Tabletop Thursday: Armies on Parade 2017 at Red House!

ARMIES ON PARADE IS IN A FEW WEEKS!

Armies on parade is the annual event where Warhammer painters roll out what they’ve been doing that year. We each get a 2′ by 2′ area where we get to display our armies. Some people may have their armies on a scenic display board, while others try to tell a story, or even have clashing factions enacting a battle. Honestly, anything goes.

This year, Warhammer Red House is hosting two (THAT’S RIGHT, TWO!) armies on parade events. One for Age of Sigmar on the 28th of October, as well as one for Warhammer 40k on the 4th of November. This, combined with the totally new categories by Games Workshop means a whole lot of opportunities to strut their stuff.

While the event this year is usually run across two whole weeks, giving people some time to come down and marvel at the models and boards, Red House will only be able to keep the boards on display for one day per event. Understandable, considering how starved for space Singapore is, and well having a shorter event is definitely better than having no event at all.

Categories

This year, each event has 6 categories:

Youngblood, for painters of up to 15 years old.

First Army, for the first army you’ve painted.

Monsters and Machines, for armies with Imperial Knights, Behemoths, superheavies and the like.

Best Theme, for (I assume) those who tell the best story with their board.

Best Scenic Board, for prettiest board.

And of course, the main goal… Best Painted.

Of the six, I’m definitely not in the running for 2 of them (and now that I think about it this is a GREAT time for newbies and kids to jump onto the army painting train). But I think I have a reasonable chance at the rest. Of course, I’d love to bring home best painted, but I have to say that the level of painting in Singapore has really rocketed up in recent years (or at least that’s how I feel), and while it means more competition for me, I think that can only improve the wargaming community in Singapore.

History

When Gamersaurus Rex organized one AOP in 2014, I joined that because I was finally able to do something I had always wanted to do; my suitcase Orks. Inspired by GMM Studios’ Keep Calm and Carry On Case, I also had to do a scenic ‘base’ that could be carried around easily.

Unfortunately, I was unable to join AOP 2016. Red House had just opened that year, and it would have been amazing to be able to join the first official Armies on Parade event in Singapore. However, when they announced it, I only had a few months to complete the board, and I’m the kind of guy that loves to slave away at bringing every original detail to life, so I figured I wouldn’t have been able to complete it in time. Instead, I decided to start planning and painting for AOP 2017 real early. And that was a good call too; I ended up switching jobs and moving in 2017, so giving myself a long lead time ended up to have been a really good decision.

Anyway, it’s been a really long road to AOP 2017, and I can’t wait to show it off in a few weeks’ time.