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 Cona...

 I am fortunate, nay, blessed to have 'come up' at a time just before the Warhammer Fantasy Battles rules hit the shelves - and stayed there, being sold off for a  mere fraction of the RRP in literal stacks at the front of GW store. It's something that we who refuse to die and in not doing so, irritate others, comment on quite often at our coffee and bullshit 'salons' - no, really... And then we get teary eyed over whatever metal based figures one of us has brought to the table for discussion and pawing over, that day, before the conversation turns to the scourge that is 'Oldhammer'. Now, don't get me wrong, the idea of preserving what was arguably the high water mark of fantasy gaming, and introducing others to it, is a fine sentiment. But, re-writing history and claiming that paintwork and styles which were not contempraneous or even available  in the case of materials as 'authentic' is taking it a step too far. If you were not there, you canno...

  As I grow ever older and tiptoe towards the grave whilst at the same time doing my level best to not catch the eye of the Reaper, who spells the end of collecting and playing with toy soldiers, by systematically going through my Filofax, editing the entries in the contact list, I feel ever increasingly like a dead man walking. Indeed, I have little doubt that there are a few people - most of whom never met me in the flesh - who would like to see the 'walking' part of that erased, because I say and write things that they don't like. Increasingly I feel like a revenant when at a wargames show, floating amongst the living. Felt perhaps, but unseen until another spectre of gaming past recognises a kindred spirit and we perhaps embrace and converse in ghostly conspiratorial tones about this ior that, sharing memories of when we too, were vital, young, kings of the world, our painted armies'ooooh'd' and 'aaahhh'd' over, trophies taken home to join others...

 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 along 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 g...

      (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 ...

    Well, I promised at the end of Part 12 that I'd tell you more about the 'Green Horizon' scenario for the Traveller RPG, which appeared in White Dwarf 35 and how it changed things up for me. Ass I've already related, the late Steve Roberts (blessed may his name be, and always remembered for the great man he was) was running a 'feeder' operation for SWS at Limpsfield School, which was a 'community school' modelled loosely on some of the Radical Left teaching methods which proliferated in the 70s. It's an interesting subject in it's own right and was the only school I know of in the area which turned out well-rounded kids from all backgrounds. Being 10 years old and let loose in a purpose built craft workshop with enamelling kilns, was amazing as was the sense of folk history and appreciation of the environment we were instilled with by passionate, committed, truly politically radical staff, hand picked for the job.  The school sat as a very sol...

 1982 was a pivotal point for me in many ways.  Alan and I had rapidly made ground into discovering the hobby, and we'd also introduced a few friends who had tried out D&D but not really had that 'Eureka!' moment that we'd had. We were buying and painting miniatures wherever we could get them, having three or four places to buy them in Sheffield, and also, on a day trip to the coast, found Q.T Models where I met and formed a friendship with the great Dave Hoyles, who was one of those 'O.Gs' who don't get the recognition they deserve, and who brought some fantastic models and inspirational painted displays in the store cabinets. Anyone of a certain age, will get rather excited when 'Q.T Hoplites' come up in conversation or indeed 'Q.T Samurai'. Sadly, Dave sold the Q.T ranges and they changed hands a couple of times. Indeed, I offered well above the asking price earlier this year when the ranges came up for sale, but the seller decided to ...

 So, toy shops... I genuinely believe that in Sheffield, we were spoiled for choice. I was born in 1968, so I lived in the golden age when Action Man was an alpha male, but girls had Havoc, a smaller scale action figure for girls, who had a motorbike for Christ's sake... She kicked Sindy's flowery-knickered ass, and even Action Man watched his step around that lady. Barbie stayed well clear for fear of getting a brake handle taken down the side of her nipple pink convertible. Havoc was designed by Mary Quant - talk about designer toys - and was well tooled up: When it came to Action Man, I was a pedant for detail. I actually bough matching uniforms (Duck Hunter pattern, high boots and M1 steel Helmet , or green jumper and beret for commando missions, for all of the troops under my command - Which if I remember correctly was 7, although the Assault Boat could only stay afloat with 6, so two patrolled in my Cherilea PBR, to allow a fully tooled up 5 man team to conduct raids, rep...

 I wrote around 370 pages some years ago, ostensibly about being a tabletop gamer and roleplayer in the early 80s and beyond, but I think it's time to add to that and indeed add texture and context to what it was like to be part of something as awesomely different as this hobby was then.  So, let me try and fill in some gaps and widen the scope of my original writing. I make no apologies for being an unreconstructed man of my time. I don't have time for political correctness, nor for the identity politics of the world today. I believe that everyone has a right to do as they wish within the basic tenets of morality - it is private to them and should be kept that way. If you are 'offended' by terminology, recollections and the like, then please feel free to simply exit this blog and, off you can jolly well fuck, and live your own life. I won't be offended.  In  1981, I was just a normal kid - normal for the time, at least - and in that Autumn, I'd gone from Junior...

 Brutalist architecture is not the first thing which you may associate with gaming... I would guess that none (well maybe two) of my friends are aware that since my early teens I have had a love of ‘true’ Brutalist architecture? Not the modern ‘fuck you’ school, but the proper full on 'Exposition Du Cement style. Growing up in the 1970 and 80s, Shefield was full of the stuff. It was grim, gritty and drab, but it spoke of the future. Where we now have the Winter Gardens in the heart of the city, there stood the truly futuristiv modern extension to the town hall, known with love and loathing by local folk as 'the Egg Box'. Built in 1977, it sort of collided with punk so that in 1978, aged just 10, I was already being drawn into the grotesque sci-fi beauty of it. You see, that was the year that I started to take an interest in things... Music and popular culture  was starting to slowly become something I was interested in, with the awful but still rather exciting to a ten y...