So, we've focussed a lot of the first steps in gaming, with a slant towarsd roleplaying, but of course I was also double dipping as it were, and finding my feet in historical wargaming. It was bound to be like that because as well as 20000AD, Starlord, Starblazer and Eagle, I was also a weekly taker of Warlord, Battle, Action and the Commando comics, with a healthy and balanced shot of Whizzer, The Beano, The Dandy and a devotee of the Willy The Kid periodical digests, the latter of which were so splendidly and blatantly NPC by  any  standards that the young and sensitive of this modern age would in all probabilities and without aid of any kid, self-immolate in a Roman candle of outrage. But that was then, so hush chile, and let grandpa reminisce... It was a Saturday morning in March 1982,  the sky overcast but with that promise that Spring would lumber  along anytime now, and Alan and I were taking the 278 bus into town for a mooch around our usual haunts but ...

  Last night, I finished the final 12 figures for the first of my 15mm sci-fi forces:       I want to thank those of you who have commented on my ongoing projects in the last few weeks. I paint for a living - full time for the last 16 years - so for me painting is a job and not simething I do for personal pleasure. It's quite clinical as I have a very specific worth ethic (as my clients would, I think, confirm) and so, my own stuff has been sent to a part time leisure painter since 2020, as after a 45 hour week under 4 lighting rigs, hunched over like Quasimodo, I generally want to go out into the countryside and fine a nice restaurant or go to the theatre at weekends. My own requirements are clean, neat and above all, what I would call '80s style' paint jobs and my painter does them very well, working as he has through about 10000 28mm figures so far, and having done so with a tight brief from me.    It does mean I have some nice (and immense) ...

 I am fortunate, nay, blessed to have 'come up' at a time just before the Warhammer Fantasy Battles rules hit the shelves - and stayed there, being sold off for a  mere fraction of the RRP in literal stacks at the front of GW store. It's something that we who refuse to die and in not doing so, irritate others, comment on quite often at our coffee and bullshit 'salons' - no, really... And then we get teary eyed over whatever metal based figures one of us has brought to the table for discussion and pawing over, that day, before the conversation turns to the scourge that is 'Oldhammer'. Now, don't get me wrong, the idea of preserving what was arguably the high water mark of fantasy gaming, and introducing others to it, is a fine sentiment. But, re-writing history and claiming that paintwork and styles which were not contempraneous or even available  in the case of materials as 'authentic' is taking it a step too far. If you were not there, you canno...

 So, we've reached that point that saw me now a member of Sheffield Wargames Society and most recently the Sheffield Runelords, the rub being that I now had to choose between the Runleords and my Monday night 'closed sessions;' with my friends at the 'after school' club run by Steve Roberts. I'd played a lot of tabletop stuff and even more D&D on Monday nights, and I was getting pretty slick as a DM, but Runequest and the 'glittering prize' of finding that imagined 'inside track' to the secret worlds that I'm sure all early 80s kids believed existed,. That hidden gaming session with the staff of the local games store, whose sage-like words were sure to reveal arcane secrets and I would be able to learn them, to become an acolyte of thes fell lords of die rolling. What actually happened was that I did indeed get to meet these people and many, many more.  Back then, it seemed that every connection you made opened a new gaming related pathwa...

  Well, I thought I should wander out to the games bunker and do a visual recording of the progress of the preslotta fantasy armies, as my painter is down to the last 800 of his batch and I have about 500 to do myself. The unpainted stuff includes 350 Grenadier Barbarians including 3 war mammoths, 10 Ackland Orc Wyverns, 20 or so of the lovely little attacking golden eagle, 5 Ackland Elf War Eagles, 200 or so Chronicle Orcs, 500 FTS, FTZ and C Series Undead and a load of angels, demons and war machines... I really ought to try and get an accurate number of those. Oh, I forgot to photograph the pink T-Rex and the Dwarf on Triceratops. And then, a lifetime's collecting of fantasy armies is complete. I certainly don't need any more. My historical collecting is also pretty much over now, and I am working through the sci-fi so, that I will hopefully have it all done in 18 months ahead of hitting 60. I'm always available if an show organisers want a 15 x 5 Oldhammer game in atten...