The almighty Space Ork Gobsmasha

Bit of a change of pace once again from my continuing adventures in Advanced Heroquest, as I've been blowing the dust away from several old boxes lurking under the bed. These boxes are a small treasure trove of Rogue Trader and 2nd edition Warhammer 40,000 models that I thankfully never got around to throwing away. You've seen my weirdo Chaos renegades previously, now it's the turn of the Space Ork Gobsmasha.

I was chatting online to the editor of Secret Passages magazine recently and he mentioned that, like mine, his dad also painted his miniatures for him. His dad had also kindly built a Gobsmasha, using the instructions provided in White Dwarf. You can have a read through and even build your own by doing the same here.

I, on the other hand, managed to get hold of the official model. I believe they were clearing them out at the time so I bought one for literally pennies (probably) at one of those GW store "grand openings".

The model itself came in a clear plastic box, rather like an obese blister pack. Inside were a few pieces of chunky creamy resin, replete with air bubbles and soft as shit detail. It looked like a white chocolate novelty gift from Thornton's.

It is at least quite "Orky", I guess.

Being a vehicle, it posed even more of a daunting task to paint than usual, so once again my dad glued it together and painted it. But he used the mattest of matt enamel paints. In fact it was so matt that it felt horrible to handle, as if it'd been fashioned out of a melted down school chalkboard. By the time the 2nd edition 40k box was taking up too much space in my bedroom however, I felt brave enough to repaint it myself.

This time I used acrylic paints and daubed it in "satin finish" Humbrol. For some reason, I decided painting a stoned version of Brum's face on the front was a good idea too. Otherwise it looks quite okay for the time. I added some spare bits from a Leman Russ tank kit and Space Ork gubbins as well, because otherwise, there really isn't much going on with this model. It's literally a box with a featureless tube stuck on the front and what look like bottlecaps for wheels. The scratch-built version in White Dwarf looked a hundred times better!

In the 41st Millennium, oversized staples are handy for attaching space marine helmets to things.

Naturally, a spare plastic beaky marine helmet dangled off the back. It wouldn't be a completed model without one. The helmet is attached by the means of a piece of thread (stolen from my mum's embroidery box) painted brown and two staples (stolen from my mum's work desk, sorry mum). The plastic Space Ork crewman (creworc?) waving his arms around fruitlessly was also added. And a heavy flamethrower, because there's clearly plenty of room for it.

Quite how this vehicle could actually function at all is, of course, neither here not there. The gun alone allows no room for the crew, so where my plastic Ork's legs are supposed to be is a matter of interesting conjecture. That frontal gun is so huge, so massive, that assuming it could even fit inside that little box, the recoil would rip the Gobsmasha in half. But ultimately, so what? None of the tanks and fighting vehicles of the 41st Millennium make any sense whatsoever. It'd be a bit churlish to criticise the Gobsmasha in the way I've just done, wouldn't it? As bad as it is, it's just cool. 

Ancient aliens and Chaos renegades

Growing up I was lucky to have access to a wide range of books in the house. My dad even had a copy of Fighting Fantasy's Starship Traveller! My dad was really into Star Trek, so I guess it must have appealed to his dream of being Captain Kirk and meeting glamorous alien ladies in constant soft focus.

He also had a couple of books by a certain Mr von Däniken and others of his ilk. I remember being fascinated by the ideas proposed in them, but at the same time thinking, even at that young age, "surely this can't be right".

It was later on while reading about Genestealer Cults in early Warhammer 40,000 that I recalled the absurd von Däniken. I'm uncertain whether the lore of 'stealer Cults was retconned soon after into them being the lurking vanguards of Tyranid Hivefleets, or whether that was there from the start. But in any case, I loved the idea that these sinister groups of aliens could infiltrate and subvert a planet's society, perhaps over the course of thousands of years, until the main baddies arrived.

This gave a great sense of the age, history and sheer vastness of the Imperium, which today has shrunk to the size of a city like Birmingham and horror of horrors, has an evolving storyline. Get out of my sandbox! Anyway, Genestealer Cultists drove around in pimped-up "Coven Limousines" and that was the coolest thing in all of 40k. 

As for von Däniken, I re-read the books and those of his followers and thought maybe the guys at GWHQ had read them too. They were bestselling books back then, and David Icke had embarrassed himself on Wogan talking about alien shapeshifters holding the highest positions in society. It was all there I guess.

Somewhat off-topic (sorry, you need to allow me a rant every now and then, it's my blog), but what really bothers me about these "ancient aliens" authors, is their insistence that earlier civilisations than their own Western one simply couldn't have built the complicated structures that they did. Instead, it had to be aliens, and it's interesting to note that an early Ufology subset of alien beings were tall blond creatures dubbed "Nordics". Going further, other authors skipped aliens altogether and claimed that ancient Mayans, for example, were actually European Celts. 

It's the kind of nonsense that gives me fond memories of the 40k setting actually being somewhat satirical and ironic rather than dreary po-faced straightlaced boredom with a crappy ongoing narrative about super-super-even-superer-and-increasingly-super-supermen.    

When being a Chaos renegade meant cocktail stick spikes on your head and random shit for arms.

So, Genestealer Cults were great and I managed to collect a fair few metal models of the various hybrids, a magus and even a Patriarch. All of which were bought at Games Workshop store "grand opening" events, because I could rarely afford full price models. Strange to think that £3.99 for four metal dudes in a blister pack was an expensive purchase back then, representing as it did a whole month of pocket money saved without buying candy sticks, 2000 AD or crack cocaine in the meantime. I'm currently writing a full post about these events, because some core gaming memories are contained therein.

Unfortunately, over the years much has been lost to me. I say "lost", but what I actually mean is "thrown in the bin in what seemed like a sensible decision at the time". Literally thrown in the bin. Boxes filled with epic scale Space Marine models. The original boxes of plastic Imperial Guard and Space Orks. Even the famous RTB01 Imperial Space Marines box. All that remains can be seen above. BUT! I kept all the metal Genestealer related models, which goes to show how much I cherished them, perhaps.

In another post I'll be covering a seminal moment in my gaming life, the Terminators & Tyranids boxset. In the meantime, you can see in the photo above all that remains of that box, too. Namely, two Tyranid Warrior arms pressed into service as goofy mutations for my Chaos renegades.

They're an "interesting" bunch aren't they? The guy second from right looks like he's saying "what? What's the problem?" after leaving his car parked on a dipped kerb. As for Mr Milliput-Blobhead on the far left, erm... 

Still, the exposed brain guy still looks pretty cool despite holding his left hand out for his change.

Originally I'd painted the plastic beaky marines so badly, and with heavy enamel paint to boot, that I'd needed to dig the paint off with a spade. The Blood Angel marines (more like Blob Angel marines in my case) thus became Chaos renegades for 2nd edition 40k. In fact, it's only while writing this that I remembered I'd intended using them as a bodyguard retinue of chemically and surgically "enhanced" (hmm) Chaos marines for Fabius Bile. By the way, the Fabius Bile model was so good that the modern version is basically exactly the same, just much bigger presumably. In fact, it must be absolutely huge because it seems to cost more than parking your car for half an hour at Bristol Airport.

What a disjointed mess this post turned out to be. But that's what happens sometimes when you're uncovering old memories as you actually write the damn thing and it turns into a series of misty-eyed reminiscences. But that's blogging for you. Anyway, I don't get paid for this and I don't have an editor, so go and puzzle over the mystery of who built the pyramids or something if you don't like it. Here's a hint for you, it was the Egyptians. OR WAS IT? Bloody hell.

The best skeleton models ever made

Most people my age seem to agree that the best fantasy skeleton miniatures of all time are Citadel's original plastic ones dating from 1986. And just for once, the amorphous blob known as "most people" is right. It was a kit that saw a very long shelf life with multiple different repackagings and minor additions or subtractions over the years, proof in itself of how good it was. Eventually they were replaced with a new plastic set well over ten years later, chunkier skellies with bulky weapons to match the scale creep of Citadel's model range at the time. They were not an improvement in my book, even if they were decent models, I suppose.

But skeletons should be morbid things of death and decay. Look at the skellies running amok in Bruegel's Triumph of Death painting, it's their angular and skinny appearance that marks them as deathly things of horror to the living. The replacement plastic Citadel skeletons look almost plump compared to their predecessors, have silly "evil" expressions like Skeletor and they have the worst attempt at a pelvic bone ever seen on a model skeleton. It looks like it's been put on backwards. 

The greatest model skellingtons of all time on the other hand, look better proportioned (within the limits of "heroic scale" models, the thigh bones for example are obviously far too short). You could imagine that if you were to peel the Bronzed Flesh coloured skin away from a Citadel human, there might just be room underneath for one of the plastic skeletons to reside.  Not that that matters too much anyway, I mean how many Space Marines could you realistically fit inside a Rhino? Probably one, at a push (assuming he took his pauldrons off first).

I bought my own box around the middle of the 90s for use in Warhammer Quest. They never did end up seeing the inside of a WHQ dungeon and inevitably, like everyone else, I mutilated them for various morbid adornments on Chaos Space Marines, scenery and such like. I imagine many people acquired boxes of these chaps just for that purpose. 

"Zombies by their very nature are inconsistent. Skeletons on the other hand, are very consistent." Alan Partridge, 1997.

I unearthed the tragic remains of my old skeletons in their original box recently. Piecing them all back together again like some micro-necromancer, I found I had more or less enough for use in Advanced Heroquest. Painting-wise I tried to match the colour tones in Bruegel's painting, with some success I think. Some had been broken up over the years for banner pole decorations and the like, and one in particular needed a new head. I toyed with the idea of leaving him headless because it would be funny/unsettling, but sadly it just looked like a broken model.

I settled on sticking one of the decorative Heroquest skulls on his neck instead. He was missing a jaw bone of course, but that's fine, those usually fall off when you're dead. His skull was wider than the others though, so I extended his lower spine to balance his proportions slightly, unfortunately making him look like a cross between the exaggeratedly stretched skeletons of Triumph of Death and one of Ken Dodd's diddy men. Ah well, c'est la mort.

To add some variety, or rather because some of these ancient dead were damaged by a cackhanded and careless younger me and the resultant blemishes needed covering, I thought I'd try making a couple that were slightly less decayed than the others. The central axeman therefore has remnants of dried out skin still attached, while one of the sword wielders has a nice head of hair made from static grass painted brown. I find that nothing accentuates the horrors of death as much as the vestiges of life stubbornly clinging on.

Despite being dead and animated against their will, skeletons are at least grinning all the time, it's nice that they stay positive.

Now, the next little project for my boney blokes, aside from repainting their bases brown, is a pink skeleton from the classic arcade game, Golden Axe. This being at the behest of my partner, who asked, nay demanded, I paint a pink skeleton with a "raspberry shield". And I have just the right miniature for it.

You see, Kitty (for that's her name, even if it sounds more like the name of a girl you'd find painted on the side of a 1940s aeroplane, which she'd have absolutely loved by the way) grew up playing Megadrive games with her brother, especially things like Streets of Rage. Thanks to the miracle of modern technology and games publishers wanting to squeeze every last penny out of their properties, we're able to play those games again via the Playstation. 

Aside from the aforementioned Streets of Rage, we've also played all three Golden Axe games. She was somehow particularly taken with the pink skeletons, hence her plea for one to appear in the dungeons of AHQ. I'm happy to oblige and you shall witness the results soon. On the other hand, we've also been regularly playing Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, but I will not be painting several differently coloured beans as monsters for AHQ. No matter what she says. And that's final. Period. Nor will Dr. Robotnik make an appearance as a "Chaos Sorcerer".

No, AHQ is a serious game. Anyway, like I said, next on the agenda is a candyfloss pink skeleton with a raspberry shield. Bye for now.

Legions of Iron and Steel, DIE HARD!

Lyrics from Venom songs will always make good post titles I reckon. I toyed with using a line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, like "there are some who call me... Tim?". But this post isn't really about Tim specifically, so I didn't (but it is a bit). Lucky for me I don't care about SEO. Damn, that reminds me, got to do my meta descriptions...

I was reading the latest post by "Oldhammer" blog royalty, Orlygg, and saw a photo of a smiling Tim Prow at Salute. Now, I remember a very young, long-haired, Metallica T-shirt wearing Mr Prow in White Dwarf oh so long ago. I don't know if he was ever into Venom, but he definitely should have been if he knew what was bad for him. That aside, his miniatures company is called Diehard, and it's great, proper old school stuff.

Not too long ago, I bought some Diehard miniatures and on receiving the parcel I was weirdly happy to see Mr Prow's name on the return address label. It gave me "cottage industry" feelings and I love to support that by buying stuff from them. Not to say that Diehard are in anyway "unprofessional", they are not. Actually, it was just a great feeling to receive something direct from a guy whose work I'd grown up with in White Dwarf. Hail Tim!

"Kovach the Devoured". Or perhaps, "Kovach in the Process of Being Devoured". 

Floating up above you can see one of the Diehard miniatures I've almost too-lovingly painted. He seems to be heavily based on, or a tribute to, a Warhammer illustration from the early 80s around the time of the 1st edition. There was also a Citadel miniature of the same character called Kardos Bloodhelm, a very early Chaos Warrior. So, he fits in very well with my other 80s Citadel leadmen.

He's been painted with pinkish armour, as I felt like using him as a Slaaneshi Chaos Champion for Advanced Heroquest. Being an old-school follower of Slaanesh, I thought about adding some text to his shield, like "BIG COCKS" or "do you like me, sex-wise?". But thought better of it.

However, I did obtain a couple of Ral Partha Chaos Warriors as sidekicks, because as we all know, a big bad villain needs his stupid sidekicks to mess everything up. Here they are:

I love these goofy idiots, pure stupid sidekick vibes.

Of course, despite being accident prone morons in the best tradition of villainous sidekicks, in the brutally unforgiving world of Advanced Heroquest they'll no doubt prove unstoppable immortal killing machines capable of insta-killing heroes by posing seductively or something. Assuming a fully armoured warrior, even a Slaaneshi one, could achieve such a thing.

Mind you, I don't fancy the chances of lobster-claw man. His lobster arm has already been cooked by the look of its bright red shell (I mean, I could have painted it blue/purple/white, but you know). My dwarf would just break it open with his warhammer and the elf could eat whatever's inside. But again, he's a dumb sidekick, so he probably cooked his own arm while making a pot of tea.

That is all. For now.    

Everyone's sick with the plague

It was my dad who painted all the miniatures for our games back in the day. With a white spirits filled egg-cup and enamel paints left over from his model aircraft days, he'd somehow paint entire sets of models in a single evening while I was in bed. I'd come down in the morning and find them lined up on top of the TV or on the sideboard.

He painted all of the miniatures from Heroquest (including the furniture), Space Crusade, Battle Masters and Advanced Heroquest. And he did that so quickly that we could pretty much start playing with fully painted models right from the start. That's quite an achievement in my book, and it added a lot to the enjoyment of the games. 

His paint palette from those days also continues to inspire my own painting style. Limited as he was by the colours he had available for military aircraft and 1:72 scale WW2 infantry, orcs ended up with olive drab skin and dull muddy brown tunics. And... they looked great for it. Of course, he was more or less following Mike McVey's painted examples around the sides of the box, but my dad's orcs in particular, with their dull colours and darker flesh looked proper mean and evil, dirty and filthy like they should be.  

Warhammer Quest orc archer, inspired by my dad's colour scheme.

Above you can see a recent-ish painted example of a Warhammer Quest orc which I painted in a similar set of tones to my dad's original models. Note the clear ancestry of this miniature descending from the Heroquest orc figures. Except that instead of crude (and no doubt very smelly) footwraps, this dude has Doc Martens on. By this point, Citadel's fantasy orcs had started changing overtly into thuggish "bovver boys". It's quite amusing I guess, but not to my taste to be honest. Today, Warhammer orcs have long since become blown-up caricatures of themselves (and they were already caricatures of "traditional" orcs to begin with) and I hate them. Sorry. But seriously, a modern orc's chin alone is bigger than one of Kev Adams's old orcs and has none of the cheeky malice or character. 

Moving on though, a note here on eyes, which brings me to the main subject of this post, sort of.

Back when my dad was working feverishly on the Skaven for Advanced Heroquest, he opted for painting them with yellow eyes. An interesting choice, and looked really good actually. Very animal-like. However, it's a proven fact that evil creatures have red eyes, without exception. The exception that proves the rule was my childhood cat, Tabby. He had green eyes, but, and I have to say this, even by cat standards he really was an evil little shit.

Tabby the twat cat. No photo of him exists where he wasn't genuinely and terrifyingly angry.

So, I departed from my dad's colour scheme there and went for red eyes for my Skaven, as is only true and proper. But again, my dad's Skaven were painted in the same old military enamels, and it's primarily this that inspired my feelings about what Skaven should look like. Mainly dark and grubby.

I mentioned in a previous post not liking how my Skaven looked with ratty flesh-coloured hands and feet, but for plague infected ratscum, I thought it might look nice if their fur had started falling out or something. So experimentally, I tried this on a plague censer bearer. Annoyingly, it looked really good and made me wish I'd done it for the other Skaven too. Especially as I painted a couple of plague related Skaven prior to this one. Oh well.

Only two of these rats are true plague worshippers, but the Night Runner on the right has a slight cold, so it's all good.

I have to say I was pretty pleased with the warpscroll in particular. It required the use of what my partner calls my "spider's foot" paintbrush. I'll leave you for now with the wise words of Trey Azagthoth from Morbid Angel, because it's extremely "Oldhammer". I just made a couple of appropriate corrections to an otherwise perfect lyric.

I call forth the (horned rat /ed)
I call forth the lord of plague

I am of the lost (and damned /ed)

Creatures of spawn of hate

Rejoice in the heaving earth

Praise the ripping sky

Rise spread disease
Consume their puny souls

The ultimate dungeon monsters - the Skaven. Yesyes!

There's something about the Chaos ratmen, Skaven, that makes them perfect antagonists in a Warhammer dungeon adventure. Dungeons are dark, damp and scary places that'd be filled with rats in any case, underground nests being their natural habitat when they aren't lurking about on riverbanks or rifling through my recycling bins. It makes sense that they'd be there, hatching cunning and cruel plots deep beneath the earth.

Furthermore, they aren't derived ultimately from Tolkien or Moorcock so they feel distinctly "Warhammer". Also very typical of early days Warhammer is the Skaven's mix of humour and horror. The idea of an evil "ratman" speaking in Queekish is inherently absurd/funny/cute.

Their mythic origin story seems deeply inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, particularly The Doom That Came to Sarnath. It's perfectly pitched in a "legend has it" style, combined with the fact that the Skaven's existence is generally considered a mere fairytale in the Empire itself.

Anyway, I could write more (a lot more), but for the moment I want to focus on my own initial steps into the kingdom of rats. 

My test subject Warhammer Quest Skaven painted in unlikely royal purple.

Before I regained a copy of Advanced Heroquest (thanks for the overwhelming Christmas present last year, Kitty), I still had my copy of Warhammer Quest, which was Advanced Heroquest's handsome son. Inside were twelve Skaven warriors, pretty similar to the older plastic Skaven pose-wise, but more detailed, more armoured and slightly less hunched over. In fact, as time went on, Skaven miniatures became less and less hunched over, more upright and stronger looking until they resembled muscular monkeys. Which is why everyone knows "manthing JesGoodwin" made the best, most Skaveny Skaven in the 80s and early/mid 90s.

Above you can see my initial painting test subject, Mister Scritchstink. Looking back through old copies of White Dwarf, and indeed, the dark memory cellars of my mind, it was apparent that the hands and feet of Skaven were generally painted flesh coloured, somewhat akin to the pink extremities of real rats. As you can see, I only made a subtle gesture towards that on my first Skaven because the first attempt with fleshy colours looked stupid to my mind. The ears at least should have been fleshy pink though. 

Clothes for rats. I can't imagine that Skaven have tailors, nor a textile industry. But who then makes their attire? Particularly as it all looks fairly uniform and stylistic, a sort of comfy quasi-Medieval outfit of tunic and liripipe. Probably it's best not to think about these things too much, similar to how we ought to ignore Tolkien's orcs talking about a "menu", with the implication that orcish restaurants exist.

Well, maybe Skaven stage regular hold-ups of travelling clothing merchants or something. In any case, I painted Scritchstink with a purple outfit, in keeping with the mid-90s feeling of the model. Really the liripipe should be a different colour to the tunic underneath, but this guy just likes purple a lot, alright? As for purple, it's a very unlikely colour really, purple being the most uncommon colour for textiles due to the rarity, and therefore cost, of the necessary dye. Hence why it was more or less exclusive to royalty. I believe at one point in the Middle-ages it was even forbidden by law for commoners to wear it. 

But, we're talking here about Warhammer, maybe Scritchstink is a regicide with a penchant for stealing clothes, I don't know. And purple contrasts nicely with the otherwise natural colours. That being said, I decided to paint the Advanced Heroquest Skaven in less flamboyant clothing.

Look how hunched they are. I think later sculptors mistook "hunch" for "hench".

It's weird in some ways that Skaven were the main antagonists for Advanced Heroquest, they don't even appear on the main box art. The painting, a somewhat more cartoonish version of the MB Games Heroquest art by Les Edwards, was clearly made to the same brief. I guess there were various commercial reasons why that was so, but nevertheless it felt a bit odd.   

Nonetheless, ecstatic with my new copy of AHQ (yes, by now it's a bit tiring writing the full name each time), I set about painting the included monopose warriors. As you can see, this time the bases were painted a brownish colour to better match the AHQ room and corridor tiles. These models have softer detail than the WHQ version but are still fun and simple to paint. 

I haven't yet painted the full horde, simply because I don't need to. The original idea outlined in the rulebook was to use different colour bases to represent the different Skaven, the sentries, champions and so on. But because I have adult money these days I've sought out proper models for those more specialist types. More on that in a later post. The remaining Skaven I've decided to paint as Clan Pestilens warriors for specific scenarios. More on that later, too.

As mentioned earlier, I went for a more subdued, natural and earthy colour palette for these, adding some brighter colour here and there on the shields for a bit of contrast. I think they look rather nice and give me the grimy, stinking Old World feelings that I crave.

More ratty shenanigans next time, manthings!

Obligatory introductory post(ory).

I've written a couple of so-called "blogs" in the past. They're long dead and buried in concrete like the ambulance from the Salisbury Novichok incident, or Jimmy Savile. You know, just in case.

Unlike those former attempts though, this one will last a bit longer probably. I have better things to be doing actually, but this'll keep my hand in on the old keyboard tapping. I need to because I'm getting rusty and want to finish my novel during my work lunchbreaks. 

At my author's alchemist workbench, I came up with the winning formula of boiling together A Wizard of Earthsea, The Lord of the Rings, adding essence of Roald Dahl, The Worst Witch and a few other bits and pieces. I don't think anyone else has done that yet. I'm making it really obnoxiously middle-class, too. Should make me millions.

At home though, I paint miniatures and play games. It's the usual story for someone my age, I'm afraid. Fed on a diet of 80s fantasy and science fiction TV, films, books, comics, music and general popular culture, I eventually ended up with a copy of Heroquest, probably in 1990 or something.  

Guess what happened next? I developed a chronic tabletop (if the living room floor counts as a "tabletop") gaming addiction and could often be found grimly shooting up with purest Chaos Black Citadel paint at every opportunity, pocket money / Christmas / birthday permitting. 

Then there were some years in the wilderness. I'll save writing about that for my autobiography, which I'll have published on Penguin Modern Classics. Not Penguin Classics, because unlike Morrissey I'm terribly modest.

On my return to Warhammering, I didn't much like what I saw. There was no atmosphere to anything anymore, all too slick and polished, impersonal, dull. Still, having a hankering once more for the sweet highs of fiddling around with little men and rolling dice, I found myself in possession of a new big box Games Workshop game - Middle-earth Strategy Battle Game. It was the Battle of Pellenor Fields box, to be precise.

Some of my MESBG elves, posing heroically in a dark wood for some reason.

The rest of GW's model output now looked more like a line of action figures than anything else, so MESBG (as we wisely prefer to call it) with its somewhat dated, realistically proportioned miniatures suited me.

Now, I've always been a "narrative player", the idea of competitive gaming had always been quite weird to me and was in any case not as common as it is today. It seemed like tabletop gaming had, while I was away, morphed into some analogue version of "e-sport" (a term I find ludicrous and embarrassing). There's nothing wrong with tournaments, but I'm not a fan of the fact that competitive gaming seems to be the default nowadays.

But whatever, I could play as I wanted despite what everyone else seemed to be doing. As good a game as MESBG is though, and it is really good, especially using the Battle Companies book, I felt slightly troubled.

"Troubled" is over-egging it, but being a serious Tolkien-ite I couldn't help feeling that my options for narrative playing with emphasis on one's own imagination and storytelling was limited by the setting. Being set in the Third Age of Middle-earth where the history is well documented meant that battles outside of the known timeline of events felt contrived and weird. My brain and my slavish adherence to avoiding the wrath of Tolkien's ghost is annoying like that.

Then I remembered I'd always been really into World War Two. WW2 was almost as ubiquitous as fantasy and science fiction as far as childhood cultural food went. Before I was pitching little orcs and barbarians against each other, I'd had all my dad's Airfix soldiers to boss around. So, I got into 2nd Edition Bolt Action.

Some of my Bolt Action Soviets, Sovieting and probably Unioning.

Bolt Action was, and is, really good fun. Thinking back to my youthful days of 2nd Edition Warhammer 40,000, I realised I'd never truly enjoyed playing the damn thing. And here I had two games that were genuinely enjoyable (maybe I was just too young back then for anything more complicated than Space Crusade). Something was missing though. Ultimately, I missed that vast Warhammer Old World of the 80s and early 90s. A rich world that served as a sandbox to have adventures of your own in. That Old World map had a lot of blank spaces to explore.

Amazingly I still had my copy of Warhammer Quest from 1995, but what was really beckoning to me from the depths of memory was Advanced Heroquest. A game I had received one Christmas long ago and never really played (too complicated for my puny developing mind to comprehend at the time). I'd lost my copy during the wilderness years, but I could still remember its somewhat cheap-looking black and white rulebook resembling nothing so much as a death metal fanzine, and the overall browniness of its components and box cover.

Here, I am Advanced Heroquesting. That T-junction won't work. Idiot.

It's not just nostalgia, at this point it's aesthetic preference. The feelings and mood conjured by listening to some rough death metal demo tape from the 80s with xeroxed cassette inlay just can't be reached by a shiny professionally produced digital album. You can actually smell it, feel it, taste it. A heavy atmosphere like incense. The same applies to games. 

Warhammer Quest is of course great, the massive Roleplay Book alone was unprecedented, fantastic! But Advanced Heroquest is very different, it's strangely dour, grimy. Death is ever-present. A place where orcs are skinny gangling creatures and would scorn a bright red axe-handle. I'd found my way to what everyone today calls "Oldhammer", and it is sheer magic.

So yes, I'm going to be writing about all of this shit. Probably some other stuff too. Cheers.