Hard to believe that the first kiddies ball pool was inveted in 17th century Prague. Note the balloon seller and St. Johns Ambulancemen also illustrated.    

 A very good day to you, and thanks for stopping by. You may recall, when we chatted recently, that I have fond memories of playing Laserburn in the early 80s, albeit at a scale which, even then, was in the realm of 'go big or go home' and beyond the scope of the standard Laserburn rules. We would regularly construct a spaceport with 'buildings' made from the foam inserts of Citadel figure boxes, using haberdashers pins to hold them together, once we'd unpacked all the Traveller models from them. Terrain was limited, and of course there were no starships on the table, we had to use silhouett, very simple silhouettes it has to be said, to represent where starships were located. We assumed that the defenders were freedom fighters, terrorists or alien invaders who would usually take control of the buildings around the spaceport and dig in, having to be rooted out by 'The Military', who would advance across the Synth-Mac under murderous fire and try to do some d...

 Now, for someone who's been on the bleeding edge of the hobby for so long, and a lifelong creature of the swamp that is the convention scene, I discovered the Sheffield Triples, sort of by accident. As previously related, I'd got my feet in so many gaming doors in a short time, that I began to feel like a baseball booted centipede.  It was a surprisingly muggy Spring Saturday morning when Alan and I stepped from the 278 bus in Sheffield city centre and walked oalong the road below the Royal Victoria Station Hotel towards the Castle Market and and the gallery where, at Hopkinson's toys, we would find our weekly fix of gaming goodness.  It was as we walked the last few yards at ground level that we bumped into 'Snitch', Sean and Craig our younger friends from the Monday night club run by Steve Roberts at Limpsfield School. We asked them what brought them into town so early, as there were not known as early risers which often played havoc with our weekend and holiday ...

 I have been having a few days off from the world, to allow me to take stock of things and have three nights at the theatre in one way or another. Last night we saw Nigel Kennedy and frankly, were blown away by the playing and at his audience rapport. In the moments I have grabbed from what has been a hectic schedule - with more late nights than I have had in the last 20 years, as a result of being a 'patron of the arts' - I've been thinking a lot about how my hobby was afforded when I was a kid. Apart from spending money of £3 per week, and whatever I could scrounge from not using all my dinner money (around 40p per day), that was it until I started painting after school and earning more than my first job paid, every week. So, on a level playing field and for the first couple of years of being a gamer, I built armies on a weekly wage of £5, which got around 60 15mm or 20 25mm figures each week.  So, it must have been possible to do a lot, because I had a lot of stuff and i...

 I was musing the other day, as is my wont, that I was off the starting blocks pretty damned fast, once I had a handle on the hobby. by 1984 I was a veteran gamer. Looking back, it was the start of an addiction in the truest sense. Had my drug of choice been heroin, I'd have been dead by now, such was my decication to constantly seeking a 'hit'. This is no exaggeration or hyperbole. Every moment of my waking life that I had to myself was spent in gaming, painting, reading about painting and gaming, and watching every TV programme which had even 5 seconds of gaming content, literal or tangental. I realise now, that I was a lost cause and have probably wasted my life in the conventional sense.  I'd discovered RPGs, historical, sci-fi gaming  not to mention boardgames other than the traditional toy shop offerings. And there was this new thing in late 82 /early 83 called Warhammer:  The Game Of Fantasy Battles, although I'd seen the wonderful Middle Earth range of 1...

 Two minutes ago, I was 13 years old, bright-eyed, counting the very minutes until the hell which was school in the early 80s, was over and done with. And I was throwing myself into it with a dedication and vigour which, without hyperbole (and anyone who knows me will be nodding sagely) would literally shape the next 45 years of my life.  I have in that time, done literally everything in the hobby and business and met and gamed with some of the greatest gamers of the first two generations. But, like most of us, in 2020, I realised that I was  just amassing lead and rules that - let's be frank - was just money wasted, either because it was going to never get painted, or because I was simply falling for the advertising of the companies for whom the hobby is a cash cow, to milked and turned into big book, big box cheese, or periods which, it quickly became apparent were one trick ponies. The lockdown years, saw me working rather than being furloughed and so I was time poor, ...