Memory Lane Part 24: Prehammer To Firsthammer & Beyond

 1982 saw the release of Warhammer. It flopped... Really, it did. The roleplayers who, at the time were the dominant force bought it, read it and sold it. Or simply didn't bother.

There were stacks of the stuff piled on pallets at the front of the 4 or 5 GW stores, for a fraction of the cover price. It would be a while before we actually got it going locally, because we'd been using a set of D&D mass combat rules from White Dwarf, and they worked rather well, being solidly based in the kind of old school (let's say traditional) mechanics that historical wargamers liked.

Some of the lads played the Lidless Eye rules using the Jacobite Miniatures 15mm Middle Earth rangeds which were loively little models with a lot of character. They were 'of their time' - what isn't, but they were great.

WRG had a fantasy modification for their Ancients rules and of course there was the excellent Royal Armies of the Hyborean Age by FGU which allowed battles in the age of Conan.

Alan and I had bought Warhammer on the first day and we were playing it in isolation. I did buy another set and a copy of Forces Of Fantasy when it was piled up in the stores, as did other mates, and by then, there were more youngsters riding on the wave that was the rise of roleplaying in the public consciousness.

It was everywhere... Even on the BBC's 'Nationwide' magazine programme, and we all lapped it up.

It was a totally different world to just 5 or 6 years later, something that you have a real problem getting across to those who were rolling into the hobby as late developers around the time of 3rd edition WHFB. The Midhammer era was a different world all together, despite the short span of years between it and 1st/2nd.

People will argue that it wasn't, but truly it was, as I was discussing with a couple of friends in a couple of separate chats last week. 

By 1983, we were in love with the Forces Of Fantasy supplement. Remember, we were wargamer and roleplayers, constantly chasing a 'fix'. We were quite catholic in our approach. Historical wargaming was done with solid, traditional rule sets with none of the resource wasting, full colour frippery that seems to be required to stimulate people these days. 

The average army was 150-200 models, but we all generally built a 'pointed' army and then simply bought and painted the entirety of an army list.  

With fantasy, we tended to simply clear a shelf or as it was then a drawer behing the 'Figure Bar' in GW, of models of a type, or as Alan did buy one of every pose in a range and lump them together as a unit - which, in the case of the Ral Partha Goblins looked splendid.

My drug of choice was the Fantasy Tribes Orc range, closely followed by the original Night Goblins. This was where I developed my 'buy by the kilo via GW friends' strategy.

The first time that I was handed a carrier bag, half filled with Orcs, I nearly pee'd my pants with pleasure - literally.

I'd painted 15mm ACW figures - they were Minifigs, too  ACK! ACK!- for weeks, to earn enough for 2 kilos or Orcs with the obligatory P.A.T percentage, then had to wait for Pete to have a day off when he felt like going down to the Citadel factory.

That was a lot of orcs for a 14 year old, let me tell you, and I never finished painting them, but I did manage to paint a few regiments. 

We committed the ultimate gaming heresy and used unpainted figures. I admit it... It was a shameful thing to do and we were not allowed to do so at clubs and certainly wouldn't in public because it was just plain fucking wrong, and always will be.

That guilt will always haunt me.

By the time 2nd ed came along, a better rule set mechanicaly but without that 'first love' feel of the original, which we had warmed to and slowly grown fond of,  when Forces Of Fantasy came along, playing games on my parent's back garden,  a natural gaming table, 18 feet by 40, for 12-14 hours straight in the summer holidays - once leaving the minis on the garden overnight, such was the scale of the game and importance of establishing a victor, my mum ferrying out refreshments and comestibles at regular intervals. We hardly even went inside for bladder relief, as the weather was so warm, we were sweating as much as we drank. Suntan lotion was used and a golden tan was a cert, that year.

We even had a portable record player out there and were listening to everything from Tygers Of Pan Tang to our new love, Marillion.

We were playing a lot of different stuff at SWS. There was a rule that rooleplaying would only be allowed if figures were involved, on the table. I believe this was a reaction to the fact that there had been a terrible plague of AD&D, before I had joined, which ran rampant, wiping tabletop wargames from the face of the green hardboard and sandwich hills. I understand that it was the best and worst of times...

Figures, you say?

Well, that was no problem...

We were starting to play Vietnam wargames at a time when it was considered bad taste, and so, we had a lot of generally suitable 20mm figures which were pressed into service to play Twilight 2000. For Ringworld, we used the cardboard stand-ups that were in the box.

We collected vast armies of Macross plastic mecha kits with home brew rules, long before the Battle Mechs rules came along, and got into trouble one night when we literally took up half the club's floor space with a single mecha game. Those 1/72 models needed a lot of space and a lot of terrain.

We were and still are 'Prehammer' players. You have to remember that long before the myth of the Lead Belt, London and Sheffield were hotbeds of the hobby. It was just how it was, and I and others were lucky to 'come up' in those cities at that time. That's why we proudly and jealously guard that heritage.

Some people get upset by it, but that's their problem. Their parents should have stopped using contraception a bit sooner... Mind you in some cases, perhaps a little later. would have been better.

Under 2nd ed I'd built a large Lizardman army and Darren Ashmore (Now a professor, but then a calculated and cunning schoolboy) decided that his 15mm Mike's Models Landsknechts would do double service as Gnomes, defending their lands and those of their allies one week and on another, enforcing the will of the Holy Roman Emperor. 

I was converting 1/32 scale Giant Tortoise models to be Lizardman cavalry. They were slow, but they looked great! 

Darren could have also used his 15mm ECW collection - we had thousands between us in the junior wing of SWS, but he had his limits and whilst Landsknechts could be Gnomes, he was not going to mix 16th with 17th century models. There were limits to what was acceptable!

Mark Bamford, worked out that he could actually field an 'army' of Balrogs - and did.

 I think that the 1982-1983 period saw the largest influx of kids to SWS, it ever saw.

Off the cuff:

 Alan, Mark, Darren, Martin, Jacko, Mark, Steve, Josh, Howard, Roger, Simon, Lee, Richard, Keith, Greg, Shaun, Shaun, Craig, Snitch, Sean, Tony, Adrian, Martin and probably a few more who passed through, not being able to exist in the fast lane

Many of the other kids on the scene were role players exclusively and didn't get involved in tabletop gaming lest their purity of purpose be questioned. One or two were closet Warhammer 1st ed players, but never did it in public. It was their dirty little perversion, to be enjoyed behind closed doors.

There was also a kid (I think he was another Richard) who came in from time to time. He lived in Derbyshire, went to a private school and his uncle was, he claimed, something to do with the tour management for Marillion, so we were jealous when he turned up during a holiday, and we called 'bullshit', only to be silenced when he showed us the photos of the tour, he'd been on in the Summer, with said uncle - The bastard!

What made it worse, was that he was so stinking rich that he could afford to have Pete Armstrong paint his fantasy figures. Now, Pete hated basing, and so I was subcontracted to imitate his style on the bases. Thus I got to know Pete better and earned more money, which, went back to Pete to pay for the odd kilo of 'product'.

There was also Joe, an older gamer who was at uni in Sheffield studying dentistry, who for a year or so, attended SWS and as an older gamer was immediately to be looked up to, doubly so, because he played Warhammer.

His Ral Partha Troll with club, converted to carry a massive standard at the head of his army was a great source of inspiration to us, and soon we were all creating our own.

It was a fun time, and I often wonder what happened to some of those kids, who were reabsorbed back into the mundanity of the real world. Many of them are still out there in the wild, spreading the filth and the faith, whilst others are ashamed of their past and have entered into a wargames witness protection program.

It still amazes me how the period 81-84 saw an organic emergence of a hobby. Of course a lot of it was due to the fact that the world itself was grim, and so kids were looking for escape. It was not just Games Workshop - after all there were few stores at the time. It was on reflection a really odd thing that happened. Gaming became visible to a minority who in turn became a majority in a fringe pastime, understanding that they were part of something that most people had no idea existed.

It's something I'll be talking about at length in due course when I get to interview my contemporaries from all over the city, who, until gaming came along into their lives, would never have met each other.

Well, the working day calls, so I better sign off for the present.

 

TTFN