The Road to Warhammer Fest 2023 - part 1, Warcry Gaming Accessories Box

I have been using an old pine jewellery box to transport my Warcry gaming accessories for a few months now - it came with me to Warhammer World in August for the Animosity UK Meet-up for example. It's small enough to be easy to carry but still big enough to hold a bag of dice, Battleplan cards, a folding ruler, combat gauges, a pen, and a set of Warcry tokens.

Last month I got day-pass for Warhammer Fest 2023 and an add-on ticket for the Sunday Warcry Rumble tournament.

As my warband is already painted my thoughts have turned to the other things I will be taking with me: I'm planning on making a mini display board for them (maybe using an A4 cork pin-board, maybe using a GW 160mm round base - not sure yet). So by the time I go to Warhammer Fest I want to have these ready to take with me:

• Part 1, Themed box for counters, ruler, combat gauges, cards and dice.
• Part 2, Themed Warcry Dashboard
• Part 3, planning the Gnarlwood Encampment mini display board
• Part 4, building the Gnarlwood Encampment Mini display board
• Part 5, The Tangled Depths
• Part 6, The Warhammer Fest Warcry Rumble

With this in mind I started thinking about this box. The plain aged-pine finish was okay but I thought it could easily be a lot more characterful and thematic.

So first I darkened the wood with a water-based "oak" wood stain and then, when that was dry, started drawing pirate orruk designs over it, with a 1mm waterproof pigment ink pen.

I did a lot of google image searches first for ideas, but I had a vague idea of how I wanted the finished box to look when I started; something mixing nautical scrimshaw designs, hand-drawn maps, recognisably nautical and/or pirate style symbols and calligraphy (skull and crossbones, a compass rose, anchors, crossed swords, curled/spiralled lines, etc.), and conventional Warhammer orruk/orc/ork symbols and glyphs (orruk skulls, weapons, checks, dags and flames). I also thought a few Dreadfleet map styled illustrations of monstrous fish thrown in wouldn't hurt.

The above is the front of the box - I think it and the top are my favourite faces.

I am pleased with the orruk glyph of the ur-whale I drew for Animosity II (or "Squidmuncha") on the back though. (I still thinks it's absolutely wild that someone liked my orruky fish-drawing so much they had a real tattoo of it done on their arm!!)

This is got a bit abstract! It's kind-of channelling weather maps and there might be a version of Azyrite script in there.

Maybe its a orruk shaman-navigator's way of mapping Realmgate travel?

This is my least favourite side. I messed it up a bit (where the anchor overlaps the crossed bones) and never really managed to get it to come together. I wish I'd done more maps instead of the skeleton, anchor and tentacles. I don't hate it though.

As I mentioned - I'm very happy with the top - I think I found a nice blend of orruky and piratey symbols. The overlapping circles are a motif I have used since WFB Storm of Magic as a way of drawing "magical diagrams".

Inside...

The bag came with some handmade soap my wife bought. I called dibs on it as soon as I saw it! (then drew a orruk skull on it with a marker pen).

It just about holds about thirty 16mm dice, but with just the 18 dice needed for Warcry it is very roomy, but doesn't feel too big.

These are the 3 sets of 6 dice I currently plan to use for the Warhammer Fest Warcry Rumble tournament (although they were all from dice sets sold for Kill Team).

• The orange skull and crossbones dice (Phobos Strike Team dice!) are my Initiative Dice.
• The slightly smaller black and orange ones (14mm Kill Team "Organised Play" dice from the last edition) are my Wild Dice.
• The Ork set with the horned-skull are my Battle Dice.

Update: I have since replaced the 14mm Kill Team "Organised Play" dice with 16mm green WH40K Ork dice to use as Wild Dice. They should be a bit easier for my opponent to distinguish from the others!

The small card boxes inside each have a simple orruky skull and crossbones drawn/painted on top - the black box on the left was from a watch and the one on the right was from a craft shop.

Inside the card boxes are the Battleplan Cards and tokens from Heart of Ghur. In the gap behind them are 2 metal combat gauges, a wooden 2-foot folding ruler and a nice pen.

I don't know why exactly, but having "off the board" accessories that fit the theme of the warband / army really makes me happy. This obviously started with themed dice (and I have a LOT of dice...) but it has extended to almost everything else that I take to a game now!