Well, I thought I should wander out to the games bunker and do a visual recording of the progress of the preslotta fantasy armies, as my painter is down to the last 800 of his batch and I have about 500 to do myself. The unpainted stuff includes 350 Grenadier Barbarians including 3 war mammoths, 10 Ackland Orc Wyverns, 20 or so of the lovely little attacking golden eagle, 5 Ackland Elf War Eagles, 200 or so Chronicle Orcs, 500 FTS, FTZ and C Series Undead and a load of angels, demons and war machines... I really ought to try and get an accurate number of those. Oh, I forgot to photograph the pink T-Rex and the Dwarf on Triceratops. And then, a lifetime's collecting of fantasy armies is complete. I certainly don't need any more. My historical collecting is also pretty much over now, and I am working through the sci-fi so, that I will hopefully have it all done in 18 months ahead of hitting 60. I'm always available if an show organisers want a 15 x 5 Oldhammer game in atten...

 I had some more W.I.P shots from Martin Buck yesterday, as he ploughs through a massive list of Chaos themed sculpts for Satanic Panic Miniatures 2.0...    All in all, I am really excited about this rebirth, using solely my favourite old school sculptor...

I love the old Forces Of Fantasy supplement for Warhammer.  It's still a brilliant read after 40 years and was, in my humble opinion one of the greatest of the early GW products. It was a rambling three book set which gave you additional rules - some of which you never used at the time, but which, 4 decades later, are brilliant for role playing based actions (you remember that 3rd book in the original Warhammer set, right?) or really small battles. But for me, the true beauty of this supplement came from the lists and descriptions of the forces available. Lets take a look at what constituted a list back then by grabbing the book and selecting a list at random - Wood Elves: If you click on the image and enlarge it you'll see that the common troop types (those available at the time) are all given a single line, with basic weapons and notes on whether armour can be worn. Rare units are also note. Beneath this, you get special rules for the army and character model stats. And that...

As you all know, I am an unapologetic 80s throwback - actually I can't be a throw back if I never came forward can I?  And as you may also glean from my previous posts I cut my teeth back on Warhammer Fantasy right from day 1, moving on to 2nd and then 3rd edition and merely dabbling with later editions which lacked the feel of creative freedom and the sense that the designers 'cared' about their game. It may have been unbalanced, not really made for competitive gaming until 3rd edition but it was FUN. I can say hand on heart that I never had anything like as many (if any) arguments over WHFB compared to historical games rules - even when we simply turned up en masse to a game with totally unbalanced armies - you know, like real battles. I've spent what little spare time I have had recently, reading my old Warhammer rules and supplements from square one and also reading through the first of my books put out in the 80s by Christian Fundamentalists who th...