Interview with Kike from Kingdom Wargames

Hello everyone!

On September 4th, the Kingdom Wargames painting contest will take place, and to bring you a bit closer to this event, we’ve decided to do a short interview with them.

And here’s a small introduction video.

– Hi Kike, for those who don’t know you, tell us a bit about Kingdom Wargames.

How’s it going, Hugo? I’m Kike, the promoter of the idea…

After spending 11 years in Madrid working for Games Workshop, getting to know and raising half of my customers… 🤣 I decided to start, at least for now… The largest hobby store in Madrid 😇

It’s a store/association with a place to buy products and another place to play… (The gaming area is bigger…) Right now we have 58 gaming tables… Enough to organize a GT.

– Who are the people behind this project?

As investors, it’s just me… The guys call me “the tank” (I bear the weight of the company).

But on the team, we have two loyal and dedicated warriors for the cause ⚔️

Valten is the DPS (he handles event organization and is the visible face of the project). He’s an expert in games and has always enjoyed being a referee. It just comes naturally to him… And Edu is the support; he’s in charge of logistics and the painting studio at KINGDOM WARGAMES 👑. So if your order doesn’t arrive… You know who’s to blame 🙈🙊🙉

– What’s your favorite book and movie?

My favorite novel (I really enjoyed Drizzt Do’Urden) and The Horus Heresy… As you can see, some great books 💪🏻😉

As for movies, if I had to choose one… Disney’s Hercules 😉 that’s all folks…

– How did Kingdom Wargames come about?

Last year, during the strict lockdown… And everyone was saying that by summer, we wouldn’t have Covid anymore… So I left my contract with GW and decided to go solo…

Not counting that later we’d have the zone-specific lockdowns in Madrid… Filomena… Brexit… It was a madness/nightmare.

– How have the restrictions over the past 2 years due to Covid affected you?

KINGDOM WARGAMES hasn’t been affected because it was born ready for it… There are several HEPA filters in the rooms with less ventilation, and we have rooms with windows for playing in a more relaxed environment…

I believe it’s one of the safest places to do activities…

– What led you to organize a painting contest?

There are two people I’ve held in my heart for a long time… Alexander Botana and Alfonso Giraldes…

The idea came from Alejandro… I just got super excited as I always do 🙉🙊🙈 trying to organize a Games Day or something similar…

And Alfonso, to whom I promised that if I ever left Games Workshop, I’d call him first to do something big together 😘

– What has been the hardest part of organizing the contest?

None really… We’ve been organizing events for many years… A painting event doesn’t scare us at all… Plus, we have a lot of people behind us helping and supporting.

The only dilemma has been whether to allow 3D entries this year…

Since my sponsors this year are stores and brands with physical products (except for my friend Gonzalo from Impriwars), I preferred to go with real miniatures to support the brands.

We’ll see what the future holds… But I have no problem with it—it was just a matter of supporting the sponsors this year.

– Who will be judging the contest?

I’m lucky to have two masters of masters… Mr. Banshee and Mr. Alexander.

They are the judges and lords of the event… And they will be the ones to grade the “Legend” pieces.

We also have many other painters of epic level 🤣🤣

David Arroba and Diego from Hera Models are going to have a Duel ⚔️ 👑 let’s see what happens 😉

– What prizes will the best works receive?

The overall winner will receive €500 and the Sword of the Alliance (after all, we’re a kingdom… What less than to win this weapon for the warrior). For the other categories, there will be €100 worth of products from the brands.

For gold, we’ll have at least €50 worth of products for each winner 💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻 and everything else will be given as raffle prizes among all the participants 🙏

– What do you need to do to register for the tournament?

To sign up for the tournament, you need to do two things:

What this post tells you…

Tag 3 friends, like KINGDOM WARGAMES, and share the story.

With that, we can reduce the registration fee from €20 to €5.

Under this premise, you can enter all the categories you want 💪🏻 (1 piece per category)…

– Personally, what do you value most in a painting job?

Working at GW teaches you to paint fast… And often, you learn to do tabletop quality… The fine work I leave to Botana and Giraldes…

As long as they’re painted, it works for me 😉

– We all know that working with the public has its ups and downs, but it always leads to a ton of interesting anecdotes. Tell us, what’s the weirdest thing that’s happened at the store?

Since I hadn’t made videos in a long time… To give me confidence, I put on a wig… It went so badly that we couldn’t stop laughing… With my beard and a blonde wig… You can imagine the result 🤣🤣

– Organizing Wargames events and with your own store, are you guys gamers? What are your favorite games, and what factions do you play?

We’re 100% hardcore gamers…

The only thing is we no longer play competitively… We’ve won tons of tournaments… Now we just want to enjoy the game rather than humiliate our opponents 🤣🤣

Personally, I like Warhammer 40k, and I have all the armies. If I had to pick one…

I’d go with my Salamanders 😉

– Well, it’s clear we play a thousand different games now, but before this boom, were you more into brisca or dominoes?

Mus, hahahahah 🤣🤣🤣

– What lesser-known or less-played wargame or game would you like to introduce to Spain?

We welcome all communities because KINGDOM WARGAMES isn’t based on sales…

Normally, we charge €5 for people outside the club, and the rest we leave for prizes…

For example, a 40k tournament that costs €15, we leave it at €10 for club members to go toward prizes, and for those who aren’t part of the association, it’s €15 (€10 for prizes), so we can play everything without having to focus on games we sell in the store…

Rare games we help grow…

KOW and BATMAN from Knight Models.

I think betting on them is a win-win.

– And now the most important question: can you rank the 3 Star Wars trilogies from best to worst?

2, 1, 3

Good answer…

Thank you very much for your time, and we’ll see you at the contest!!