Memory Land Part 29: 80s Model Kit Madness Part 2 - The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum (For A While)

 So, here I am once more, as the large Scotsman in motley and a Sutton Hoo helmet once sang...

We left this story on a cliffhanger ending last time, and I bet like me, you've been unable to sleep ever since with the anticipation of another tale of teenage hijinkes, japery and tomfoolery in the greatest era of gaming.

So, we had found that the model kits we were going mad about, had stats and dimensions on the boxes, and this information was not wasted. We also had Pete (My friends don't call me Stretch) Armstrong, AKA 'Greblord' and his unquestionably unchallengable knowledge of these models.

I can't remember who it was who had the idea, it was probably one of those organic, osmotic decisions, to try and write some rules for using these on the table. 

Now, you need to remember before we start that these models were generally 1/100 or 1/72 and contained either a human in the head or a bloody enormous alien who wore it like armour, one being developed to counter the other in that now familiar way of the Japanese cartoon series.

So these were three times the size of a modern Battletech model (at least) and we had dozens of them - this is no overstatement, but we'll get back to that.

We were great fans of games with lots of weapons tables and the Basic Roleplaying framework which underpinned some of the RPGs we played, so we began by reading all of the weapons and their ranges, copying them down, finding only one problem, in that the 'Destroid Monster' was a different scale, larger than anything else.

So, Darren's beloved kit had to be imagined as being the same scale as the rest of the mechs and, we decided it was just a large, cumbersome,  mobile artillery platfrom at our scale which, led to some of us using 1/72 scale mechs in what amounted to an arms race, and the development of even larger 'takes' on the standard weapons, with devestating damage rolls, resulting therefrom. 

We knocked up (what we thought were) some fun, fast and dirty rules, and we were well ahead of the the first iteration of Battletech, the awful Battledroids, which ran into some serious shit and was, well, shit, and got into a lot of trouble with the Macross intellectual property lawyers for some cheeky misuse of IP, but that's another story.

We started with the standard 'club game' 6x4 foot board and rainded the club terrain cupboards fot hills and woods because, when you are a 30 metre tall armoured mecha, a copse of tree, becomes 'light cover' and we rigidly enforced line of sight rules, modifying hit location tables as  we learned how to use the landscape at a macro level. It was great fun.

When we cottoned on to the fact that 1/100 was the same as our beloved 15mm wargaming scale, the boxes of Traveller minis and toolboxes full of Laserburn minis were raided so that we could use (short lived) infantry units which really threw the mechs into perspective. Of course we then raided the terrain cabinet for 'proper' 15mm trees with two results:

1.  Our mechs found it harder to hide behind cover.

2. The senior gamers who played mostly 25mm, suddenly had a supply of terrain again.

I think we were literally comtrolling the flow and creating the marlet for mecha kits in Sheffield and the surrounding areas, until we 'bumped' into the Thamside modellers and George, who was the 'Daddy' over the border in Mordor, with whom we did not mess, and with whom we had a nice business arrangement, supplying kits that he could not find and for which we were handsomely rewarded with cash or trades. 

What he offered me for a Destroid Phalanx in 1/72 scale was ridiculous... I snapped his bloody hand off.

The worst two 'offenders' were your humble correspondent and Darren 'Robo Daz' Ashmore, being as we were acoyltes of the Greblord.

Sheffield as you will recall from my earlier instalments setting out the scene in around 1981, blessed with a large number of toy and model shops, way beyond the average I'd guess. 

Redgates and Beatties were the primary battlegrounds, but Marcway started to stock them too, and we have of course already mentiond the GW influence. We also both holidayed on the East Coast, and both knew all of the toy and model shops in Skegness. and every surrounding town and village (and there were more than you may think and indeed the quality was second only to Sheffield)

 Oddly, we would help each other out if one of us was there on a jolly, but at home it was war!

As the leading disciples of the cult of Greb' and the torchbearers of the mecha-invasion at Sheffield Wargames society and turned them out at a prodigious rate because we'd written a rudimentary set of rules that meant we could put them on a table at the club and play games with them. 

Now, we both set out some rules for the fair and open acquisition of weapons systems - and immediately both broke them. We could be seen at weekends and even after school, lurking and scoping out the various shops, as we both broke the rules we had sworn to adhere to.

One day, I had popped into Redgates after school and bought a rather nice Valkyrie in Battroid mode, and when I showed Darren, he showed me his armoured Valkyrie in Battroid mode, which he - the sneaky low down bastard - had got earlier the same day. Of course, I the wounded - but equally sneaky, low down bastard - party threw up my arms and had a good rant and blarted about how Darren had broken the rules, in an early practical lesson in plausible deniability.

But, I found out about Marcways stocking Macross first, and for a while, I ran amok, aided by the girl - a couple of years older than me, but who was sweet on your correspondent, (because let's face it, she was only human after all) who, had a lovely bum, smashing smile and more importantly stashed stuff away for me, which was a noble thing to do because the owner was - and still is - a bit of a grumpy git.

It was good whilst it lasted, but Darren with his similarity to a youthful John Candy, was also a charmer and so my advantage was lost not long after. He's a fiend when when he turns on the charm, believe me!

Marcways eventually moved from the city centre to Attercliffe Common, where it remains to this day despite the opressures of the modern retail trends, the last of the Sheffield model shops. You can still get some great stuff there, but I always preferred the Moorfoot store.

 This in itself became a bit of a problem, as before long, at the worst stage of the fetish, we raced in at 7PM, ran upstairs and laid out 1 12x4 table, depriving the membership of two 'normal' wargames tables.

 It was becoming a problem and we were really pissing off the older members, with whom we had an uneasy relationship when it came to non-historical games with Orcs and Goblins, let alone 150 ton death machines.

Eventually, when things were really getting out of hand we were 'sanctioned' and had to make do with 6x4 like any normal club members. That seriously cramped our style, and soon we were back to ECW gaming as usual.

However we were definitely ahead of the curve by about a year and those games with a dozen teenagers, leaping about, laughing and bragging about their latest acquisition and fast-build are still some of my fondest memories. Indeed, I have just checked a few details as I typed this with Darren, who is now a professor of Giant Robots or something similar over in Japan, something which came about as a direct result of those early forays into mecha model making.

In fact, it's also got me wondering about how I can get mecha into my Laserburn games. After all, what's a mech if not just a Dreadnought suit on steroids?

 

TTFN