One Month In: A Winner, a Wobbly Livestream and What Comes Next?

One month ago, Legion Comps went live with a brand-new platform, a collection of prizes and the sort of optimism normally found in people who have not yet tried connecting OBS to Facebook Live. Four weeks later, we have drawn real winners, dispatched real prizes, welcomed returning customers and learned several lessons that would probably have been useful before launch. We are still here, still growing and still enjoying it. My technical abilities, however, remain a matter of ongoing investigation.

1. Our first month is complete

When Rob and I started Legion Comps, we had no existing audience waiting for us. There was no enormous mailing list, established social following or army of customers refreshing the website on launch night. We started with a platform Rob had built from scratch, a selection of prizes we genuinely liked and the hope that other hobbyists would eventually find us. Growth has been gradual rather than explosive, but it is happening. New people are discovering the site, customers are returning for later competitions, our social pages are growing and more names are appearing in the draws each week. Some days have been busy. Other days have seen the dashboard return to its convincing impression of an abandoned tomb world. That is the reality of starting something new. Every entry, comment, follow, review and shared post matters because each one represents somebody placing a little more trust in a business that did not exist a month ago.

2. The Iron Warriors completed their siege

Our first flagship monthly competition - the Iron Warriors Siege Host - has now been drawn. Naturally, as an Iron Warriors player, I approached this with complete objectivity and absolutely no personal investment whatsoever. One winner, Dirk Von Grimm, won the full siege force:

• The full Age of Darkness: Saturnine boxed set
• Fellblade Super-Heavy Battle Tank
• MkIII Breacher Squad
• Liber Hereticus
• Heavy Weapons Upgrade Set
• Forge World Iron Warriors MKVI Heads
• Forge World Iron Warriors MKVI Shoulder Pads
• Iron Warriors Legion Transfer Sheet
• Colour Forge primers Commercially, it was a close one. The competition did not sell out, and it certainly did not make us rich. The final push brought a strong increase in entries, though, and seeing the community respond during those last few days made the effort worthwhile. Most importantly, the closing date remained the closing date. There was no extension, no rollover and no attempt to move the finish line because more tickets remained than we wanted. The draw went ahead, a winner was selected and a genuinely enormous prize found its new commander. That matters more to us than pretending every competition has been a runaway financial success.

3. Lewis attempts a livestream

We wanted the Iron Warriors result to be our first proper Facebook Live presentation. The plan sounded simple:

• Show the draw stage
• Show my webcam
• Explain what was happening
• Draw the winner
• Look vaguely professional Then I opened OBS. I am comfortable discussing Legion paint schemes, building armies and spending unreasonable amounts of money on resin. Confront me with scenes, sources, stream keys and audio channels, however, and I apparently become a Victorian man encountering electricity for the first time. Facebook Live and OBS briefly refused to cooperate with my carefully prepared plan. I pressed several buttons with confidence but very little understanding, which is generally how technical disasters become larger technical disasters. Fortunately, Rob saved the day. This has become the unofficial Legion Comps workflow: I have a big idea, technology begins making alarming noises, and Rob appears from somewhere behind a computer to stop the business catching fire. The presentation was more improvised than intended, but the important part worked. The competition closed correctly, the final eligible ticket pool was confirmed and the winner was selected through the same verifiable draw process Rob explained in his previous War Table article. Nobody's chance depended on my ability to operate OBS. Thankfully. We learned plenty from the experience, and the next live draw will be considerably smoother. I may even know which button starts the stream before we are due to begin. No promises.

4. The next monthly draw is already live

With the Iron Warriors siege concluded, our next monthly competition has opened. This time, one winner will receive a £250 Element Games voucher to spend on whatever their hobby currently needs - or whatever new project they can convince themselves was absolutely essential. A new army, reinforcements, paints, tools, scenery or the box that has been sitting in their basket for three months: the choice belongs entirely to the winner. Choice-based competitions have been popular because every hobbyist wants something different. Rather than deciding what somebody should want, we provide the prize and let the winner make the difficult decision. Enter the £250 Element Games Voucher Monthly Draw

5. More than another raffle site

Competitions are the foundation of Legion Comps, but they were never intended to be the whole structure. From the beginning, we wanted to build something made specifically for hobbyists rather than a generic competition website that happens to contain a few Warhammer boxes. That is why the War Table exists. It gives us somewhere to talk honestly about building the business, explain how the platform works, share what goes wrong and publish the hobby content we would want to read ourselves. Over time, we want it to contain painting guides, product showcases, battle reports, collecting ideas, behind-the-scenes updates and conversations with other people from across the hobby. The draws bring people through the door. The hobby should give them a reason to stay.

6. Painting all eighteen Legions

My next major War Table project will be painting guides. The current idea is to work through all eighteen Horus Heresy Legions, showing the colours, primers, paints and techniques I use for each one. These will not be guides that simply say "paint it blue" and then reveal a Golden Demon entry twelve unexplained steps later. I want them to answer practical questions:

• Which primer gives the best starting point?
• Which paints do I actually use?
• What can be achieved quickly?
• Where is it worth spending more time?
• Which mistakes did I make before finding something that worked?
• How can the same approach be adapted for an entire army? Colour Forge primers will feature heavily because the starting colour can remove a surprising amount of work from a Legion scheme. I want to show how different primers perform, which colours suit particular Legions and what they look like on real miniatures rather than relying entirely on a colour chart. Naturally, Iron Warriors will receive entirely fair and unbiased treatment. They may also appear first. This is not favouritism. It is simply recognition that there is only one Legion that truly matters.

7. A painted-miniature store?

We are also exploring the idea of adding a painted-miniature store to Legion Comps. This would sit alongside the competitions and offer finished display miniatures, characters, Kill Teams and other painted pieces that hobbyists could purchase directly. There is still plenty to work through before it becomes a reality. We need to decide what people would genuinely want, how frequently new pieces could be added and how to price the painting fairly without turning the entire process into a second full-time job. But the idea fits what we want Legion Comps to become: somewhere for collectors, painters and players - not simply somewhere to buy a chance at a prize. If a painted-miniature section is something you would use, we genuinely want to hear from you.

8. What should come next?

This is where our Legionnaires come in. We can sit at the War Table and create plans all day, but the most useful ideas will come from the people actually following, reading and entering. What would you like us to make next? Would you prefer:

• Step-by-step Legion painting guides?
• Quick army-painting recipes?
• Honest primer and paint comparisons?
• Beginner guides without hundreds of pounds of equipment?
• Painted characters and display miniatures?
• Painted Kill Teams?
• Battle reports or army showcases?
• More behind-the-scenes business updates?
• Particular factions or prizes in future competitions? Tell us what would genuinely be useful or entertaining. We cannot promise to create everything immediately, but we will read the suggestions and use them to shape what comes next.

9. Legion Comps is now verified on Meta

Another small but important milestone this month is that Legion Comps is now verified on Meta. Our official presence across Facebook and Instagram now carries the verification badge, making it easier for customers to identify the genuine Legion Comps accounts. Trust matters enormously when you are a new business asking people to enter competitions online. Verification does not replace the need to keep proving ourselves through real draws, real winners and prizes that arrive as promised, but it is another step towards building a recognisable and trusted name within the hobby. We will continue using our official accounts to share live competitions, winner announcements, dispatch updates, War Table articles and the hobby content we have planned.

10. Thank you for trusting us

Starting a competition business requires people to trust you before you have had enough time to build a long history. That is not something we take lightly. Thank you to everyone who entered during our first month, followed the social pages, shared a post, left a review, watched a draw, sent us feedback or simply told another hobbyist that Legion Comps exists. Thank you to our winners for trusting the process while we arranged their prizes. Thank you to those who challenged us when something was unclear. Honest criticism has already helped us improve the website, the descriptions and the way we communicate. We are not pretending the first month was perfect. It was busy, expensive, occasionally stressful and considerably more complicated than the original pub conversation suggested. It was also worth it. One month down. Real winners drawn. Real prizes awarded. A growing group of Legionnaires around the War Table - and far too many ideas for what comes next. Rob remains at the computer. I remain officially banned from touching the livestream settings without supervision. The Legion continues to grow. Iron Within. Iron Without.