These are a few of my favourite things...

 Although I am a passionate historical wargamer (and by this, I mean old school, get of your arse and research the subject, find the figures and then paint them accurately not use an off the shelf 'faction book') I am probably even more obsessed with fantasy gaming as you probably know - probably!

I am not a fan of anime inspired, or grim, dark and dystopian settings. I am a child of the 60s, who came of gaming age in the early 80s, where maidens were fair, knights chivalrous, and orcs and goblins evil, not misunderstood sentient races in need of a good hug and and maybe an intervention by a social worker.

We all instinctively knew that the worlds we played our games in (usually, more a notional thematic anchor than a fully realised world)  were medieval in nature, with monsters added. Orcs and goblins always lived in the fringe mountains, and battled with dwarves who dug mines in those same peaks... And so on and so forth.

So, it will be no surprise that I have a large number of 'proper' medieval figures forming the kingdoms of mankind, which I have bedecked with banners from all over the place, both because they look great and moreover to piss off those 'proper' wargamers who give short shrift to fantasy games (but oddly, don't consider using a single unit of Old Guard in a French army to be fantasy). They are Essex Miniatures, because one of the most inspiring pics I saw in the 'Tabletop Heroes'  section of White Dwarf

And Hinchcliffe Feudals, were shown in White Dwarf - Yes, in effing WHITE DWARF - beating the crap out of a giant and assorted greenskins.

And so, seeing that the metaphorical division of church and state could be broken, there was no holding the teenage me from all sorts of combos.

In fact, Tabletop Heroes was a monthly dose of inspiration and even included a great article on the colour wheel, which was a boon for friends who had decided that they did not want to take art at school, thereby missing out on what I took as perceived wisdom from age 9 (yes, I went to one of the first model 'community' schools in the UK, where kids were introduced to the arts and crafts much earlier than the norm, creating pantone charts and being allowed at age 10 to use enameling kilns with only minor supervision).

Here are a few of those TTH articles for you. Remember this was the mid 80s, and this was cutting edge - but we still didn't need a fucking 50 page books to get a point across because we had less additives in our diets...

I have been fortunate to own several of the models in those pages, down the years, and I cannot stress just how much my future gaming was influenced by that lovely Joe Dever game. 

That pic got me collecting orcs and goblins, and the Night Goblins were and still are a big favourite. I built a pretty decent force, about 80% of which was located in the big clear out of our unopened boxes from our move to the Dark Tower., along with other goodies. 

I was fortunate that being a historical gamer, it was 'normal' for me, and others of my ilk to buy models from GW and Citadel mail order in units of identical or thematically linked batches, but some of my units were odd sizes (I think this was a point based decision, back when this mattered to me) so I am currently buying odds and sods to round out those 15,19, 23 (and so forth) figure units rounded out. 

My other passion of late, has been to buy outrageously eye wateringly large numbers of models I want, to build into equally outrageous units. 10 orc war wyverns for example. It's expensive, but I am on target to complete the project within 18 months now - PHEW!

All other acquisitions are on hold until the fantasy project is bought and painted. I need about 7 models now, so again, if you can help me, get in touch (see my previous post for my 'wants' list).

Well, if you will excuse me, I have been up since 04:30 and need to feed the dogs and get to work, ahead of the builders returning for another day of desolation. 

The Memsahib is in Westminster today, so I was forced to rise early and wave her off, tear in eye and hanky in hand a-feared for her soul in that there London, hence this long epistle, mid-week.

TTFN