The Smell Of 80s Lasers...

 I bang on a lot about the 1980s and just how great they were. Well, that's because they were.

Look, to be frank, few kids I knew, were affected by Thatcherite politics for the worse, which I think is because most gamers came from reasonably secure family backgrounds. A bit of a sweeping generalisation perhaps, but not one of my friends was walking around with the arse hanging out of their trousers, looking malnourished - not one.

I was scared shitless by the fact that Sheffield was number 47 for the Russian nuclear launches against the UK. By that I mean nuke 47 was the first of a few for the city, and there were more. Barry Hines' 'Threads' did not help, I can assure you.

But, look, music was truly varied, there were so many youth sub-cultures that you could fit into a group but at the same time, each of them had a great variety of sartorial leeway.

And then there were the games. OK, admittedly many were not slickly produced but they did have a real sense of being loving written, many could be called 'crafted'. And there were so many.

Generally there was a lack of grim, dark, nihilistic thematics too. Why on earth would you want to be constantly fighting depression in a game you played to escape the real world?

Anyway, in the very early 1980s, I found out about Sheffield Wargames Society's show 'Triples' (before I found the club actually) and boy oh boy was that an education.

I could literally see and buy the miniatures of every company - and there were lots of them as those of a certain vintage will recall.

One of these was Bob Connor's 'Tabletop Games' and his Laserburn range, which, whilst being 15mm like the Citadel Traveller figures, had a more 'T.V sci-fi' feel, with powered armour, fanatics who had their skin flayed from them and replaced with steel carapace and heroic adventurers doing what they could to make a credit. All great stuff!

And there were a lot of models to choose from. One of life's joys along with Terry Wise's 'Wargamers Newsletter' was the Tabletop Games catalogue. line after line of product descriptions at pennies per figure. On that first visit to their stand I spent £50; a princely sum for a schoolboy barely free of his first decade, but all eaned from painting figures. And quite literally half filled a cantilever toolbox. I staggered with it to the bus stop, after filling it with other goodies over the weekend.

I bought the Laserburn rules at the show, but then got all of the supplements from Games Workshop, and boy was it a fun game, which was played unmercifully.

Anyway things get set aside and I am not a hoarder, so they lot went somewhere, somewhen and I have sometimes dallied with it since, down the decades.

Over the last couple of weeks, I really spent some time trying to mentally time travel back to my youth, and find a connection - I've not been in tip top form with a few nagging health issues and it kept me focussed - and I did when Alternative Armies said they had a 20% off sale this month. Now, I can take a hint from fate, and so I decided that a return to LAserburn was hat I needed.

As I type therefore, I have just placed a nice order for a few hundred models and vehicles, which, using the Imperial Commander massed combat rules for Laserburn will give me:

10 squads of Imperial Marines each in a Glaive transport

3 squades of Black Guard in Glaive transports

A Power Armour platoon

A dreadnought platoon

And, the entire Redemptionist 'Late Dynastic' army list, with 20 dreadnoughts, 20 trikes and 10 squads of Disciples along with Lords to lead them.

And what's more, I want to paint them myself, ratherthan farm them out, so I must be on a roll of sort.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a pzza and boardgame night at my brother's place in half an hour and I need to freshen up a little.

TTFN