Saturday at the Bowie Battle Bunker

A Day at the Bunker


     I spent a good portion of the afternoon at the Bowie Battle Bunker in Bowie Maryland (go figure, right?).  A few friends were meeting up to play some Warhammer Fantasy.  While spectating the game, I thought I'd putter around the store and take a look at some of the 40K games going on, and snap a few pics.

     I was disappointed to find only two fully painted armies being played.  The most impressive was this Thousand Sons army that was being played using the vanilla Space Marine codex.  There were some interesting conversions, and some creative "counts as" models.  There were Space Marines on horse back that were being played as SM bikers, and Blood Crushers adorned with weapons that were counts-as attack bikes as an example.  Some great modeling work going on here.

Cool but... um...
     So that's a $640 worth of Thunderhawk Transporter.  From distance, it looks ok.  But when I inspected it a bit closer, it made me sad.

     So the paint that's on there is super thin, and the Land Raider... dear God where do I start.  Some of the model has been, well I guess primed?  Not sure what I would call that.  Yikes.  This thing has been on display for some time now.

     I'll just leave you with a few more random shots...

Drop Pod Assault On Dallas/Ft. Worth Area!

     So I'm not living in the Dallas area at the moment, though I spent the lion share of my childhood there, and prior to joining the military, my wife and I lived in Arlington (only about a mile or so from the new Cowboys Stadium... aka Death Star). There was only one GW store at the time, located in Grapevine Mills shopping center. That's an large mall, and if you have been to one of the "Mills" style malls, you know what I'm talking about. The GW store there is small, but most of the staff that I had met are top notch.

     Well the floodgates of GW are opening in the DFW area now. They built a GW store in sort of the Frisco area last year. One opened in Denton this year. CRAZY! Three GW stores! But wait there's more...

     I happen to have a friend who is a manager at a store in the Parks Mall in Arlington. He said he has confirmation that they're putting up a GW store there! So for those of you DFW Texans, congratulations, you're pretty well covered if you live in the mid-cities area and north.

     

     That's not even to speak of some of those independent retailers, simply because I don't know a lot of them. After all, I didn't get into this hobby until AFTER I left Texas. I do know of a pretty key IR though called Area 51 not too far from that Grapevine GW location.

     Just two more years, and I'll be able to return to Texas. I've been looking forward to it for many reasons, and these store openings are getting me very excited. My local GW store at the moment, is decidedly less than awesome. I was really hoping for more, when I moved here. The employees are all kinda slimy script readers. I've been in that store countless times, hell I even painted in the store (not really by choice) and they don't remember me, they ALWAYS go to their scripts, and you can't engage in a just normal chew-the-fat conversation because they're actually TOO dorky. That's saying something as I'm a huge dork myself. Of course I need to also mention that the store's assistant manager's son is there almost all hours of the damned day. He's a little snot-nosed brat that will find his way into ANY discussion in the store, and will interrupt games with stupid "humorous" insights. I had to play a game against him one day, and he specifically tailored an army against mine using some of his army and some of the display stuff. Bleh... worst... game... ever.

     So I hope that these GW store exemplify the better store experience I had at Grapevine Mills, and will provide me and my friends with a good place to enjoy our 40K games.