The last month has been quite an expensive one. There were the Chaos Dwarves, the Great Spined Dragon and now, the very week in which I decide that perhaps having spent a four-figure sum on toys, I should recuperate a little, I am contacted to see whether I would be interested in spending another four figure sum on 3 original artworks by John Blanche? Well, do wargamers wank over old Citadel catalogues? Of course I was bloody interested... And so, after securing the funds my darling wife drove me South at an unreasonable hour this morning to collect the works. And what works they are! Here are some pictures to make you drool. You will see in some images that I have included an old Citadel miniature for scale. For anyone interested it's 'Prince Ardelon', himself quite a sought after model. First up, a 1987 sketch of a wizard, in pencils: Next up, is a truly wonderful and insanely detailed abstract pice of a cyborg female suspended ov...

A very brief post to showcase a couple of seagoing vessels which will be available at Salute in April. These are 1/300 as you would expect. You can get an idea of the sheer size of the trawler (also available in a civilian version) if you look at the Sherman tank in the LCT. Separate crew figures are available with which to bring the models to life. TTFN

I just came into possession of some photos which show me as a child playing with toy soldiers. What is fun about them, is that the fort is a traditional soap box fort and that as well as the odd plastic toy soldier they are all early 20th century toy soldiers. Collectors seeing this may faint, but they were toys and I was playing with them. I have no defence for the haircut! And me on my birthday wearing a Six Million Dollar Man outfit... TTFN

One of my prized possession, with which to give any retro Warhammer game some 80 hi tech gravitas is my MagiDice (TM). This was, at the time a very expensive executive toy which was powered by a PP7 battery no less. These were such precision pieces of electronics that each one had an individual serial number lest they need to back for servicing. Anyway, here's some pics of the beast... The more observant may have noticed that it was made a few doors away from that other great 80 gaming institution 'Chris Harvey Games' for whom I had the distinct pleasure of working in the 90s. TTFN

I think that we all have weak moments in our pursuit of the hobby, and today I have had one of those moments. In the 80s I literally bought every new model as it arrived in Games Workshop, Sheffield. I almost lived in there; in fact if a particularly desirable item was due in stock, I'd (and I don't even blush to recall this) be there an hour before opening and half an hour after closing lest I miss it, or it be placed on the shelf after I had been thrown out at closing time, just to thwart my need for lead. I have a vague memory of being found, one chilly November morning with my nose and tongue frozen to the glass of the shop window, and that the staff had to help remove me. But that can't be right because Pete, Chris and Lisa would have stood there in the store and waved, laughed and phoned around all my mates to come and do the same. *sigh* Anyway, one of the models which I tackled was the Great Spined Dragon, sculpted by Nick Bibby (who also painted arguable the ...

This must be a first. I am writing this post whilst in the bath, so fingers crossed... If you are reading this, then I didn't drop the iPad in the water. Right, here goes... We see the term 'Oldhammer' bandied around freely these days like the favours of a lady of ill repute. But what exactly does it mean to me? Surprisingly, very little, but not in a derogatory way, I assure you. Let me explain... I started playing Warhammer, literally on the day of release, and although I was hooked, having for some time been a historical wargamer and a finalist in the junior heats of 'The Nationals', I was also obsessed with fantasy miniatures to t he point that out of the two first places in competions I had won by 1982 (by 1996/7 rising to 22 first places and several others which being lower, I literally binned) one was fantasy and one historical. But out of the six entries I had placed, only one was historical. I'd been bitten bad, after my first purchase (deta...

For me, one of the great joys of Warhammer, when it came along, was just how open the world was.  You got a skeleton of what is now an over-examined gaming world, which you could flesh out and shape to your own needs. And let's be honest, you never really needed all the 'fluff' in 1982. It was all about getting units on the table and knocking seven shades of imaginary shit out of the opposition. I remember in one game, that a friend fielded a 3000 pt army which consisted of three wizards, who summoned demon after demon. Three Greater Demons ensured that on that day those seven shades of shit were: Unicorn Liche Spectre (quite insubstantial stuff' Fish Man Dragon  Gnoll Skeleton (yes, he kicked me that   hard) But, it was a bloody good game, legal under the rules and did not need to be justified against any 'official' background story. There was a loophole and my mate used it to his advantage. After all how many 3000pt armies have...

Real life’s a bu**er! That’s the conclusion that the author has reached after spending years of his life doing his best to avoid it - with an exceptionally high rate of success thus far. As one of millions of teenage boys (and sometimes those other ones who smell better and have two bumps at the front) who spent the 80’s playing games with model soldiers or pretending that they were a mighty elf warrior, when the role playing and wargaming craze swept the globe, the author takes the reader on a journey of almost 3 decades from his first forays into fantasy worlds, all the way to – allegedly – making a living as the owner of a game store in the 90’s. Candid and heartfelt, this is the truly entertaining tale of a decidedly abnormal son of a normal Northern working class family. The story is in turn, humorous, sad, serious and introspective, but always unrepentant. It asks some of the most important questions faced by a teenage ‘games geek’ of the time: When  doe...

I was listening earlier today to a radio show out of L.A which was discussing 'The Beanie Baby Bubble'. Essentially, the author of the book of this title was examining the way that mass hysteria of sorts can ensue with popular fads, and how as people jump on the band wagon of 'the next big thing', literal fortunes can be lost. For instance, one poor deluded fool invested and lost a 6-figure sum which was to have been his son's college fund, by buying into the Beanie Babies craze. There's much more to the book, which is not about  those cute little soft toys of the late 90s and early 2000s, and it's now on my 'must read' list. This got me thinking about the nostalgia frenzy and the horrendous prices being bandied around for toys soldier which are around 30-35 years old and which, were mass produced and sold at 25p each to literally millions of kids in the 80s. For example, I recently sold by auction a single model of a Dwarf for a 3-f...

It's common knowledge that  my first love of gaming, is 1980s Warhammer stuff. However, today I have found that it can be emotionally dangerous for someone in their fifth decade. Having cleaned out my studio, put ups some new pieces of artwork on the walls and dusted my Warhammer boxes (which, more than any other game save 'white box' D&D seem to leech dust and damp unless regularly cared for) I opted to take a cup of tea, 'The Observer' and 'The First Citadel Compendium'...  ...and have a good hot bath. It was when I got stuck in to the Compendium, that disaster struck... I was happily losing myself in 1982 (the original 1982 and not one of the later incarnations) when I suddenly, in the midst of a rather excellent article by Rick Priestly on the introduction of high tech weapons and gadgets to fantasy games I had a literal 'flashback' to more than 30 years ago. It was a real 'FUCKING HELL!' moment.  ...