Well, with over 26,000 hits on this blog last month, I suppose I better say a big thank you, and get cracking on September... Saturdays were always fun, once I hit my 14th year as I was given a key to my parent's home and was allowed into town on my own, without question. Of course, normally I would be with Alan  and latterly Alan & Craig 'Stav' Stainrod - more on this individual at a future time. I would sometimes bump into my parents in the city centre as they did their shopping, but generally I was in a world of my own, exploring what was a seriously interesting underbelly of what was, back then a great city.   In the very early 80s, we still had proper youth tribes. Whilst there was not the gang violence we see today, it was 'exhilarating' just getting around town as I have mentioned in previous posts in this series. Alan and I were finding our feet as 'Rockers' or as many of our school colleagues would have it 'Fuckin' Hippies'. Alan...

Carved in 1890 from wood and wax, this sculpture in the collection of Sheffield's Weston Park Museum depicts a 21 match bout between 12th century Samurai, Kawazu Saburo and Matano Goro. Matano was beaten and obviously was left humiliated. Like all good losers, he then had his opponent assassinated. *takes notes* Now this is not only a wonderful work in wax and wood - stunningly lifelike - but when I sent a pic of it to my old friend Professor Darren Ashmore over at Akita University a while back, he reminded me of spending time in the museum when we were but level 2 Frothers in the 80s. We would often sit in galleries, and talk games, absorbing the culture. As Darren said, one particular snowy afternoon stands out in our memories. Secondly, in the grounds I came across the site where once stood a 3-sided stone-built park shelter, now sadly replaced with this: Back in 1987 over the weekend of the Triples show, whilst all my club mates slept in hotel beds, I w...

 So, as we all know by now, I was, with Alan, beginning a journey from which only Alan would return, some 45 years later. I was a lost soul, and would never return to the world of the mundane, but getting myself thus damned was fun, so I don't think I had any thoughts of Alan as we drifted apart a couple of years later. But that reader, is not for the telling today. One overcast morning in 1982, we were standing outside Games Workshop a half hour before opening (quite late by my standards), looking at the window displays, when we noticed that there was a 'Warhammer Painting Competition' advertised alongside a small spread of Chivalry & Sorcery products. * (C&S was apparently a favourite of one of the staff, the late John Steele, who was allegedly a heavy drinker and one of the old guard of local gamers, whom I never saw at any of the clubs at the time, having I assume, drifted out of the public eye, much as I have done in the last 10 years. He was amicable, had nico...

        CHAOS UPDATE...   We are now mastering the Champions of Chaos & Misrule and Regiment Of Repute. Next stage, the 174 variants will be put together by Martin Buck, then we will be launching a Kickstarter or pre-order.   It's looking like around 3100 'one drop of glue' variations will be available. There are 174 physical model variants with 18 shields which will be separate, requiring a drop of glue to create a unique model. Want a regiment of halberdiers but not all identical?    Easy peasy...   As we speak, Martin is working on a couple more shields and another head, as well as the next totally awesome Regiment of Repute and some seriously sexy characters.   We have also laid out the plans for the next two essential C&M troop types which, will be equally old school and equally varied.   Once that's done, we have even more stuff in the pipeline, and we'll take a break from Chaos & Misrule.

      (Hinde House School, upper half, taken from where would be built two mobile classrooms, where I would spend a LOT of time in 83 and 84) In 1981, totally against my will and without prior parental consultation, I had started the final four years of my compulsory education at Hinde House a sprawling comprehensive school. It had, I openly confess, being a dreamer, come as quite a shock to the system, not only because Hinde House was such a large establishment, divided into a lower and upper wing with nearly 1100 pupils, but because back in the early 1980s it still retained a ‘house’ system. The pupils across all four years were divided into four houses named Chantrey, Brearley, Hunter and Sorby after great local industrial tycoons who helped build Sheffield up to be the urban sprawl that it was before the nation’s beloved Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher and her inner cabal allegedly decided to destroy the industrial wealth of the North of England. Personally, I ...

 Wargaming is a luxury hobby, despite what the kids in the cheap seats say. It's not a cheap hobby as those of us who collect armies and not factions, have known from the outset. But, are we getting screwed on costs? I think we are. In the mid-80s an average historical wargaming figure was 35p for a 'top end' model, which would equate now to £1.40 if we follow the same scaling up of values used for other 'non-essential goods'. Instead we are paying around 6 or 7 times that 4x scaling for historical and I'm 'not going there' with fantasy miniatures.  The question is, why the fuck are we allowing ourselves to be taken around the corner, our trousers dropped around our ankles and given a Roberting (I have a friend called Roger) without even the courtesy of a 'reach around'? I know for a fact that I can get 50 castings for around £40 through third party (IE: increased production cost than self- casting) which would allow a good profit margin as a thi...

 Hi ho, I just thought that I'd let you all know that will certainly be returning to the 'Life Story' soon. I'm just looking at where to go next. I am trying to weave it in with the stories in my 2012 book as well as covering stuff I was not mentally ready to relate back then. It got pretty dark in the basement in the late 80s for me. In the meantime, pop over to Amazon or your local bookshop and you can get 360 pages of my story, packed to the gills with actual gaming memories of the 1980s and a few in the 90s. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-Lifes-Bu-Tale-Dragons-ebook/dp/B007WTPQBK/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1HUQXSPD5GC4P&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.NqKLNDjfGbpBrlKN-ZLlsspHQn8yigVEPoYluBkm8sb8fW_AYGceZAPp3jrWP-WE2Ll4FhHtmKAnlBSNRfywluQyHDXTy-sZMDyDjHaPPCK6T3DGYWRG9ujY44eQ9v43D2yoIIYF3d6kQYK2vxDVmqKxFzbYTCKrqE7nlPNeYOu5SHarv69riPFLR8QeN6ah0uldn1iHBsAV7Vtp5FBDpb9lLt-Y5nTjCFrhNQ8IpIs.5yyCyd0iuHsIqTEQrQJYrPDJ5nF5WtYJIW6ysIbbkK4&dib_tag=se&keywords=Real+LIfe%27s+A+Bu**er&qid=1756...

 For the last 45 years, I have been happily wandering through the proverbial wargaming jungle, like' Chef' in the seminal 'Apocalypse Now' looking for the metaphorical mangoes, dreaming of making a mango cream. True, I have become something of an accomplished saucier, with my immersion in this fascinating world, even though it is dilute and tepid by comparison, these days. Sorry, but I call it as I see it. If you don;t agree, that's just fine. I was stretched out on the sofa last night watching Top of The Pops episodes from 1981 and thinking just how good the music still sounded (with a few exceptions) and then it his me, that this was a year before Games Workshop opened it's Sheffield store, and the year I found my first baggies of Citadel and Ral Partha models in Hopkinson's Toys (see my previous posts about the toy shops of Sheffield). It was also the year I truly started to wake up to music and what a time it was. I was also quite pleased, having hit 57 ...

  It's here; the start of a massive re-launch of Satanic Panic as we go back to basics and try and do things even better than before, as I learned what could be done in traditional metal and had some fun doing so. The new way forward into the glorious dawn light of the future will be to produce all models with the head variants cast on as standard, but with individual and varied shields. WHY? I hear you cry... Simply put, if I spend a little bit more per sculpt, I can have the heads fitted and matched properly, by the sculptor, giving you a nicer model. Then, all you have to do is choose a shield, pop on a bit of glue and away you go. The next two releases are truly massive, with around 200 individual casting and around 15 shield variants - Do the math on that one :) The sculpting is done, and we just need to get them mastered and sent back to Martin Buck for the heads to be fitted. You will see two distinct groups. One is the first of of many 'Regiments of Repute...