On a cold and rainy day back in 1981 Chaosium unleashed its  Call of Cthulhu  tabletop roleplaying game on an unprepared world...  To help celebrate the 40th anniversary of  Call of Cthulhu , this Friday (July 2nd) we're launching the  Call of Cthulhu Classic Kickstarter , featuring a remastered version of this iconic boxed set and five of its first supplements: Shadows of Yog Sothoth  (80 pages), a global campaign to save mankind. The first of its kind. The Asylum & Other Tales  (72 pages), seven shorter sinister scenarios set around the world and at sea. The Cthulhu Companion  (64 pages), four scenarios as well as added rules and source material. Trail of the Tsathogghua  (64 pages), a mini campaign of two scenarios, plus a third adventure. It's world spanning, and thus all over the place. Fragments of Fear  (72 pages), additional gods, background, and other material, as well as a bonus scenario. Due to the remastered formatting (r...

      Well, that was an 'interesting' week... It began pretty well, with working days being longer than expected, but equally they were very productive. So far, so good. Then the Macross kits arrived and I was forced to put on an industrial filter mask because the boxes were literally made of gloss printing and black and brown algal growth and fungal spores, which as anyone who has been on the wrong end of them will know, are rather toxic. So, back went the lot and a refund requested. Taking this as a 'sign', I added the cash to my slush fund for the latest project - namely Ultra-modern 28mm firefights. It was only really a matter of time before I went down that road, because I had been hankering after some War On Drugs, 80s era gaming, but the models available are a little sparse on the ground. So I thought I'd buy a little Middle East set-up and some Mexican Cartel troops, opposed by U.S Special Forces and C.I.A assets. I sent an order for £150 to a premium-rate m...

 So there I was looking for something totally different, when I saw a lot on eBay which piqued my curiosity. A nice lot of genuine vintage 80s mech kits... *cue shimmery memory scene* In the very early 80s I'd been going into Games Workshop for a year or so, when I first teamed up with one of the Sheffield Wargames Society Brat Pack (of which I was a founding member), one Darren 'Flash' Ashmore, who back then was not the prestigious academic he is today, but like me a teen-nerder of particular frothworthy credentials. (See my book for the origin story of our first - and what could have been our last - meeting) At this time Roger (his loss of course) was moving in elite Wargames Holiday Centre circles as an 'enfant terrible' of Grand Manner 25mm games. 32 man Connoisseur Russian inits? At age 14? In the 80s? ELITISM! Certainly, I'd never met a schoolboy with such refined tastes in minias at that point (other than I of course *coff*) - AND he knew about Miniature ...

 This is something of a serious post, but I hope that I might be able to offer 'something' to others who may be in the same place. It's time I spoke up about an uncomfortable topic. The last 5 months have been the worst of my life. I've been coming to terms with the loss of family and moreover, I've averaged 3 hours sleep due to the worst pain I have ever experienced at night, across my ribs and shoulders, with added joy of a diagnosis of sleep apnoea which stops me breathing on average, 45 times per hour, what I think is a problem with my rotator cuff in my left shoulder and to cap that off a lack of strength and grip in my left hand coupled with some pretty spectacular pain. Lockdown and the lack of access to my regular G.P has meant that I've compounded a few things into a pretty toxic cocktail of pain and fatigue, not to mention depression. I've worked myself just as hard as usual, because you have to work to live, and we've purchased a total of thee...

  Well, it's a true bastard of a week in my studio, with a perfect storm of technical brushwork, every day. However, it has meant that I've had podcasts and audiobooks playing for 10 hours a day to keep me sane, and how better than with the complete works of H.P Lovecraft, a whacking 82 hours of well narrated pleasure, including not only the stories, but also the prose and the scholarly 'Supernatural Horror In Literature'. Note that the latter will cause 1D10 SAN loss if listened to after 2PM. Now as you know, I am a Grognard of the crustiest and grumpiest type, who generally cares little for the modern gaming world, so you will be surprised I am sure, to find out that I am waving the flag for the 7th edition of Call Of Cthulhu. I began collecting 1st and 3rd edition, when Roger mentioned that he wanted to lose some SAN again, but he then asked 'Old or 7th?', because let's face it, he likes to throw me into turmoil like that, with hard hitting and controvers...

 It was with a very heavy heart that I read of the passing of Duncan MacFarlane this week. Anyone of a certain vintage will (and should) know Duncan's name. It was He who brought to the hobby two magazines in the last 40 years, who famously appeared on television in the 70s with Peter Gilder re-fighting Edgehill and above all was someone who embodied everything a gamer should strive to be. I'll miss chatting with him at shows with his sudued but wry humour. A few times Kayte and I had given  Duncan a break on the rare instances he was on his own at a show with his stand, manning it for him for an hour or so. It was an honor to do so. An excellent obituary has been writte here:      https://thepartizanshow.blogspot.com/ I guess there may be one hell of a game going on in the afterlife, in the near future.  Rest in peace gentle sir, and have one of those brie and apple sandwiches waiting when I get to the great Partizan in the sky.  Moving on to more ple...

 Well, I've been busy with hospitals etc over the last two weeks, but, as I was on a break from work, I also managed to get some stuff done for my Covenanters, namely the completion of 48 infantry standards for the 12 regiments of foot and 5 more comands/vignettes: I'm pretty pleased with the progress. I have 3 wagons to paint and then I'm just waiting on the army itself, to come back from the painter. I've been mulling a model railway, but I sat down this moning and thought it through, and whilst I'd like to revisit that hobby, I am still more dedicated to the wargaming and role playing genres, so splitting my resources and attention seems a bit daft. After listening to the latest Grognard files, both I and Roger have been bitten by the Call Of Cthulhu bug, and I reckon that I'll be buying that in the near future. I also bagged a copy of the original Twilight 2000 game, which I have loved since the day of release, back in the days when a nuclear exchange in Eur...

AWESOME! That's about all I can say, friends. I was very aware at the outset, that this campaign was going to be a big one, in more ways than one and that I was asking a lot of my backers. I'd wanted a 'clean' set of pledge levels which meant I'd have no wastage on spins , which I lose with the 'bespoke' Giant level, but hey, what the hell, you great (and I mean that from the heart) people have supported me in every project, so the least I can do, is suck it up a little and give you what you said you wanted. It's always a two-way street! I appreciate that many of the pledge levels were high price tag and at an odd point in our lifetimes, but I hope that I've given great value and the level of variation that is the halmark of my little endeavour. As many of you know, I don't make a living from Satanic Panic, but rather as a full time figure painter and sometime author, so I am very reliant on you, fellow old school fans to make things a reality. O...