While in the Netherlands and France I stopped in at two different Warhammer Stores. I wasn't planning on buying anything as I fully expected they would have the EXACT SAME STUFF as my local Warhammer Store... but there were two in the neighbourhood of places I was going to be in Amsterdam and Paris, so I thought I'd check them out, just to see how different (or the same) they were!
This is the first of the photo-dumps of pictures from my recent European vacation. This is probably not the most interesting for most, but it was the easiest for me, so I thought I'd just get this one out of the way!
Amsterdam
We found the Amsterdam Warhammer store (or, at least, ONE of them) on our first full day in Amsterdam (and Europe!). Like EVERYPLACE in Amsterdam, there was a HUGE pile of bikes locked up out front!
The manager was friendly and spoke English (like EVERYONE in Amsterdam!) and there were two others sitting and painting with him when we visited. Amanda spoke with them briefly, while I kind of just had a quick look around...
As expected, it had basically all the same things the Warharmmer Store in Saskatoon had... and everything was in English.
displays for Warhammer Quest and Kill Team and other games..
Age of Sigmar: Spearhead...
The only thing that really varied was the contents of the displays of painted miniatures...
Yeah, that's a Hierophant Bio-Titan, which was pretty cool to see! I like how they dealt with the basing. I know Ian had trouble with those spindley little legs bending where they contacted the table. I'd seen others that put theirs on GIGANTIC bases, which made it difficult to maneuver around a table full of terrain. These little individual bases for each leg that also seemed to support the legs a bit, seemed rather ingenious!
some cool terrain they had. I liked the clear tanks they'd made and the Forge World cargo carrying variant of the Valkyrie was interesting to see!
Paris
The Paris shop we found on our second or third day in the city... temperatures had soared to 39°C... I feel like maybe it was air-conditioned... I'd been walking all afternoon and was pretty dehydrated and veering wildly into Heat Exhaustion territory, so everything is a bit of a blur...
The Paris store was on a pedestrian-only street with lots of cafes and other retail. It seemed super small at the front, but stretched a bit of a way back into the building. Still... smaller than the Amsterdam store... which was smaller than the Saskatoon store.
It seemed rather busy in there - maybe it was people seeking the refuges of air-conditioned businesses. I feel like there were two or three clusters of two to three or four people painting together at a table...? It seemed like there was a few staff...? I want to say three? but again... memory is pretty foggy at this point.
As with Amsterdam, it had all the same stuff as the Saskatoon store, but laid out in a wildly different fashion, because of the layout of the store. I feel like there was probably MORE stock in this store than the one in Saskatoon - like there were WAY MORE Blood Bowl teams.
Everything was in French. Well... mostly...
As with Amsterdam, the thing that differed, and was of most interest to me, was all the painted miniatures.
Stormcast Eternals army of Age of Sigmar and an impressive Imperial Knights army for Warhammer 40,000
Some Big'uns for assorted games.
More Big'uns
Giant Warhammer and Bolt Gun
This was pretty cool to see - new minis for the Old World Grand Cathay faction! I had not seen these before! If I didn't already have far too many armies for far too many games, this might have convinced me to jump into The Old World and build a Grand Cathay army!
Brand new Cities of Sigmar Cog Fort, expertly assembled and painted!
A really cool looking Hedonites of Slaanesh army... unfortunately my phone would only focus on the Myrmidesh Painbringers, fabulous glory-hogs that they are...
One last look at the window display - the Standard Age of Sigmar Skaven versus Stormcast Eternals from the Skaventide box... and some Lord of the Rings miniatures below.
Other Game Stores
I did not come across any stores that had any historical miniature games... I did find a board game store in Amsterdam with a lot of neat stuff... mostly English games that I could get at my FLGS, but a few Dutch ones...
Including a Dutch version of Munchkin!?
and Werewolf!
And something called Forest Shuffle, which Amanda thought looked interesting enough she suggested I look for an English copy when we got home...
I kind of regret not getting the Vincent VanGogh cards... (or the Rouseau or Carvagio ones... I think they might have had a pack of Rembrandt cards elsewhere in the store...) I don't OFTEN play games with regular playing cards... but I do like ART and having cards that each have a different painting on them from would be fun...
In Paris I stumbled onto a Wargame Cafe...
"French Wargame Cafe"
It wasn't open when I walked by... peering in the windows there were a lot of displays of painted miniatures, which I tried to take pictures of, but being dark inside and bright outside, all I got was reflections of what was across the street... beyond the display cases of minis it looked like it was just tables for playing games on, no actual product being sold.
I'm sure there has to be some stores selling historical wargaming miniatures in Amsterdam and Paris... they probably just weren't located centrally where I generally was!
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