Warhammer, Pornography And The Mythical 2p Ride Of Pleasure

I have recently REALLY found my mojo with regards to the older Warhammer rules again, and having found that my spending is 4 figures lower than planned despite my best attempts this year, I threw caution to the wind and shelled out a reasonable sum for the two 'Realm Of Chaos' volumes on top of all the Chaos models I bought a couple of weeks ago.

I used to be a competition gamer in historical circles until I retired 32 years ago this very month, at the tender age of 18.

I used to bust a gut coming up with armies and remember when I competed in the Nationals for the last time, sitting in Rogers bedroom, crunching out a Polish army to Gush, the day was a rather wind beaten one, and Roger being used to the slight movement of the low rise flats, gently mocked my panic as I'd never experienced it before.

I've always enjoyed creating armies, characters and notoriously my 'Christmas games' at the club and in my store, back when life was simpler (if more existentially fraught at times) and I think this is what's driven me to the Chaos books and older Warhammer again after solid year of historical stuff. 

I am enjoying delving back into two books that I've not owned since they first came out. I bought my first volume on day of release at the Leeds store when Tony Cottrell was in residence and wowing us with his amazing conversions for 40K made from 1/35 scale model kits. The second volume was again bought on day of release, and for me was the better of the two as it covered Tzeentch and Nurgle, the two gods of Chaos that appealed to me most.

But back then, we were so poor that the pot we pissed in did double service as a tureen at meal times, and I was unable to afford the £3.95 price tag of a blister of figures. Thus, as we had a young daughter at the time my plans were curtailed for a while. Not that I am complaining; too many gamers put their hobby before partners, children and their own hygiene, and that is not the way it should be.

Take some advice kids - If you can't afford to look after yourself, then a high cost hobby of any kind is not for you. It's a luxury, not an essential. Take that as read from someone who historically knows.

But, I digress...

Over the years, GW has distanced itself from the old Chaos background and added an 'a' to the word 'demon' (as if that will convince the frothing religious types who think that having water with their dry bread is a luxurious sin). Me, I'll call them demons,

But whatever your thoughts on that thorny issue, the one thing that can be objectively stated, is that the rich background and the 'D.I.Y' approach to constructing mutants and champions of Chaos was and still seriously fun and means that the insipid vanilla Chaos armies that we have today (what's the point of making all that shout about the mutated glory of Chaos, and then creating lists wherein they have about as much variety as any other army?) look as lifeless and flacid, as a dead seal on an East coast beach , on an overcast Tuesday in March. Yes, I have seen that very thing and in the same conditions.

The one thing I have noticed in reading the 2 volumes of 'R.O.C' is that in the first book, the number of units of demons are restricted in the army lists, and that the units must be a set number of models, whilst in the later book, there are no limits, and whilst units do have fixed minimum numbers, they may be increased in multiples of the given number. I am assuming that those points are applied retroactively to the first book's lists.

The freedom whilst still having a few limits is what made Warhammer work for me. In '82 it seemed neither one type of game or the other. It lacked a few of the familiar concepts I was used to with historical rules, and feel short of the detail required to be a proper RPG. By '83, I'd re-examined what it did offer and saw that it was a unique and fun experience which, with a little love and care made for some great games. GW was still not the shiny and P.C behemoth it was to morph into, and breasts and pubic hair didn't cause offence. I never saw one of my peers - male or female - drop into a dead swoon, awaking only long enough to request a lawyer sue the company for psychological harm. Me, I liked tits, leather bikinis and pubic hair, but seeing it on 25mm (yes, 25mm sonny!) wasn't the same as some decent trashy porn of getting an eye to the keyhole of the door which separated the two sexes changing rooms at a local sports centre (or so I am advised).

And back then, if you wanted porn, you couldn't just type in 'Necrophile Donkey Whores' into a search engine. No, you had make do with tatty mags, found under piles of leaves in local woods or by finding a newsagent where they didn't know you and didn't care that your voice hadn't even broken - or so I am told.

Escort and Razzle were probably the drugs of choice for sexual angst back then, but certainly not the cover of White Dwarf or the illustrations in a game supplement. No, they were art, and whilst they were admittedly erotic, it was the eroticism of a well drawn female figure, rather than the eroticism of the white high-heeled tarty variety.

The point was, that appreciated the difference between fantasy and reality. and as far as I knew, most of my mates with possibly one exception didn't get their rocks off to their gaming collection. This went for the girls I knew... They could talk animatedly all through lunch, about a nude figure rendered on paper, but were not interested at all in soft porn. They were able to discern and differentiate, a skill which seems lacking in this age of equality and neo-Victorianism.

Games have suffered for it, I think as they look more and more like the world and moral framework forced upon us today, with the addition of some conservative chainmail and androgynous, almost sexless characterisations. Is it really making the world a better place? I think not, personally...

Anyway, I am finding yet another level of retro enjoyment of my hobby and I'm appreciating in all it's non-P.C, imperfectly written and imperfectly balanced glory. The only thing is, that I have also decided that as much as possible must be done with contemporaneous models (but hey, if it looks good, I'm not too anal that I won't use a modern figure, so f**k those of you who, insist everything is authentically 80s. I love and breathe the 80s but I didn't stop buying figures in some slavish, slobbering fit of indignant obeisance, when the decade passed to 1990 or a range was revamped, and I never will!) which is costing me a small fortune, but equally is bringing the collector and hunter in me that pleasure that only money can buy - And yes, I have spent more on clothes and perfumery than I have figures this year, and thus am entitled to splash out on some lead.

I was reading another blog this week, wherein the author was opining on the seemingly unbelievable phenomenon that was the 2p bus ride in the 80s. Several people doubted this, but it's true. One of the great things about living the the People's Republic Of South Yorkshire was that bus fares for kids under 16 were subsidised and you could travel across the county for 2p each way. If you had to change bus, then you paid another 2p, but we could for instance, travel from Sheffield to Doncaster to visit Athena Books and Terry Wise (blessed be his name) for a grand total of 4p. We could go into town every night after school and on Saturdays for a total of 24p.

Now, this meant that if we saved 60p of our dinner money every day, on Saturday we could buy a Citadel Fantasy Tribes dragon with the three head variants they all came with and have 1p change. The spare heads could be sold for 50p (about the same cost as 2 figures before blister packs came in and the price went to 30p and the world as we knew it, changed forever even if the brown slot bases were nice) and so with luck, for every three cycle of this process, you could buy a fourth dragon, essentially for nothing.

In fact, one month, I was suffering with some digestive problem which meant that around lunch time I was unable to eat without throwing up and instead was on medication and a glass of water. So, I'd have a good breakfast of say 6-9 Shredded Wheat, and then my dinner money would be saved. This meant that with my spending money of £3 from my parents, £1 from my nan and my £5 dinner money, I could buy 24 F.T Orcs, get a chip butty and my bus fares when Saturday arrived. That month saw my Orc army really get a boost, I can tell you.

I could stomach the mentality which prevails in this region, of voting for anybody or anything which wears a red rosette and sings 'The Internationale' (if pressed I'll take Billy Bragg's version, thanks) if we still had bus fares like that for the young, because those bus fares allowed my generation the freedom to travel to every game shop for miles around.

Today's parents will blanche at the idea of their precious little bundles visiting strange towns, but it was probably even more dangerous back then, but our parents taught us how to be sensibly cautious, drilled us on what and what not to do, and we also understood that if you had a denim jacket and long hair for example, you should find where similar types in other towns could be found, 'just in case'.

Anyhow, apart from once being chased by skinheads in Manchester after I bout a Ral Partha wyvern and suit of armour on a stand at the GW branch there (yes I could have got it in Sheffield, but it made this models feel 'earned' by making a pilgrimage; leaving home at 6AM when my Dad was doing a stock audit up there to 'ride shotgun' into Mordor.

Ah, the simple pleasures of the young!

And so to the week that was...

I had posted a poll on the Facebook page for my figure business this week, and was somewhat surprised when someone said 'You lost my money at 'Satanic'... Repent while you can' and apparently meant every word.

Now, I don't get wound up by this kind of thing because for all my faults, I respect the right of an individual to believe whatever they wish as long as they don't try to convert me. However, given that the name of my company relates to a time when we were genuinely thought of by some who took their personal beliefs a little too far, to be devil worshiping, disciples of 'The Dungeon Master' in an ironic manner and does not at any time suggest that you slaughter the Billy Goats Gruff, and offer their still beating hearts to dark gods, I don't see the need for this type of knee jerk response.

But rather than have a good rant at them, I did what Jesus would do - turned the other cheek and forgave them. I was tempted to send them a picture of 'my staff':

Part from that, it's been a busy week painting 15mm ECW and 28mm RPG figures for some of my clients as well as having my good lady abed with quite serious food poisoning.

However, in  between, I did manage to grab a few new toys, some of which I present here for your moist-palmed delectation:

All in all, not a bad haul for the week, and I considering a few other select purchases before the week is out.

TTFN