortened to just ‘CarBoot’ …and, as you’ve probably guessed, a ‘WarBoot’ is a play on that.

And, instead of folks selling off some of their unwanted household items (like you might find at a CarBoot… which you can probably think of as a sort of garage sale – but on a larger scale), at a Warboot, the things on offer are ‘hobby’ related.

Now, there have been a few of these popping up locally of late (or at least, this is the first I’m hearing of them), So on the 15th of August I attended one of these events for the first time (as it wasn’t too far away).

I didn’t really know what to expect, but seeing how it was free entry, there’s not a lot to lose right?

However, I have to say, it was pretty cool. I mean, the place it was held at wasn’t super huge or anything like that – but there were a ton of things on offer (both old and new), and it made for a good afternoon out.

And, of course, I did end up buying a few things while I was there – so here’s what I got (though there were other things I was tempted by, and a few things I regret not picking up):

Pictured here (on the left) are five metal space marine scouts from 1997, and next to them is a Marauder dark elf (corsair?) from 1995. On the right are nine of the first ever plastic skaven models (from the ‘fantasy regiments’ box from the late 80’s I believe), and at the back is a newer sprue of space marine accessories that had 2 pieces missing.

All together this cost £19 (Scouts: £10 / Dark Elf: 50p / Skaven: £8 / Sprue: 50p) – which I thought was a pretty good deal considering the fact the scouts alone often go for around £5 each on ebay.

Anyway, as you can see, they did need a bit of work to get them cleaned up and ready to paint – and so that’s exactly what I did.

First the scouts were stripped (by leaving them overnight in a jar of dettol, and then some serious scrubbing with an old toothbrush):

Then primed (I just use the Army Painter brush-on grey primer for this):

And finally painted and based:

And, as you should be able to tell, I’ve gone with Blood Angels for these – mainly because when I was a kid, that’s how I painted my very first space marine models :)

That being said, I never had any of these particular miniatures – but painting red shoulder pads again sure did bring back some memories (luckily for me though, paint formulas have improved a lot since then – so I didn’t have to give them half a dozen coats to get decent coverage).

Anyway, now that I know that these ‘warboot’ events are happening semi-regularly at different venues across the Midlands… with the next being in Wolverhampton tomorrow…

...I think I’m going to try to get to more of them – with the aim of adding something new to this ‘warboot army’ each time (and also setting myself the challenge of having to paint up most of what I buy, before attending the next one... at least in regard to this particular 40k project).

Now that doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be more Blood Angels (though that’s the main idea), as I can fall back on other ‘imperial’ stuff – perhaps to represent some kind of ad-hock force that’s been thrown together from the remnants of much larger armies – maybe as a last ditch defence of a particular world/city/etc. (as stuff like that is easy to do with One Page Rules, or even the original Rogue Trader game… as I picked up the reprint of the latter a couple of years back).

So that’s the plan. All being well, tomorrow I’ll be heading off to Wolverhampton with my brother, and we’ll see what other bargains are on offer (and find out if I can actually expand on this 'army' with some more warbooty :) ).