Armies on Parade is an annual competition that invites you to show off your beautiful army for the chance to win awards (more on those in a moment) and earn glory in the eyes of fellow Warhammer hobbyists. The global, online event for 2021 is taking place later this year, so now’s a great time to start putting your mighty war host together to impress the judges. You also have the opportunity to join in at a local level in your Warhammer store – look out for more details coming soon.
Before we go into the details, consider this your Save the Date invitation to join us on Warhammer TV for the live Parade Day Award Show.
The submission window opens on the 1st of October, and it closes at the end of that month. If you’re even faintly considering entering, we say go for it!
Armies on Parade is as much about sharing the cool hobby projects you’ve been working on as it is about winning awards – we just love seeing armies fully painted up and ready for battle.
As before, there will be one email address accepting submissions. We’ll reveal that nearer the time, along with full instructions on how to enter. Once the submission window closes, our expert Armies on Parade judges will sift through all your entries and pick the winners, which we’ll announce live on Parade Day.
For a bit of inspiration, here are a few great Armies on Parade entries from last year.
Judges are giving out honours for three major categories – and there are gold, silver, and bronze awards for the top three entries in each one.
As before, our judges are handing out one-off awards for particularly outstanding or unusual submissions that deserve recognition too. Loads of entries caught the judges’ eyes last year, and there were a host of special categories including the Blessing of the Omnissiah award for converting, the Dread Artisan award for painting, and the Honour of the Household award for the best large models.
Speaking of judges, one of the talented painters who oversaw last year’s competition was none other than regular Warhammer Community contributor Tyler Mengel. If you’re after some inspiration for how to get your own Armies on Parade entry underway, here’s Tyler with some words of wisdom on how he goes about starting his projects.
Tyler: I've always been a fan of Armies on Parade and have been involved every year since 2014. One of my favourite parts of playing Warhammer is seeing fully painted armies all lined up ready for battle, and that's essentially what this is – there's just no dice rolling after.
It was an easy choice for me to pick an army thanks to the recently released range for Soulblight Gravelords. They have a ton of different units to choose from and are almost like Cities of Sigmar in that way. There's a Vampire faction, a Deathrattle faction, and a Deadwalker faction all rolled into one book.
While you can certainly do a classic mixed army, I rather like picking one aesthetic and running with it. After seeing the new Deadwalker Zombies, I knew which faction I was going to choose.
My goal for this army is for it to be entirely focused on the Deadwalker and Deathmage aesthetic. That means lots of zombies, Necromancers, and zombie-adjacent units such as Corpse Carts.
Luckily, I have had a bit of a headstart on the project as several units are already done. The Necromancer was completed during the Malign Portents campaign and is made from the Mortis Engine kit, while I painted the Corpse Cart for my Legion of Grief army during Forbidden Power.
I don't think I could ever get bored of painting zombies. I'm always excited to work on more of them, which is a good thing because I'm planning on plenty of them for this army. I'm also looking forward to painting some of the new Dire Wolves in the future.
Next month, I hope to have another Hero done, as well as some more Deadwalker Zombies, and an elite unit that I can’t wait to begin.
I have a lot of conversions planned for this army to get it to fit my theme, including a rather ambitious Mortis Engine I've started building already. After seeing Gobsprakk, the Mouth of Mork for the Kruleboyz, I may have to incorporate that monstrous vulcha into my plans as well.
Thanks, Tyler – you can never have too many zombies, and we’re looking forward to seeing how Gobsprakk’s Corpse-rippa Vulcha might fit into the army.
So there you have it, folks. Armies on Parade 2021 is back, and it’s going to be bigger and better than ever. If you have any questions, make sure you check out our competition FAQs for the answers.
Remember, this year’s competition is online once again, so you don’t even need to leave the comfort of your own home with all your precious miniatures – there’s no excuse NOT to give it a go.
* This includes the following games: The Horus Heresy, Middle-earth™ Strategy Battle Game, Aeronautica Imperialis, Necromunda, Blood Bowl, and Adeptus Titanicus.