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So, I have to admit that as excited as I have been for WarhammerFest I have been disappointed by a lot of it so far. I keep waiting for something to WOW me and nothing really has. Yesterday the Chaos got all the love, but it wasn’t my thing, and the Squats were really a sideshow. Today, there was the hints of something great but it never really materialized. There are a couple of models I REALLY liked today, and the rest were boring.

For starters, I was getting really excited with the trailer for the Skaven. I love the Skaven and they’ve been deserving a range refresh for a long time. So when the video was clearly about the Ratmen I was ecstatic and then we got… one guy. The Skaven Deathmaster. And honestly, he’s not even that exciting of a model.

I haven’t been able to find a picture of it, but I can SWEAR that there was a Skaven in an Underworlds set that was standing on this same exact gated archway. There is really nothing here that excites me, except I like the poison dripping down the blade. The rest is nothing.

Here’s a picture of him. There was no mention of the Skaven getting any more models in the near future, but they did get a Battletome.

Then came the Sylvaneth. We knew the Sylvaneth were coming because they were featured on not one but two banners on the teaser picture. And, they really came out swinging. Lots of new Sylvaneth, and I admit that I like the models, I just… don’t care about Sylvaneth. And I can think of a lot of ranges that were in more need of new models than these.

That said, let’s talk about the models. First we have the Lady of Vines, and she looks suitably weird and really about as good an evil tree person can look. There are definitely Sylvaneth models that I like more (the Drycha Hamadreth is phenomenal and the Treelord Ancient is great). This one is good and fitting the them, but overall looks lacks a lot of the great stuff that the other good Sylvaneth have.

I don’t know. I don’t like Aelves.

Next we got the Gossamind Archers, and I admit that these are some pretty great looking sculpts. Again, they don’t make me want to go out and start a Sylvaneth army, but they are solid. I really like the half-aelf/half-tree thing they’ve got going on, and the bug wings are really good for the Realm of Life. So, overall, good minis.

Now come some models that I can really get behind: the Spiterider Lancers and the Revenant Seekers. These great big bugs are good homages to the fact that Alarielle is riding a huge beetle. This is, after all, the Realm of Life, and there’s more to Life than just trees and vines. There’s also bugs. Heck, I even really like the aelves who are riding the bugs–at least the Spiterider Lancers. They have some pretty great mask/helmets. (The long haired, plain-faced aelves of the Revenant Seekers aren’t anything special.)

Finally, however, we got something that I could really sink my teeth into. This was the highlight of the reveals for me: the Ogroid Theridons. And I say this as someone who has no interest in playing Slave to Darkness. I will 100% be buying these miniatures just to paint. Heck, I might buy two sets of them because I can’t decide if I like them better with their two-handed weapons or with their shields. These were, by far, the biggest win of the day for me.

(I actually have the Warcry Fomoroid Crusher–a seemingly related cousin of the Ogroids–sitting on my desk right now and haven’t known what to do with him, but I think he’ll be a painting project very soon with these guys for inspiration.)

Then we got a teaser about the Free Cities of Sigmar, and, well, it was nothing. I have to admit that I was really laughing when the hosts were showing off this iconography, talking about it like it was something really new and different. To me it looks pretty much like regular old Sigmar/Free Cities stuff we’ve seen forever. Heck, half of it looks like it could swap just fine onto a 40k model and no one would know the difference. Anyway, boo.

And then we got two character models, Cado Ezechiar–a vampire who is apparently in the books–and Drekki Flynt, another character from the books. They both look fine. They look like a pretty good vampire and a pretty good Arkanuat. Nothing amazing.

Honestly, I’m really putting a lot of hope into tomorrow’s models, because this was a whole lot of nothing.