The odd thing about my early years, was that despite the fact that my parents were overly strict and overbearing control freaks in the rest of my life, when it came to gaming, because I was mixing with improving and wholseome characters, I got a lot of freedom.  Ask to go into town when here was some kind of minor Left Wing/CND protest and I would be confined to barracks, but ask to travel 30-100 miles on a quest for games, and that was OK, as long as I let my parents know by publuc phone, when I had arrived and when I was returning home, laden down with booty which even the original Games Workshop could not provide. For a short day out, we would go  by bus or train , to  Doncaster which had The Stamp Corner, ostensibly a philatelic supplies specialist, but which also stocked Minifigs and Hinchcliffe figures and the entire range of Osprey books, which was amazingly useful when it came to Christmas and birthday, as my father worked in Doncaster and, worked wi...

  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...

It's January, a time when I used to begin another 'campaign season' in the hobby by planning what I would like to buy at Triples in March. Alas, Triples no longer exists, but I do still plan a January to October 'campaign season' every year, for what it's worth, and I often begin with reflecting on how it was when I had £3 per week spending money and a head full of white metal dreams and printed paper aspirations. I had some excellent times in the early 80s, along with some awful times, but the latter took place in the  real world , so I wasn't really that bothered, because when life got shitty, I simply grabbed my denim jacket, hairbrush and whatever money I could scrape together, and went on a rampage in the world imaginary. Now, when I refer to Games Workshop in an 80s context, if you don't know what it looked like or that Warhammer was but a glint in a Nottingham accountant's beady eye back then, then go out an get a hold of 'The Dice Men...

 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...

 Well, with over 26,000 hits on this blog last month, I suppose I better say a big thank you, and get cracking on September... Saturdays were always fun, once I hit my 14th year as I was given a key to my parent's home and was allowed into town on my own, without question. Of course, normally I would be with Alan  and latterly Alan & Craig 'Stav' Stainrod - more on this individual at a future time. I would sometimes bump into my parents in the city centre as they did their shopping, but generally I was in a world of my own, exploring what was a seriously interesting underbelly of what was, back then a great city.   In the very early 80s, we still had proper youth tribes. Whilst there was not the gang violence we see today, it was 'exhilarating' just getting around town as I have mentioned in previous posts in this series. Alan and I were finding our feet as 'Rockers' or as many of our school colleagues would have it 'Fuckin' Hippies'. Alan...

      (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 ...

I was chatting with friends over the weekend, and it was quite clear that I am far from the only one with 'views' on how the hobby is becoming a playground for people with agendas other than just playing with little lead dollies on make believe battlefields. One of the things we discussed was 'gatekeeping' and how it is used as a derogatory pejorative, when in actual fact, it's really time that the so-called gatekeepers of the hobby were given some due. Look, like it or not, those people who care so much about the history and traditions of the hobby will be the ones who history will show, were the true heart of wargaming. You can experiment and innovate all you like, but never lose sight or memory of where it all began. Admittedly, I only started in 81'/82' but hell, I was taught by my older gaming peers to respect the roots and trail blazers in the hobby. They did not try to constntly fucking milk gamers. They came up with something, improved it and honed i...

 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, it's late 1982 and I'd been gaming for a while now. Only a few months in reality, but it felt like an eternity. White Dwarf in GW Sheffield at the time was still on the top shelf and having one day looked left and right, somewhat furtively, I'd grabbed White Dwarf 35, with it's fantastic cover by Les Edwards, the Green Horizon scenario for Traveller and Necromancer character class for AD&D. And I was blown away... But, let's go back a little way and go into town with my parents one Saturday morning early in 82 - sometimes, I was required to go with them rather than out with my mates, or maybe I was angling for some consumer booty - and the obligatory sausage sandwich in Woolco on the Gallery, a few doors up from Hopkinson's Toys. Having finished mine, I excused myself and went out of the back doors of Woolies and jogged down to Hopkinsons, where on a bottom shelf, was a pristine Holmes edition of Basic D&D for £2.99. At the time I received £3 per we...

  The Dice Men is a stunning book. It took me back 40 years in 40 seconds. A plethora of visual goodness.   BUY A COPY NOW!    

 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...