Talking Miniatures

This 2-volume book arrived in the post yesterday.

"Talking Miniatures" , by John Stallard and Robin Dews, chronicles the early days (most notably the 80s and early 90s) of Games Workshop and Citadel Miniatures through interviews of many people who worked there at the time. I already read a few of the interviews, and it brings back a lot of memories and nostalgia. It is also a nice complement to "Dice Men" (by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson), which described the very early days of Games Workshop.

I was a real GW junkie during my early gaming days. I bought the 1st edition of Warhammer when it was first published, and it opened a whole new gaming world for me (before that, I played mostly board wargames, I had'nt even played an rpg yet :-)). So many of the events and games and miniatures described feel very familiar to me, although I never knew or met any of the GW/Citadel staff. But I was an avid GW gamer (these days are long gone, I'm not the target audience anymore), and still have quite a lot of those early games and books and miniatures.

But anyway, after reading through a few of the interviews, I realized a couple of things:

• Although I didn't feel like that at the time, as a gamer I experienced a period in the history of fantasy gaming that was still very close to the early days. So perhaps I was a pioneer without realizing it ;-)
• It is stated several times that the Warhammer books (and especially the 3rd edition book) created an ideal to strive for as a wargamer: photographs of spectacular gaming tables, which were the dream of many starting hobbyists. I do indeed remember me drooling over many of these photographs, thinking it was something I could never achieve ...
• Something else which struck me, but I also never gave much thought, is that the slottabase was a very clever invention. It allowed for miniatures to be manufactured with less metal, but it also allowed for regiments to be formed in neat blocks without having to cut out one's own bases.
• Rick Priestley (one of my wargaming heroes!) mentioned that Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd edition was quite unplayable ... which I found very odd, because this is the edition I played many battles with., and which I felt was perfectly playable at the time. But anyway, thanks for letting us know! :-)
  

An enjoyable read, and a must for all GW/Citadel fanboyz, past or present ...

And here are some of my early credentials ... (my 1st edition box is gone, all 1st edition stuff is in the 2nd edition box ;-)).

History of Games Workshop

It finally arrived ...

I already browsed through the book, lots of interesting pictures.

Now to see how many games I recognize and how many events I have a vague awareness of ... ;-)

Blast from the Past (5): Tactics II

A few more images from the home-made Tactics II game shown yesterday. Eddy told me he also penciled in names of city, inspired by names of cities in The Lord of The Rings, but these are hardly visible ...

 

Blast from the Past (4): Tactics II

Back in the early 80s, when I just started into wargaming, it was very hard for a teenager without a significant budget to acquire a lot of board wargames. Belgium wasn't exactly in the centre of wargaming activity at the time, although they were a few shops were you could buy wargames. Availability was one thing, price another.

One of the solutions was to copy wargames. Copying the rulebook was easy in a copyshop (which were plentiful at the time), but counters had to be made, and maps either photocopied and coloured in, or drawn from scratch. I remember making copies of the famous Rise and Decline of the Third Reich, using a lot of cardboard, letraset and coloured paint. Sadly, I threw all these handmade games out when I had enough money to buy all those games myself.

My longtime wargaming friend Eddy S., didn't throw them out so easily, so I was pleasantly surprised when he showed his handmade copy of Tactics II (copied from my original game), dating back to our high school days.

Another interesting fact showed up, as can be seen from the photographs above. For some reason, he always assumed the game had to be played with Red and Blue rotated 90 degrees on the board. This was one of those weird consequences of copying the game, but not having a faithful 100% copy - some labels or indications on the map were forgotten. It never occurred to me one could play Tactics II in this manner (I did play other variants, such as placing the sea borders next to each other for an invasion-style game), but it does look like an interesting variant.

Blast from the Past (3)

Here's an article recovered by Eddy S from our fanzine Eddy and I put together during our high school days (80s).

The article below (in Dutch) is written by me, but typed by Eddy. I owned Tactics 2 (still have that same copy), and so coming up with scenarios for Tactics 2 seemed like a given.

The first scenario, "Beachhead" was supposed to be an amphibious invasion. Only half of the map was used (the homecountry to be invaded). 10 infantry units were upgraded to marine units. Units could land anywhere on a coastal square. I see that we were very bloodthirsty at the time. Units had to roll for survival after landing (section 2). We also proposed the use of mulberries (the blank counters in the box). Nukes were not allowed, otherwise the mulberries could be destroyed immediately. We also had a special rule for amphibuous tank units!

The second scenario is similar, but was an airborne invasion.

I can't remember we play-tested these scenarios. But that's ok. We were aspiring professional wargames designers after all!

 

 

Blast from the Past (2)

A few years ago, I reported that when I was in high school, we (that's me and my long-term wargamer friend Eddy S.) had the grand ambition of launching a wargaming magazine.

Thanks to Eddy's excellent archival skills, a cover of issue 1 of that magazine has resurfaced.

Oh, the glory days of our innocent teenage years! This was still pre-computer, pre-printer, pre-anything, but we had enthusiasm, hand-drawing skills, and Letraset!

I have no recollection of making this cover, but since I recognize my own handwriting, it must have been done by me.

 

New books

Last week some new books arrived from the History of Wargaming project.

Good reads, and definitely useful to get further insights into the development of our hobby.

The total tally of books I've ordered from these reprints now has reached more than 20 different titles ...

More Archives: Super Heroes!

Ever since I was a kid, I always liked to make my own variants of existing games. I remember we made a huge RISK map during a hot summer, expanding the number territories to several hundred. Unplayable, of course, but as kid, you don't realize that yet. I also made my own variant of Monopoly, adding shares for companies and a stock market. And racing games using Matchbox cars or Cyclists, emulating the Tour de France (some more examples here). I guess I never stopped doing that ;-)

From the digital archives, I recovered some files for a game called Superheroes: The Wars of Destruction! The was a game I made together with my friend Eric B. If I remember correctly, we made this during the 93-94 Christmas break. We had attended EuroGencon that fall in Camber Sands, at which Magic The Gathering was launched in Europe. We were addicts immediately. So, we came up with the idea of making our own variant, using Superheroes as the theme. Eric had a huge comic collection, so we spend quite a few days scanning images, and designing cards. No mean fate with the computer power of over 20 years ago.

We printed and mounted close to 300 cards (we printed our cards using various coloured papers, and glued them to ordinary playing cards), and distributed them among a handful of friends. We even had "starter decks" and "booster packs". Of course, the idea never was to make a commercial game, we did it just for fun. We even included ourselves as "superheroes".

I lost the original files long ago, but Eric had always kept the printouts, and they resurfaced recently. Some examples below ...

New additions for the library

Some new titles for my wargaming library, from the History of Wargaming project:

Nostalgia: Heroclix

When cleaning up some digital archives, I came across some old pictures of one of my Heroclix games. This particular game took place in 2005, in my previous house, and when looking at the pictures, it seems as if it took place in a completely different era.

The pictures are not that good (I guess taken with a smartphone at the time), but show more or less the setup we had. I built a couple of buildings out of styrofoam blocks, and placed them on top of the map sheets that came with the Heroclix game.

The players are not my regular miniature wargaming gang, but the boardgame/roleplaying group I still play with regularly. Actually, we are in the process of redesigning our (Dutch-language) roleplaying game Schimmen & Schaduwen. More info about that on this blog.

I always liked Heroclix as a gaming system. The idea of having all the stats on a clickable base was novel at the time. I still have a huge box full of figures, but haven't played the game for years.

Dirk and Wout pondering about their next move.

I guess this movie was playing in 2005.

Wout moving a figure in Smallville.

Wout, Kurt, and Wim.

A little inside joke.

One of my very first game designs ...

A few weeks from now, I have young nephews coming over to spend a few days at Uncle Phil's house. Of course, they expect to be entertained. They are still a bit too young to be introduced to "proper" wargaming, although I have played simplified D&D with them and some simple move-and-shoot fantasy wargames.

Anyway, I was rumbling through my stockpile of old board wargames from my own  youngster days that might appeal to them, and I came upon Embuscades. It wasn't that difficult though, since the box is large enough not to go unnoticed. Embuscades is a game I have very fond memories of. We probably played this game a hundred times during all those lazy summer holidays.

I opened the box probably for the first time in 20 years, and encountered something I had not expected - my very first own-designed wargame. This was a variant upon Embuscades, which we must have made somewhere around 1980, when I was 13. It suddenly all came back to me: we drew some islands and ship lanes on large sheets of chain paper from the university computer labs. We also built some very crude transport ships out of wood, that could hold 2 vehicles and men. The idea of the game was still very similar as the original Embuscades - capturing your flags before the opponent captures his. I don't remember whether we played this variant (I do remember other games I designed, although these have perished), but the fact it was still in the box after all these years suddenly made me very happy ;-)

 Whether kids from 2015 will still enjoy Embuscades as much as I did 35 years ago remains to be seen ...

The General - Avalon Hill

As I recounted almost 10 years ago on this blog, I once was a heavy fan of Avalon Hill boardgames. This was when I was in high school (1978-1984), so budget was limited, but gaming time was not. I owned various AH games, most notably Tactics II, Afrika Korps, and Rise & Decline of the 3rd Reich. We played these to death.

More treasured even were a few issues of The General, Avalon Hill's magazine. I mostly picked these up when I visited the one wargaming shop in Belgium I was aware of, The Tin Soldier in Sint-Niklaas. I only had a few issues of the General, but they gave me a glimpse of the wider wargaming community that existed "out there".

I do not have these issues anymore - I probably tossed them all in the local "free for grabs" bin in the local gameshop when I moved to the US for a few years in 1998. But today I discovered that you can actually download all of them from the site View From The Trenches.

I already browsed through a few issues I remembered I once read as a teenager, and boy, does that bring back memories!

History of Tin Soldiers

Recently discovered these on youtube. Originally Russian, but with a voice-over in English. Interesting stuff!

Oldhammer: Treeman

This is a very special miniature in my collection. It is a Treeman, but you will not find it in any of the Citadel catalogues. It is completely scratch-built from real twigs, all cut-to-size and made-to-fit, glued together, embellished with plasticene for the eyes, mouth and nose, painted and drybrushed, and mounted on a proper 40x40mm base.

Scratch-built Treeman

 The backstory is as follows:

During the late eighties, early nineties, our gaming group was heavily involved in Warhammer 3^rd edition. We mostly played standard 3000pts battles, on the ping-pong table in the verandah of my parent’s house. As befitted a group of young gamers, we each had our own army. Mine was Skaven, but High Elves, Dwarfs, Orcs, Undead and Wood Elves were also part of the mix.

The standing agreement was that you could field anything, as long as you had miniatures that more or less resembled whatever it was you wanted to include in your army. And although we were quite liberal in our thinking, we were not that liberal that a goblin could stand in for a dragon. At least for the bigger and special monsters, some faithful depiction was expected.

Now, getting Citadel miniatures in Belgium during that period was not that easy. They were only sold in a few selected shops, and quite expensive. Infrequent shopping trips to London supplied us with the occasional Regiment of Renown, and direct mail order was considered a somewhat risky business transaction (students on a budget and all that …). As a result, each of us had a pretty good idea what sort of “special troops” we all could field, and this was taken into account when designing our army prior to battle.

So it came that one summer afternoon, we had agreed to fight a battle between my Skaven and the Wood Elves of my long-time gaming buddies Dirk and David. Since I know that they didn’t have too many Wood Elf miniatures between them, I was pretty confident I could predict what sort of army they would field. Sure, the Wood Elf army lists in Warhammer Armies allowed Treeman in the army, but this was a hypothetical choice, since no-one in our group had a proper Treeman figure, let alone we had ever seen one in a store. The closest we came to a Treeman was a picture in White Dwarf or in one of the Citadel flyers.

The Treeman entry in the Wood Elves army list in Warhammer Armies

It was therefore a huge shock to me that, when the armies were deployed, a couple of Treemen were suddenly put on the table. Not less than four Treemen were pulled out of a box, 3 as part of the army, and one spare to be used as part of an illusion spell to create mirror images of units under your command. I gazed in awe at these figures. Did David buy them? I had never seen them in any of the Citadel catalogues or in White Dwarf? Were they from some other brand, Ral Partha maybe … ?

It turned out that a few weeks before the battle, David had started to scratch-built these four Treemen. It was meant as a surprise, and what a surprise it was! He had collected various branches and twigs from his garden, spent a few nights cutting and fitting them together, and painted them up. A spectacular sight!

The Treeman next to two old Citadel miniatures, one fighter, and one old wizard carrying too much adventuring gear.

If I remember correctly, the Treemen only participated in that single battle. David gave them away to gaming friends, including me. I don’t know what happened to the other three, but mine is still in my collection, and is one of the most original figures I own.

Is this Treeman a proper Citadel miniature? No, of course not. However, for me, it reminds me strongly of the spirit in which we played Warhammer 3^rd edition during the late eighties- early nineties. And in that sense, it embodies the Oldhammer spirit very well …

Addendum 1 (May 2017)

When cleaning up some archive boxes, I found old pictures from the particular game involving the treeman. The pictures below show 2 different treeman, one of them is the copy now in my collection.

Addendum 2 (January 2018) 

Another scratch-built treeman joined the ranks -- see this blogpost.

Even more Oldhammer monsters ...

And we continue with some more pictures of nice Oldhammer miniatures ... all originally bought during the late eighties and early nineties.

Giant Scorpion - http://www.solegends.com/citcat19912/c20301monsters-02.htm

Giant Spider - http://www.solegends.com/citcat19912/c20301monsters-02.htm

Coatl - http://www.solegends.com/citcat19912/c20301monsters-02.htm

Chimera - http://www.solegends.com/citcat19912/c20300monsters-02.htm

Manticore - http://www.solegends.com/citcat19912/c20300monsters-02.htm

More Oldhammer Monsters

Some more Oldhammer monsters and strange creatures ...

Demon - originally Winged Fire Demon: http://www.solegends.com/citcat1985comp3/citcomp3032-02.htm

Hippogriff http://www.solegends.com/citcat19912/c20300monsters-02.htm

Troll http://www.solegends.com/citcat19912/c20294trolls-02.htm

Fimir - these I bought painted at a convention only a few years ago.
http://www.solegends.com/citcat1988/0901monsters-02.htm

Zoats. Note the size difference between the newer models on the left and the older model on the right.

Oldhammer Monsters

The past few years, there has been an increasing interest in Oldhammer - playing Warhammer but with the rules of 3rd, 2nd or even 1st edition. Not only the rules though, also the miniatures should preferably be the ranges that were produced in the eighties. Now, this is not really necessary - the true aim of Oldhammer is to play according to the free spirit that Warhammer embraced during that period. There are quite a number of blogs devoted to Oldhammer, but two that I think are worth following are Oldhammer, Eldritch Epistles, and Realm of Chaos 80s. There are more, of course, but listing them all would be too much work.

Anyway, since I started my miniature wargaming career with Warhammer 1st edition, and was really obsessed with Warhammer 3rd, I acquired quite a lot of miniatures during the late eighties and early nineties. For some reason, I never sold any of my fantasy miniatures, so I still have a huge number of old Citadel miniatures from the golden age in my collection.

Below are just a few examples. All were painted by me, more than 20 years ago. I did include links to the relevant catalog pages on the Stuff of Legends website.

Balgorg -- http://www.solegends.com/citcat1983comp1/citcomp1034-02.htm

Slann wizard on his palanquin & Human Slaves

Jabberwock -- http://www.solegends.com/citcat19912/c20301monsters-02.htm

Giant Eagle -- http://www.solegends.com/citcat1986jour86spr/cj86ap30me-02.htm

Culchan - http://www.solegends.com/citcat1985comp3/citcomp3032-02.htm