It Ain't Over Until... Well, Actually It's NEVER over...

 In 1981, I found gaming, without realising it. Now, some 43 years later, I'm still obsessed with this hobby and enjoying it at a personal if not group level, more than I ever did.

I was chatting with the Memsahib recently and trying to convey to her just what it was like back then.  We are the same age, but our experience of our own home town is totally different. I suppose that to some degree, it's just what Joe Jackson sang about, but moreover, my wife comes from the semi rural fringe of the city, whilst I am from a 10 minute bus ride from the heart of the Steel City.

I met my wife in '88 so she saw the final throes of Games Workshop allowing stores to have an individual identity and sense of autonomy and saw the high water point of the Sheffield Wargames Society domination of Northern wargaming, so her own gaming experience since then has mirrored my own.

But S.W.M.B.O missed a critical period in our hobby (as did all those who somewhat ironically profess their love for old school, declaring they have had a figure since the day it was released, despite not even being a potential semen stain at the time). I sometimes wonder when I meet some of these 'yoofs' what would have happened had their fathers used a sock instead of their partner on a given night. Would the gaming landscape have been different?

But, I digress.

I wish I could show her the Games Workshop of the 81-84 period with the wonderful, fucked up characters it produced, or take her to an early 80s wargames show and introduce her to the hobby and people I was introduced to by the likes of Steve Roberts, Dave Gregg, Lloyd Powell, Mike Goss and other people who, shaped the hobby in the North.

Yes, yes, Nottingham claims the crown, no doubt but Sheffield and Manchester were where the grass roots evolution of the hobby happened, with Leeds throwing it's blousey, fur coat and no knickers pennuth into the mix.

We had so many places to buy gaming stuff in Sheffield, that a day had to be carefully managed if you were going to visit everywhere. All it took was a new model kit, rule set or figure range and you risked not doing the Grand Froth, for that week. I guess that was why so many of us also went straight from school into town most nights to do 'hit and run' visists to one store or another. The rivalry was as intense as the friendship in my peer groups (yes, I used the plural because we were in several loose gaming 'gangs' who morphed and mutated in a way that any pandemic would be hard pressed to match) and 'revolutionary elements' would be often found on the delivery day at this or that store, trying to steal a rhetorical march on the enemy and get the latest stuff earlier than the approved Saturday morning 'mooch' into town.

I plead guilty to this, with regards to the Golden Heroes and Twilight 2000 RPGS, and several Macross kits, but one future Professor Ashmore beat me to several 'Armoured Battroid' kits by breaking his normal routine and getting into Redgates on a Thursday evening after school, and beating me by about 10 minutes.

This was how it was, and how it should yet be...

One theme I keep returning to in my mind, is that we did not have 'big box' companies doing it all for us. Epic did not exist - being as it is a cynical way to exclude other more established companies with strange and pointless 'bastard scales' of model. W had 6mm, 15mm, 20mm, 25mm and 54mm along with 1/3000 for naval battles. Each period of genre had it's scale and it all meshed very nicely. I am a dyed in the wool 25mm fantasy fan, despite the most influential fantasy game I ever saw, being in 15mm. ECW can be 15 or 28mm for me, whilst Napoleonics has to be 28mm despite common sense teling me 15mm is a better option. And so on, and so forth...

As you know I am a conventionally 'trained' historical and fantasy gamer. I learned my chops the long hard way, not fed to me by large glossy books, and this means that to my mind, my experience has always been and will always be, so much more fulfilling than the modern experience, because building an army involved several stages even before you got to the painting. You were primed and motivated, and whilst you did see the odd failed project, you did not see the number of unpainted, pretty much worthless piles of tat, you see these days being offered for sale because the current generation have been poisoned by the toxic 'buy, buy, buy the latest thing' approach being pushed by companies who are ryun by greedy self appointed demigods of gaming, who rake it in and give NOTHING back to the hobby.

I would rather give my money to a smaller company than a big box operation because I'll bet big money that those companies are run by people who care for the hobby and don't treat it as a cash cow that they feel only they have the right to profit from.

The last great games store was for me 'Spirit Games' in Burton-On-Trent and was exactly the kind of store we looked for as kids. Phil had everything in there. I only got there ten years ago, and I was in frothing heaven, let me tell you with actual tears of pleasure filling my eyes as I went from room to room, filled with so much stuff, you could actually get lost amongst the bagged figures alone.

The amount of resellers these days, all with little knowledge of the variety of products available beyond the big boxes, all putting their livelihoods on the line for as little as a 5% return, amazes me. Running a store is hard, but I cannot imagine running one of these bland 'big box clearing houses'. I'd derive no joy and would probably end up going postal.

And what's more frustrating is that if they actually understood more about the hobby, they could cut some great deals with smaller manufacturers who care about the future of the hobby because they depend on it's survival for their own living. This is how it should be, but sadly isn't.

There are a few 'old school' companies out there still, and they are doing pretty well, but there are increasing numbers of companies who are selling up in 2024 alone. Thankfully, I know a few ranges are being passed into the hands of new owners who really care for the hobby, but I fear that we will see a similar landscape to that we saw around 1984 when Games Workshop was so paranoid and greedy that it bought out small companies with great products who which were no threat, selling the models for a while and then 'vanishing' the ranges in a metaphorical manner akin to how the IRA dealt with informers and undercover operatives.

Have you noticed how metal figures suddenly started to exponentially jump up in price, and then sure enough plastic figures started to creep up too, so that you are now often paying (if you pay retail prices, of course) what you paid for a nmetal figure originally? 

Have you ever considered the amount of money you waste on plastic sprues and the amount of parts you don't use when you buy a box? A bits box you say? Bollocks... you may use a few parts from the hundreds you hoard like a pack rat.

But wait, if you have more thousands of unused bits and unpainted figures, you are a better gamer than the next man, aren't you? No, you are just scared of admitting that you don't need all the stuff you have.

I learned this lesson and learned it well, and I send my stuff to painters now, and have returned to looking at which scale or format suits my needs for a period. If I want eye candy, it's 28mm metal, if I want to play something but cannot  be bothered with the outlay because it'll get used once per year, I'll ho with plexiglass 'flats'. And you know what? Those flats look great if properly based and in 'proper' armies.

I began this during 'lockdown' and I have found that actually I am spending less over all, because I'm actually getting stuff on the table with no wasted figures. 

In some ways, I am doing what I did as a kid, in a refined manner, with the added point that I am a lot more selective and collect a deeper but narrower selection of armies. 

In doing this, I'm starting to really 'rediscover' the pleasures of my hobby again. I am no longer driven to compete with other gamers for the best army. I want to wmesh with friends to have fun and to use each other's collections as a 'force multiplier' whilst still having a 'stand alone' collection for my chosen periods.

I have said that I'm getting close to completeing this or that, but you know, I am so engaged that I am always rediscovering stuff that I realise I just have to have. The Napoleonic project is probanbly the only self-contained project I have. The old school ECW is grabbing me siomewhat, as I love the idea of giving these old warhorses of the hobby a new life and sense of self worth. The trouble is, that when this kind of things happens, the less scrupulous in the market jack the prices up to way beyond the natural 'settling point' and in doing so, ruin a wonderful thing.

At present, I have swallowed the bitter pill of scalper prices, and I'm trying to buy the units I always wanted, or had but sold as a kid. It's expensive troo, but only when compared to other miniature related things, rather than say cars, golf clubs etc. So, I am doing deals, talking to other gamers and generally interacting with other gamers. This is how it should be. Quite often if you can prove your credentials as it were, or perhaps provoke a memory with a seller, they will in turn cut you a fair deal where you both benefit. That's also how it should be.

I'm working on my 1980s Lizardman army, which has sat there for years. It has lots of units of identical figures and has a lovely old school charm, being made up from figures from different Citadel ranges and a few Ral Partha (though not as many as it originally had because I sold that part in 1984/5. I would go into GW or make a mail order and it would be 30 or 40 of this or that model, every week. It built into a quite unique army at a time when Lizardman armies only had a single page in Forces of Fantasy, and nobody made a complete range. It was great. I need a few individual bits and I know they will be eye wateringly expensive, but I acceot that sacrifice to complete my army.

I'm not against anyone making a few quid here and there, but I beg you, think about where those models are going when you sell them. They were meant to played with, not be stuck in boxes and admired because they are too precious to touch. I say precious orather than valuable, and there is a difference

If enough people re-engaged with their hobby in a meaningful way, I think we'd see it in a new light.

Maybe I'll live to see that happen...

TTFN