Yeah. Thanks again, Chris, for coming on. Mate. I know you. I know you're busy getting prepared to go down to bring out your lead. Now that's now, you're in Nottingham at the moment, is that right? Yeah, yeah, but I normally live up in Hadrian's Walls sort of like up north, but I, I went to university here in Nottingham actually, and I've worked here
in Nottingham for years. And so, yeah, it's a, it's a three day event at Newark War Games Foundry where everyone gets together and it's, it's, well, they keep it very, they
call it boil actually. They they've for sure, because they found that they had big signs saying bring out your lead, sort of like attracted people that thought, well, actually we're going to go there and steal all the lead off the church roofs and stuff, you know, which is a big problem here in the UK. So it's called boil colloquially and locally, but bring out your lead.
Yeah. It's the idea about going to just get all your old lead toy soldiers out from sort of like the days of when toy soldiers predominantly metal, you know, that was 1983 to 2011 I think so. Yeah, yeah. Well, actually just talking on our discord at the moment before because I said what should I call you guys like boilers, but boilers doesn't sound very, very attractive. Name someone said.
I think, I think just boils or boilettes or boils on your cock like Coc, Chronic Command, It doesn't sound very nice at all. So yeah, we're coming up with some interesting names for for people going to to bring out your lead or regulars that head down there. But I know there's quite a few new guys heading to bring out your lead this this year. They've never been. So it's very exciting.
I'm very excited for them. Yeah, we had lots of famous Youtubers sort of like get wind of it last year actually. And sort of like they all turned up with film crew and sort of like doing high dents and stuff, which is a bit odd actually. It was, you know, it's, it's nice that sort of like, I always think nostalgia is a stagnant pond and that you're going to have events like this dwindle and dwindle, but you can sort of like recruit new people into nostalgia.
And I, I think that people can get a nostalgia for things that they haven't actually experience. It's just nice, like stepping back into another world or stepping back into sort of like kind of a faux nostalgia. Before social media, basically, like, yeah, they should. They should. Yeah, I think, I think it was a little bit contentious, some of the people coming down last year. And I know that I know personally that some of them just weren't happy about that.
They, they liked it that it was kind of secluded away from all of that, that it was their little private space that they could get together and and do all this sort of stuff. So I get, I get it both ways. I know, I know Jeff from Oakbound Studios, he does a wonderful video presentation every year. Bring out your lead. And I really like his videos. He's he's been there since the start and I think a lot of people respect him a lot.
He sort of sits back a lot and sort of lets the video camera sort of pan from a distance. So he's not really up in your face kind of thing. He's letting people get on with whatever they're doing, but respectfully, that sitting back and just talking about it subjectively about the whole event. So that's really cool. But yeah, I mean, it's good that it's attracted a lot of
attention. I think it did because of course, Brian Ansell passed away recently and well, that was actually after the last event, obviously, but it's been, it's been put into people's minds more. I think it's just being covered more by a lot of more people, which is only a good thing because we want it to keep going. We want it to keep existing. So, you know, more people coming down, the merrier, really.
Yeah, I've got this sort of weird sort of complex feelings about it because when I sort of like went to my first one, I was living in Nottingham. And for me it was just a 10 minute walk from my house. And it, it, it, it's grown over
the years. And if you, if you just a 10 minute walk from your house and you just like pick stuff out your cabinet, you're like, oh, this guy mentioned that you can bring along 250 points of 3rd edition fantasy chaos arches for it. And you know, you that, that, that, that sort of makes you approach the event one way. And you sort of like, it's just a sort of a normal day out, you know, because you might just pop into the war games Foundry anyway just to pick up some blisters.
But then when it gets so large and you get people coming over from sort of, you know, planning international trips around it, it then comes with a weight of international expectations. And it means that it, it, it's nice that people come from that far and apart, but it's like it changes the vibe from being a local show to an international event. And I, I think some people still wanted to be sort of like quite low key and quite local, but that, that, that sounds sort of
very protectivist. And so I'm not sure. I don't know. I can feel two things at once about it, you know? Yeah, I, I, I really hope to go there one day. I'm really sad that I could never meet Brian Ansell. Now just to shake the man's hand to say thank you so much for all the awesome years of wonderful stuff that he, he brought to us, you know, in the early days and how it's sort of evolved after when he left. But it's, it's great that people are still celebrating this
stuff. Hey, Chris, because like, you know, we're going to talk about the stuff that you make, the models you make very much in the style of the 90s. But it's it's great to see people still playing with their old miniatures, people maybe using alternative models now, but in the same spirit as the 90s or the 80s. So it's great that people still want to play old games that are considered unfinished or broken or whatever, like third edition
fantasy and Rogue Trader 40K. You know, Rick Reese's talked about it that some, I think Rogue Trader wasn't it that it had parts missing out of it. So he just just went, oh, I think was that or the siege book. I can't remember exactly which publication it was, but things were just missing and he just couldn't work out why or how. People are still playing it, but they'd still played it and still enjoy it, which is which is great.
So yeah, I, I, I saw an interview where he was explaining that Rogue Trading was meant to be just a sort of like a stand alone summer release. And the concept was that it was people would have a large existing collection of fantasy miniatures and they would just spend that summer with the Rogue Trader book, sort of like porting their fantasy miniatures into a a space setting and have their space vampire fight their space dwarfs and stuff with just a spattering of models with guns.
And then they'd move on with their lives. And the idea that it's sort of like they captured lighting in a bottle is quite strange in that it's this juggernaut that's still going 30-40 years later. It's brilliant. Yeah, and a lot of the old games shop luminaries like Rick Priestley, like Jervis Johnson, who else? Tony Ackland. So a lot of those old, older existing former Games Workshop employees are going down there just to say hello, seeing what everything's about.
And they, they really enjoy that. I think that'd be wonderful as a creator to see your game still played after 30 odd years. That's pretty impressive really, isn't it? Yeah, the reaction Blanche popped in one year, I think Trish Morrison's been down. Tim Prowl's been along. It, it, it, it, it's nice, like shooting fish in a barrel. And it's kind of like celebrating an era of very creative lead and personality
LED games. And Nigel still came along one year actually and brought his bought US helmet, which was sort of like that. I felt very nostalgic to that because there's was that picture of him sort of like wearing it and talking about, you know, it put out just the chariot War supplement for Warhammer Ancient battles. And being able to see that first hand was sort of like quite a, you know, special thing. It's like religious experience in a way. Yeah, I hope Nigel.
I really hope Nigel comes down this year. I think he'd be, he's been missed because he hasn't been down there for quite a few years. So let's hope that he can make it down there and to see his fans and to meet the people that love his games and and all that kind of stuff, mate. Come overseas for it or?
I, I hope so, I hope. I've been saying to people that I'd sell armies to go there just to, just to fund the voyage over to the UK. It's quite an expensive trip, even from, well, it would have been more expensive from Australia, but even from Japan to the UK is quite, you know, quite costly, especially when you factor in transport, hotels, food, all that kind of stuff in it as well, apart from the airfares. Yeah. But who knows? I don't know. I can't say that I won't be going.
I hope that I can make it over one day because I, I think more than anything, it would be just great to meet a lot of the people that I know through the Crown of command through our Discord. Another thing, other places related to that, it'd be just great to go and meet them, you know, just hang out and have a few beers and have a chat.
Yeah, I, I think the kind of the successful way of doing it because if you just come over just for the event, you might just find it sort of a few 100 people in a, in a, in a sort of a fairly standard UK venue is a lot of people sort of trip it, combine it with the trip to Warhammer World and then they pop into Warlord Games. And then some people go and
visit the Mantic shop. And then some people sort of like then branch out and sort of like bring the wife and then show them a couple of UK sites like Nottingham Castle. And then they kind of like treat the UK as like a big destination. They can go to Edinburgh as well because flying into Edinburgh is quite a good thing for
international travel. So you can start off with a couple of days in Edinburgh and so it's not just a sort of a, you know, 2000 LB airfare to pop in to a sort of like a free local event. Yeah, you'd have to make it a big holiday built around it especially. That's for sure, mate. So, Chris, tell us about how you got into the hobby, mate, because you're quite, you're a lot younger than me by the look of you on the camera. Oh no. No, no, I I'm just babyfaced.
I'm, when I was eight years old, I, I, I went to Tesco and I was having a big top trump phase. You know, that's sort of like those cards where it's all like Formula One cars or Dragons. And I just, I, just, everyone in the school loved Top Trump's and I got a pack from Tesco and I was eight years old for the kind of citical space war combat cards, which were the Rogue
Trader miniatures. And I, I, I didn't know for years and years and years afterwards, they were actually something that you could purchase and pay. And I just always assumed they were just one off statues they'd done for the, for the top trump cards. And I loved them. And I know all their names and you know, those wall masks, Gore and the squats and guts muncher, the York heavy plasma gunner. And I loved them.
And it was only a couple of years later when my uncle down in London sort of like gave me a load of his old miniatures. He had a load of Colin. No, no, they were Dixon Miniatures Samurai, which is these 28 millimetre medieval samurai with large pumpkin heads with all the kind of correct war gear, which is from the 1970s. And he gave me some of his old Rogue Trader Space Marines as well.
And I, I suddenly kind of like realized these were the things from the Top Trump's I had as a kid and still a kid then. And, and so that was me just like instantly hooked. I found there was a shop in the local town one over that I could go to and Necromunda was just coming out and I went into my first painting lesson. I got a Goliath Ganga and I
painted him. And I've never really sort of like spent money on anything else regularly since really it's, it's been like that since I've been a kid. I've been going to tournaments, I've had lots of different phases where as a kid you'd sort of like just play the kind of like sanctioned games night from 4:00 to 8:00 PM and, or at your house. And then as you go into, got into my 20s, I thought, oh, you know, I did a lot of tournaments, a lot of the kind of the grand tournaments or the
independent tournaments. And these days, I'm just a sort of, I've stepped back from this like the tournament affair, but except for boils, not really a tournament that's more of an event. And it's playing on a Tuesday night at a local club and sort of like, you know, painting in my spare time now. Yeah, mate, your, your painting
is really exceptional. Looking at your wonderful work now that you've released well several, several products as part of Kickstarters for the ROK, ROK Nort, is that how you say it, ROK Nort? Well, technically it it should be said Rok Nort because that O is an on lock, which sort of like makes a long sound. But I'm very guilty it it's just a stylistic choice. Like Blue Öyster Cult had AO above the O and Blue Öyster Cult and like Motörhead had it.
And so it's just sort of like a, a way of making the word look sort of exotic in a 1980s cliche way. So it should be pronounced Rok Nort. But then the accents, sorry, excuse my phone, but then the accents are just sort of an affectation, which is a bit like the the the the slain comic by 2000 AD, which is Slaine about the sort of the Greek, the Irish dark age hero.
It's got an accent above the A, which means that protects the correct pronunciation should be slonia rather than slain, but the word's meant to say slain, and they've just added it as a an affectation, really. Right, OK, yeah, mate. Now talking about your history into miniatures, what you talked about, you got the combat cards 1st and you got into Necromunda. So I've got a feeling that you're really into the 40K side of game special games, is that right?
Yeah, well, I'm, I'm, I'm an absolute greedy person who will have anything. And back in the early days there was a shop called Manchester Model Shop that I could go to. And we were living in the golden age as well. When the main record shops on the High Street, Virgin Megastore would stock really strange indie games constantly,
which I always found very odd. Like you wouldn't get it nowadays and you'd be able to go into this High Street street record shop and it would have flintlock game that, you know, the sort of the weird Napoleonic dwarves versus orcs metal
starter sets. And then it would suddenly have some battle tech in it. And then it would have some Harlequin miniatures Doctor Who. And there's someone who probably worked at the store that was just sort of like really had a kind of like a passion for local games. And it was just nice sort of like going on this experience of going in and like seeing what are the games that are out
there? You know, I, I went through my teenage years playing Void and there was 4 into the Maelstrom and there was the Doctor Who miniatures game and there was there was War zone as well. And so anything that's like could appear in the local shop in a blister pack was just absolutely fantastic. But Games Workshop was always the juggernaut because it had it's own retail stores. But it was really nice just being able to sort of like see
what else was on the market. And you don't get to see that kind of large, the mainstream adoption of the Indies nowadays, which I think is a bit of a shame really. You know, you don't, you don't get flintlock on sale, You don't get this sort of strange games. You have to go to the Internet, you have to go to indie people, you have to go to direct mail
order companies to get them. Yeah, that's a good point because back in those days, yeah, you're right, the the main competition was Gangs Workshop and everything outside of that was kind of these little small fringe companies, mainly UK based, but some US of course. But Harlequin, yeah, that's a name from the past, isn't it? Wow, that's, I think that's Black Tree design now. Did they go through like three different name changes or something? But Harlequin was like the first one.
Yeah, the EA orbits as well on their website but. I I, I I. Do remember the first time I saw anything, which was space dwarfy was at the Coliseum shop in Manches, which was, you know, us, we were spoiled for choice in Manchester when I was a kid with sort of like the number of indie shops. They had these space dwarves and they had their Doctor Who miniature came. And just seeing those on the shelves together was wonderful.
And, you know, the idea that they could be available in multiple shops on the Manchester High Street in 2024 is just, you know, it's like, OK, Granddad, you know, and I'm sure, yes, yes, it's time to take you home now. Yeah. So where, where did the, where did the love of space dwarves come from, mate? Is it something that you had sort of in your collection back in the day with your squats or how did that all evolve into? Yeah, well, the first time I saw space dwarves was those
Harlequin miniatures. It was a very small range. I think they were sculpted by maybe Tim Prow, but they were very space suity techno dwarves. And you couldn't really get squats from Games Workshop when I was a kid. But I did have the black Codex, which came in the Warhammer 40,000 starter set that my dad bought me when I was about 11.
And I always wanted them, but the minutes weren't available in the stores and you could only get them through mail order if you sort of like, asked incredibly nicely. And my dad started off my squat on me when I was a kid by buying me five of the metal bikers for Christmas. You know, the old sort of like really long fairing models with the tiny front wheel and then it's sort of like a fat, bearded, Hairy Biker cliche on the back. And I've still got them in my army to this day.
They've been repainted so many times. But the army just grew and grew. But it was always very difficult getting hard hold of the miniatures. And I used to have to go to this local magazine called Loot, which was a yellow, yellow newspaper, which would sort of like sometimes have ads in for sort of, you know, some Warhammer miniature dwarf types. And every time you saw one of those, you'd think, oh, maybe they're squats and you'd sort of like call a number and see if they had sold or not.
So, you know, this is before eBay. And, and so my, my, my squat army was very small. And there just wasn't very much information about the, the miniatures pack that I remember having. I, I bought from a second hand shop, all the miniatures, which were the chaos squat miniatures. And the idea that they were kind like chaos squats was just, I didn't really know. I just thought that kind of the one which had a goat leg was a sort of like, it was just, it was, it was a sculpted bionic
leg that he had. And you couldn't just look in the catalogue and stuff. And I came to them all as regular squats and just thought they had funny masks on or funny bionic legs. And I think the tentacle one was a bit odd, though. There's one with, you know, tentacles flying out of one arm. And I thought, well, maybe something's not right here, but he didn't know.
It's only years later I found out about the Chaos Squats existed and there was Chaos squat extra armour and there was Chaos Squats in power armour and all the ones in Flack as well. Yeah, that reminds me too. Yeah, I do remember seeing like the corn chaos squat on on a bike. I think it like the corn shaped helmet, the emblem on his helmet and that kind of thing. So yeah, that were a thing.
Definitely back in row Trader, maybe as part of some kind of White Dwarf article they released later during the evolution of the game. They just introduced something else like cow squats because they had cows dwarves, you know, it's it goes to reason that they'll be abrupted somehow. So yeah, looking at looking at you, like I said before, you're in a very accomplished painter and a very skilled painter.
How did that sort of coming to? Being like, were you more of a painter and collector more than a gamer, or is it more of a all three combined? I like to think of myself as a very balanced hobbyist, and I do painting and collecting and gaming, but I have this disconnect when some people talk about complaining about painting where they're like, oh, I've got so much painting to get done. I don't want to paint all these models for the tournament. I think that's what's one of the
best elements. It's like complaining that, you know, saying, oh, I've got I've got to paint 10 squads for the next tournament. I think that's like complaining, oh, I've got 10 chocolate Easter eggs and I need to eat them all. I find the idea about making an evening of sitting down and just quietly painting with some podcasts or some DVD commentaries on in the background is it's just absolute
bliss. And it doesn't really matter if the minute she gets finished or just sitting down and being in the space where you can sort of put down the highlights and put down the face coats is just sort of Nirvana really for me. And I don't, I don't, I don't game to a very high standard. I don't have any sort of perfectionism creep in there. And I don't have any sort of competitive pride creep in
there. But with the the painting, I think there's always a call to mastery where if you've got the miniatures with studio paint jobs in front of you, you want to get them close to that level or you sort of like think the expectation as you get them to that level. And I think that I probably internalized that before I realized how kind of toxic and unhelpful it is.
Actually, I think it's maybe the wrong way of looking at the hobby is just getting awash with studio images and images from magazines and thinking, oh, that is the standard I have to paint them to rather than the standard, which some people can paint to as an aspiration. And it's fine if you paint it to a, the standard that you're comfortable with or you're happy
with really. And then I went through a golden demon phase in my, in my 30s where I sort of would plan my year rather than about I, I'd moved on from the tournaments because when I was in my early 20s, I was, I was doing tournaments very regularly, like maybe one or two a month where you'd kind of like gather up all your friends.
And then on the Friday night you'd travel down on the train or one of you would have a car and you'd drive down to somewhere in the UK. Sometimes we went overseas as well, actually together and you'd have like 2 days of solid gaming with sort of like nights out at the pub or even nightclub when we were really young and sort of energetic thrown in. And there's that sort of like that group sort of like
gradually grew apart. And then sort of to get my, the focus was went into like trying to enter the golden demon painting competitions. And so I'd plan a year around what I'd want to enter into next month's gold, next year's golden demon categories and sort of like spend a lot of time focusing on that and using that as a sort of like the major tentpole to think, do things around.
And then you'd go down to golden demon with a couple of friends that were sort of like minded as well and make that the, the weekend out. So I, so my, my painting came on quite a lot when I was doing that regularly.
But now I've I I I I find it very be difficult to enter the modern Golden Demon contests because I don't even they they announced them with only like 6. Previously you could depend on it being a games day sort of like at the same time every year and the categories being largely the same every year. But nowadays it's very difficult to work out where in the year it was. And one year I, it was October the 1st, 2022 was when they announced it sort of a couple of
months before. And I was like, well, I'm getting married that day. And it was my wedding. And I thought and, and then I sat there and sort of I thought you. Don't want to accept the bride, mate, that's for sure. Yeah, OK, yeah, they're having, they're having it all around the world, aren't they? Because that in the USI think wasn't the first one in the US Adepticon. Yeah, it's a bit, it's tempting to sort of sort of like fly over for that and try and compete.
Actually, I've, I've never been to the Depticon actually. And sort of like it's a very good excuse to sort of like say, oh, actually I came to the Golden Demon there. But the category information that they send out ahead of time is, is, can be a little bit sort of hazy and you've got to sort of like start painting things a year in advance. And so you've got to be very clear on what the category and
the rules are. And you can't just sort of like start painting and then sort of like work out sort of like, you know, the month before if it fits into a category or not. So. Yes, yes, it does. And the standard now for Golden Demon is just like through the roof, isn't it? Like, mate, I would have no chance, mate. I think if I entered something Golden Demon, it just wouldn't even get a look in. I think it's yeah. The painters now are just yeah,
they're just. I don't know if they're sold this, sold their soul to the devil or whatever, I don't know. But there's some really amazing talent out there in the miniature painting world. And and it's just not just painting, it's like converting or just scratch building stuff. So yeah, Golden Demon is really different now than it was back in the 90s. You know, you can see it. I. Think that I think that you you could actually enter Golden Demon.
I think most people could enter Golden Demon, but what they don't realize is the sheer amount of hundreds and hundreds of hours that go into painting a single miniature to that quality. And people mistake the quality as being something which is sort of like an inbuilt talent rather than just a result of a process which takes hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours. You're so like finessing, finessing things on a very small scale.
And so I, I think most people have the ability, if they were sort of like had training and support to kind of compete very competently at Golden Demon level. But most people just don't really want to spend several 100 hours painting a single miniature and then doing that sort of like for 10 minutes and then also spending hundreds of hours on a display base. You know, at that point, you
think, what do I get out of it? It requires a lot of a lot of discipline and a lot of a lot of commitment, really. So I won't bring my Dwarf command group down to Golem Demon then. So if they, if they had like an old hammer category, I think that'd be wonderful. If they had like the old, you know, like you could be Goblin green bases. They're going to be, you know, 90s miniatures. They did that in Australia. I entered one time in Sydney. It was on behalf of a friend of
mine. He had a one of the old original Jazz Goodwin Inquisitor models and he wanted me to put that on a nice civic base and entered into that competition. And there was just one specifically for, I don't know what it was called now. I think it was called Old Hammer or something like that, where it was just models made within a certain time frame. Yeah, I think. I have seen that around actually, yeah. Yeah, it's really cool. I thought it was really nice. I thought they'd bring that back.
I think a really nice a nice way to show their in respect to the older, you know, original painters and the original sort of style from where it sort of started. Even if it was like guys coming back to, you know, if you ever saw the Earl, the very, very first golden demons they ever brought out, I think it was like 90, so 19199189 or something like that. Yeah. Incredible amount of conversions and painting and it was just just wild as this. There was no restrictions.
There was nothing sort of conformed to anything. It was just like just all these ideas of all this great stuff. And if they had something like that, I'd be really, really impressed if they could do that. But. I remember a really early gold demon entry I saw in White Dwarf, which is Marnius Calgar. But then the person's got a tarantula skin, a real world tarantula skin that he's just got Marnius Calvin sitting there.
And it's just very odd just seeing a sort of like a bit of a modern real world animal next to a miniature. You've got the person at the time thought that's cool, spiders are cool, Space Marines are cool. Just stick them all together. Off we go. Yeah, it's. Funny, isn't it? Yeah, It's a good time, mate. It's a good time. Now in your, I think on your bio, I think on Instagram you talk about some companies you painted for, is that right? You did some painting work for certain companies.
Yeah, I've, I've tried my hand at studio painting for what's the first company. I, I started doing that for the first professionally done miniatures work was for War Games Foundry and I, I, I tried getting in there when I was like 16 years old. They, so I put it in a magazine article. They, they, they used to own War Games Illustrated and sort of like run that as a, they're sort of like essentially we love. I'll start again.
I'll start again there. War Games Illustrated sort of like used to be the sort of like the, it wasn't an in house publication of War Games Foundry. It was they, they just had a sort of like they, they put a lot of advertising money in and they had an advert for painters on the Backpage. And I tried getting in when I was 16 to sort of like be the person that painted the miniatures for the the magazine and for the catalogues and
stuff. And I didn't get in straight away, but I ended up painting some Boatian Greeks as a, as a test piece and sending them off and they didn't like them very much. And they've got the miniatures back. But I, I, I did paint some of their Amazonians that have appeared and their orcs and their dwarves and their elves, and they're not very good at crediting me in the book. Actually, I found out I've been miscredited quite a lot as Steve Dallamore.
But then sort of like when he's such a no Kev Dallamore, who is it? One of the Dallamore. Kev Dallamore is, yeah, the the famous painter for, I think for foundry and a lot of other companies. But yeah, he's the main man. I've been credited as Kev Dallamore quite a lot actually, which I'm like I was happy to take at the time. I'm like, great if people,
that's good. And then I've painted for the Avatars of War boxes and they did the hard plastic sprue dwarves and I've painted for Mantic Games that did quite a lot for them. And then I ended up working for them actually as a graphic designer for a couple of years as well. And then when I was at Games Workshop, I painted some of the new releases they had for Forge World where they're putting out the Mark 4 upgrade kits. So I did some of the nice Salamanders for them.
And also when Games Workshop put out things, they have a certain amount of overspill from the the army painters in the heavy metal team. And they sort of just sort of like go around the company saying we've got, you know, more product coming out than we can sort of like afford to paint stuff, you know, sort of like who, who, who's a good painter. And so I ended up doing some of the Space Marines for them as well, actually, which was quite good fun. But it was, it was, it was difficult.
It was, it was, you do sort of like your 8 hours on the day job doing the graphic design at the time for the White Dwarf magazine. And then you'd go home and you kind of go, all right, I've got to go and do 8 hours now of painting for this. And then you'd like finally get to bed about 3:00 in the morning and then get up for, you know, the next day. And so it's, it's, it's quite
good fun. And I was sort of like, very motivated by the idea that I, I'd be painting a beast like part of the new Games Workshop release. But it was very, very, it didn't let you do very much else in your life really at the time. Yeah, I bet mate, that's, that's a pretty heavy schedule 16, but it would have been fun at the time anyway. It would have been fun to be part of that. So that's great. OK mate. Look, we're going to, we're going to go away for just a moment for a quick advert.
And then when we come back, we're going to talk about on Toss Games and the Rock Noughts Revolution Kickstarter you've got at the moment. It's a very exciting start. So we'll be back in just a moment. A question of the month for August 2024 is what miniature
would you like to own? Above all else, for me it's got to be the Great Unclean One from the Citadel combat cards of the late 80s and early 90s, a great looking miniature which by all accounts weighs about as much as a small cannonball. I'd love to own it, I'd love to paint it, but I imagine they're very hard and very expensive to come by these days. Anyway, tell us about the ultimate miniature you would like to own by going to bedroombattlefields.com/voicemail.
And I need those in by Thursday the 29th of August. That's bedroombattlefields.com/voicemail. And now, back to the show. I feel a bit sad I didn't have a a nice studio behind me with all of my favorite things on the wall. Like if if I was at home. I've got I've got a load of 1990s super robotic warriors power like bootleg action figures on display in a row. I've got all five different colours and on the plain hotel.
I'm afraid so. Well, that that sounds very, very Japanesey. Those kind of robots. Do you have you been to Japan before? Are you into this sort of the Gundam Gumpler thing? I, I've got, I bought my first Gundam two years ago. I got a ZAR 22 and I'm, I'm, I'm wanting to sort of like indulge that side. I've never been to Japan.
I'd love to visit. But what I'm very much into at the moment are the Hong Kong action figures, which are bootlegs of the popular brands at the time where they're sort of trying to work out right, what's this year's big seller? And then they put out a sort of a fake version of it, which is
legally defensible. So it's the Super robotic warriors and the Super robotic ranges that I've been kind of like obsessing over for years now, which are not Power Rangers, but they sort of like have big lighter things. They also came packaged with laser Pogs, which was fantastic. You, if you remember Pogs at all, you know, they still like thought, right? Power Rangers are big, Pogs are big. Let's just mash the two toys together and sort of it was great.
It's great. But I can't show you them. I can just show you a small TV and an en suite bathroom so. That's fine, mate. Yeah, you'll love it. You'll love Japan. If you love big stompy robots, then you you're in the in the home and heartland of all that kind of stuff here in Japan, that's for sure. So mate, look, let's go. Let's have a look at your Kickstarter. Now. These are like big stompy robots, but very on a much
smaller scale. I find they're nice and chunky and I love, I love the designs of your, of your miniatures that you've designed. Now, are you the actual designer, Chris? Do you do? You right? Yep, right. OK. So you design them, you obviously produce them and paint them. So that's excellence. And then you then publicize them through through Kickstarter, which is going really well at the moment. This is your second Kickstarter
from memory, is that right? Yeah, yeah, I did a initial set of I did just a little five man squad back in 2022 to test the water with and it went absolute bananas. And so I thought actually I'm going to follow this up with some more miniatures. And it's taken it's about 11 months of work to from the initial sketch of this bike to the release where all the miniatures are painted and
available for pre-order now. And I shouldn't sort of like, and then I'm thinking if this one goes well, I'm going to do some more options. I might do some exo suits, I might do some trikes. I want to do some more infantry. I'd love to start doing some characters.
But my dream is to be producer, sort of like a whole workable range, so that people could just paint an army of these and nothing but these that would look incredibly coherent and everything would be interchangeable and pluggable together. Well, that that was that was exactly what I was going to suggest. I'm actually going to wait until you have the entire range complete and then I'll go in big on one of the Kickstarters to get an entire army because I'm starting from scratch.
So I'm not one of those guys who has like Paul, who has some medal, the metal models and he has your Kickstarter as well to make a squad. But I want everything from your from your, your staff, your designs. I think that the the designs that you have match my image of what the 2nd edition squats should have been.
There are two unreleased models on the Dark Millennium inside cover on the in the front and the back, I think, and they were two unreleased Perry sculpts of what the squats were going to look like. I think they were actually. Perry, I think they were done by Gary Morley, actually. Oh, were they? Really I. Think, yeah, it's difficult to get information on, but I'm, I'm
happy to be wrong. But they they've got his classic large hands and they're very much similar to the metal Blood Bowl team that we've done in the early 90s as well. Actually, now you mention it, yeah, I think you might be right, Chris. I'll have to message him and ask him if that's the case. I mean, I love, I love that design. So those design aesthetics are just being ported straight into your Rock Naughty Revolution
series of models here. Now, obviously this Kickstarter focuses on the bikers, which are just brilliant. So yeah, I mean, I've got nothing to fault them against. I mean even even their cast and resin, I think the resin's a really nice quality. I've seen what Paul has here. The models I've seen, you know, first hand, they're really. I've seen this entire army on the, the battle report you put
up last night. Actually, I was sort of like, I was constantly at and taking a look at the because because the bunkers that you're using and the sort of the fortifications are all the stuff that I've designed as well. So the whole thing felt like, wow, OK, I did that. Wow. All right, that's. If you want to do space cactuses, you you, then I've, I've just put out some sort of like little space cactuses as well. Actually, they're on the they're
on the 3D cults at the moment. Oh, you're a very talented man, Chris. I didn't realize you did. I didn't realize you did those because yeah, I love those. They were kindly sent to me by Carnifex, my good friend in Australia, to help us out with some terrain. Because I didn't actually have any terrain. And I thought, and I really want to make terrain, you know, obviously. But the time it takes and I, I, I really haven't found the time to do it.
So he sent me those things and I just said, OK, that's it. I'm going to get them out, put them on the bases. I'm going to spray them black and I'm going to just get the airbrush out and just go for it. And I did it and I did it in a day, knocked them all out. They look fantastic. I've got lots of people asking about it. Even today someone asked me about it on the video.
So I'm going to find out exactly where I can get the link to those, where they can purchase them or print them or whatever. And I'll start, I'll start doing that. I should maybe just do a video just on the terrain itself and. And the rocks, are the rocks fires from Con FX as well or
have you done those yourself? Because those are absolutely spot on in terms of kind of giving the board a lot of interest, but also having a lot of vertical height and not actually, you know, they're perfect if you're wanting to put like Knights on the table or dreadnoughts as well. They're just sort of like they, they look great in photographs. And then when you're doing the army show, you just throw them all behind the army as well to sort of like block off the spaces. They're great.
Are those yours or? Yeah, they're just handmade out of like Styrofoam, basically. Yeah, they were just real. Well, that's that, that sort of builder's Styrofoam. It's like insulation Styrofoam. Not the not the really horrible white large chunky ones. Some more of a condensed one. Yeah, yeah, it was good. I should really do videos on that. It's just, again, finding the time, Chris, to do all those kind of things. But yeah, I really enjoyed that. And it's really simple.
It's not that hard. Even the even the, the, what's the names, the the cactus plants. I did a video on that. I did a did a how I did mine. And obviously other people do their own own way and their own style, but it's good to see that sort of cord on. I think it's had a little time there where everyone's making those things and everyone had to make the cactus lant because it was kind of the iconic thing they had to have on the table.
And then I saw your 3D rinted ones and they look really good too O. I did actually watch your video. I watched your video about the making cactus ones. And then Thomas Grove had given Leonard to like put together a set as well. And so I bought a set of polystyrene balls and polystyrene eggs earlier in the year to do exactly that. And I found because I, I, I wanted to go back to feeling like I was eight years old again and sort of like looking through the pages of White Dwarf.
But I, I found that when I had them in photographs, they tended to descale miniatures put next to them. And so I thought I'll try and sculpt some instead, which sort of like things that you can just dry brush and just slap a wash onto. And also they're a little bit more transportable. If you are enjoying this podcast and the content on the Chronicle Man Games YouTube channel then please consider supporting me on Patreon.
Becoming a Storm Boy allows you access to behind the scene news, information of upcoming podcast guests and themes, video battle reports, and occasionally exclusive podcasts with special guests or fellow patrons. And coming soon are painting videos, which we made to give you the skills and tips on painting in the red period using modern paints and practical
applications. And you can also access 1 to one painting lessons in the heavy LED Master class tier for a 40 minute personalized painting lesson. So check out patreon.com/the Crown of Command podcast. Yeah, so I was going to say also, Doctor Spork is another fantastic 40K second edition terrain modeller in 3D like yourself. He's done amazing bunker like the ones straight from White Dwarf. And yeah, it's really good to see.
It's really good to see that these nostalgic projects coming out as STL files and people can print them out and paint them up and put them on the table tops. It's really cool. It's really accessible now. So I think I really like that aspect to it because not everyone has the time or skill to build all this stuff. So if they have an alternative out there like those, then it's something that they can get it. They get the aesthetic feel of the 90s and with very little
time and fuss. But mate, let's have a look at your Kickstarter because it's now got 77 backers. It's the time I'm reading this and seven days to go. So I'll make sure this this interview with you, Chris goes out before it ends. You have a chance to get on there and grab their rock naughty bikers.
Now, not only are the bikers there, there are three different, well, there's 33 bikers listed in this beautiful photograph you did of your painted samples with a kind of like a veteran Sergeant type dude with wings on the side of his helmet, which I love, and two regular Rocknort bikers. But also you have the original Kickstarter models available too as an add on as well. So yeah, I've started calling that squad the Bedrock Squad, which I thought was very flat
because I love that. Yeah, it's called the Dead Rock of the Army, but it's also rock for Rocknort as well. That's so like the day I thought that I'm like brilliant, brilliant, you know? Yeah, I love those figures, mate. Honestly, they're just amazing. And and also I've seen a glimpse of another bedrock infra squad ready to reinforce your collection with five new sculpts
of a a beautiful a female dwarf. Well squat this time or rock naughty holding a what looks like a plasma pistol or a a bolt pistol and a power. Axe, it's got like 2 barrels because I it's a hangover from the initial weapons I designed, where I wanted to make the weapons also look not like standard space weapons, but make them look like they were dwarven weapons. And one of the ideas I hit on was having everything having two barrels, so the weapons had
quite a lot of height. And then a couple of months later, Forge World brought out a set of their Necromunder Squats where they'd gone to the same sort of like design cue as well. So I felt like I was onto the right path. But the original sidearm that the Rocknotes had was A2 barrelled weapon. But then I found that when people were holding it in front of their bodies, then it would cover up a lot of their face too much.
And then you'd end up just having it looked like sort of like toddlers holding large cardboard boxes rather than towards holding guns. And so I saw I slimmed it back and gave the weapon just a single barrel and put a sick clip on there. But yeah, I found that I had to do more infantry weapons, more infantry options in this squad because people were in the first kick start, were buying multiple
squads. And this one guy got in contact saying, oh, I've just come back from a kill team event and my entire army was nothing but your miniatures. And I bought 4 squads of the miniatures and I converted them all. So all of the rock things looked different. They all had different hairs. And I thought this is going great. You know the idea that people just want to do armies of these.
I thought, right, I'd better sort of like make sure that people can have options for choosing more than one squad. So I had to do another infantry squad on the side as well as the bikers so that people can start start rounding this out. And after I'm getting off this podcast, I've got this lovely shot. I set it up last week and it's going to take a lot of editing just to get it on.
I'll put on the Kickstarter of all four of the squads that I've painted together on the terrain just so that people can start seeing that rather than just a squad they can add to an army. This is the sort of like hopefully can build into an army all of its own as well, which is that's my dream really. But I've got to this like start off.
You always want to start off with the characters and you want to start off with the sort of the really exciting huge artillery and the kind of, I don't know, large artillery trains and all of whistles and bells where you've got to build the army with the sort of the foundation in place of having nice standard infantry squads. And then I haven't even done any characters unless you count the sort of like the squad leaders
yet. And I'm leaving those till a bit later when I can sort of like I've got a strong foundation of what kind of things they might have as war gear. You know, because the regular helmet, the sort of like the Sutton who helmet with the nose bar and the sort of the large eye lens, it looks great. But then we've got the Sergeant level one way. It's got the wings coming out
the back. And I'm thinking right, how can I make that slightly more ornate for the for So like, you know, mid level characters, you know, does it have jewels on it? Does it have inlaid not work patterns on it? Does it have rebreathers on it? Does it have more ornate horns on it? That that's exciting, you know, But I don't know. Watch this.
Watch this space, you know. Yeah, look, I'm really excited for it, Chris, Honestly, I, I, as soon as I saw your models, I thought, yeah, that's it. You just nail you nail the aesthetic that I want to see in the squad army and yeah, to to see this expand now. That's why I really wanted to get you on because I thought, wow, you've got another Kickstarter and more models coming out.
I'm really excited to see how this evolves and yeah, no, I'm really impressed with it mate, really impressed. I especially love the wings on the helmets. I think that was a really nice little touch there to signify your little group leaders or your hearth guard models and that kind of thing. But yeah, I'm really looking forward to seeing the Living Ancestor, the Warlord and the EXO armour guys when you eventually get around to designing those. I have my first prototype back
of the EXO suit actually. Yeah, it's coming out really nicely at the moment, but it's just a question of how I scale it nicely. I've got to work out. I've painted it, it looks wonderful. It's got a nice large banner, it's got weapon options on both hands. And I'm thinking I can do like different poses where one striding forward to the left, one striding forward to the right, but the regular rock not troop is quite as stocky bulky guy.
And working out how much more bulky a person in the kind of the heaviest form of armour would be and then still look right is the thing I'm just trying to nail at this point in the project. Because at the moment what you tend to find is that models in sort of like a Games Workshop Terminator is a very bulky set of armour. But does it actually look like, if I sort of like undress that Terminator, would it have a person in of the same size as a
regular Space Marine? And that's just the element of design I'm trying to nail at the moment. And we'll see how it goes. I'm very excited. We'll do it. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. And yeah, I mean, like I said, I'm just excited to see what the next designs will be. You do have a a Facebook page now. Ninja Bread. Is that sort of your online handle name, isn't it? Ninja Bread. Well, yeah, I that's what my personal blog is.
I when I was setting up on Toss Games as a company, I thought maybe I'll call it Ninja Bread. Like my old, I used to run a web comic there which had a kind of like a collective print edition. And then I have a blog on the side and I thought maybe I'll call it Ninja Bread. But then I thought. I. Might move past that phase of my life because I came up with that when I was 16 years old and
working in a bakery. And what we used to do was at the end of the day, if we had any gingerbread men that were left unsold, we'd sort of like get the kind of the molten chocolate out and we'd dip them in until the entire gingerbread man was covered in chocolate apart from a small rectangle over the eyes. Like he was a shinobi ninja. And they were called ninja bred men. And I thought, you know, that it was great fun, but it doesn't actually tell you anything about the company.
And I think there are so many companies out there which have Ninja in their title that, you know, I might sort of just keep that as a sort of a, the name of my personal blog. And so I set up the company, formerly a company's house. It's Ontos games. ONTOS, which is simpler to say on the phone and also isn't the name of a, an old like PlayStation one computer game which bombed as well. Actually, you know, the old Ninja bread man game. No. OK. Right. OK.
That's something new I didn't know about. Cool, mate. I think that's good. Yeah. Because I think it's. Yeah, maybe just has more clarity to what it is because I know you go under different names. So Ontos Games is is the name of the company and Gingerbread is just, yeah, your old former online handle that's associated with Ontos Games. But. Like like my old e-mail address used to be spicy beef at Hotmail and sort of, you know, like that was always like my forum name
for ages. And I'm, I'm glad I moved past that. You got to sort like, and then and then before that, I sort of I, I was calling myself, you know, Lord cheese grater and all of these names and you look back and you're like, I enjoy it and it means a lot to me. But does everybody else sit there and think, Oh, it's
cringe? You know, we had had a used to work with a guy who his professional e-mail address was Greg Master G at and and, and I was just sort of like we were just burst out giggling and it sort of undermined any sort of like serious professional point he wanted to make. Yeah, totally get it, mate. Totally get it. Yeah, I actually made my own Gmail account under my own name because I didn't want to send other, my other things like Chronic Man podcast, youknow@gmail.com.
I mean, you know, that doesn't sound very professional if you're, if you're doing it for work and that kind of thing. They're wondering who the hell is that, you know? So totally get that. Totally get it, mate. So yeah, look, I hope that people, when they listen to this, go and at least check out the Kickstarter, see what you've got on offer. You know, obviously postage will be quite reasonable given that they're all risen.
Well, for people in Japan and for people in Australia, I'm not sure where the bulk of your listening base star. I have spent a lot of time organising import and export to go from a either from the UK distribution hub, from an American distribution hub, from an Australian distribution hub and from a mainland Europe distribution hub so that you can and sort of like not get a custom sting at the end.
And so this is different to the web store which are always posted out from the UK address and then sort of like people are responsible from customs. But I've spent a lot of time thinking, right, if people do want these miniatures, I want to make sure that they understand that postage is sort of like what you see is what you get, rather than having a sort of like a huge parcel of 200 lbs hit you with a huge import fee.
So I, I shipped this to sort like partner organizations in the US, in Australia, in mainland Europe, so that you can sort of like reasonably expect sort of like VAT and customs from that point onwards. I spent a lot of time doing that. And you know, like if I got to spend that time painting more bikes, I would have. But I think it's always very important with these
kickstarters to work out, right. I want this to be pain free from the the backup point of view, the people that want the miniatures and I don't want them to suddenly have a parcel where and turn up with a 30 LB customs bill on. Yeah, no, that's, that's barely insaneable, Christian. That's, that's great. You did your due diligence on that, mate. So people appreciate that, I'm sure, because that's one of the things about Kickstarter that
puts people off. It's like, OK, I'm paying this much, but then the shipping and the import duty fees and what have you, depending on what country you're living in. So that's really good to know for people that they, they can see that and they can learn that. So that's good. Yeah. Now, well, now you're going to bring out your lead. Obviously it starts today, today being Friday the 2nd of August. Are you actually down some of your products make for people to
have a look at on the day. I haven't actually. I I'm going down simply as a punter. I did think about bringing down the squad to entrance to the painting contest, but then I decided against it. I'm just going down. I'm taking down my copy of Space Crusade and I'm seeing if I can sort of like wake up three players to sort of fight against my Chaos Dreadnoughts. And so I'll have that on display. But I, I, I bring out your leads.
Not really a trade show and I don't have the ability to give people their miniatures ahead of the end of the Kickstarter yet, but I will be doing a trade show at the Border River War Game show in Gateshead on September 6th. And then hopefully I'll be doing the Middlesbrough trade show and some Sunderland trade shows and if those go well then I'll start looking at doing the bigger ones like Salute and UK Games Expo,
right? Maybe it's Jen Conindy this weekend as well actually, which, you know, I'd love to do something like that. But that's got to be something I've got to, I've got to do a lot of working out how I sort of like do an international trade show. I've never done something like that before. Well, you've already got the person there set up to, you know, carry your products as like a sort of a, you know, halfway man or hub or something like that to get your products
in there. So that's half the battle. You can send it all in in advance and even get someone else to represent you there on the day. I mean, I've, I've known, I know that one of my patrons, Elliot, he's doing something for another company, UK based company, I forget the name of the the company, sorry, and the game. But yeah, he's representing him and his products, showing off all the models, doing demos and that kind of thing.
So yeah, you can get, you can find someone who really likes your products to go there on the day and just represent you on your behalf and show off all the wonderful rock Nords, mate. That's the way to do it. We'll have to find some avatars in other countries that I can remotely remotely possessed with my enthusiasm for space. I'm happy to do it for you in Japan, mate. I don't know who's going what kind of what kind of well, I can showdown this.
I can put them in the store and I actually asked Paul to do that. Just put them in the store in our the, the, the place where we play. We are thinking about doing like a second edition kind of games day. We've done a lot of here for Warhammer Renaissance, but there are some guys interested in playing second edition. I know there are quite a few about maybe six or seven or eight people now who play, who've got armies and that kind of thing.
So who knows, it might have those set up somewhere, you know, as part of the Rocknorts Revolution corner, so people can check out some. Well, it's good because I always, I'm always interested in people designing miniatures now based on the oldest aesthetics. Yeah, because obviously the influence of 3DS3D design and printing is massive now it's it's revolutionized the entire industry.
You just can't go to, you just can't go to Kickstarter without, you know, finding 10 or more Kickstarter's now with 3D prints of various different systems, you know, whether they're historical, fantasy, sci-fi, whatever. I launched Brocknort Revolution Kickstarter the same day that Andrew May over at Meridian Miniatures launched a set of space, space orcs, which are very 90s themes as well, which are sculpted by Kev Adams world people.
And so we both both launched us on the same morning and we're kind of giving each other mutual support as well. So you just can't swing a cat for bumping into two or three things. But I I like the I like the style because the miniatures are very straightforward and characterful and paintable and don't come in 36 parts each. Yep. You know what, mate? I've got some beautiful Gretchen from Nightmare Games. You know Diego from Nightmare Games? He did a Kickstarter some years ago.
That was the last one I think I did. And they're the ones that. Popped up in the battle report or. They're the ones, yeah. People ask me. They were lovely, They were lovely. Yeah, they're awesome, mate. They're beautiful Warcast and beautiful metal. I mean, I wish the rock Nords would cast in metal, but then it'll cost quite a bit more, I think, to do that. And the process behind it. I don't know much about it, but
yeah. Yeah, the cast are actually offered to do them in metal, but the cost of metal is shot up so much that it's cheaper to do them in resin. And maybe have a bit of a personal preference there in that the miniatures don't chip as easily if you're taking an army of them down. But then he did, he was actually trying to persuade me to do a set of the bikes in metal as
like a collector's edition. But the weight of bikes is sort of like absolutely huge really when you're doing small vehicles in metal. And then I, I'm not sure how well metal kits stay together because metal bikes, I've got a, I've got a squadron of metal bikes at home and they're, they're just a running repair really. Yeah, I know what you mean. I, I totally understand it.
I, I, I can get it from a, from a business point of view these days that of course I love metal models and you know, I've got a whole cabinet full of them. Luckily they can support the, the, the shelves they're actually sitting on luckily support like 10 KGS and over I think because they're quite heavy. But you know, for transportation, for storage, for obviously for a, for a seller
shipping all this stuff out. Yeah, I mean, resin is the way to go. I mean, my friend Marcus, you know, you might be familiar with wearable miniatures. Oh yes, yes, he's done some really nice, he did a really nice Wastacker Gutsmaker conversion a couple of weeks ago, which is just sort of like absolutely spot on because he's taking extra care to do like the mega armor of the rider as well, which I'm just, I've got so excited by that. I've got lots of pictures of that saved to my desktop.
Great, That's awesome. Yeah, he, he's done some awesome spotlight models as well, which would, I think, I think Paul's got the living Ancestor model from his range that he used in our game in our battle report the other day.
So it's it's really great, great to see people like yourself and Marcus and other people out there, you know, recreating these old miniatures in a new format and you know, obviously metal resin or whatever, or SSTLS people can print out and still enjoy old style gaming with some new fresh looking models on the table. So yeah, all, all yeah, sounds
great. Bring back that sort of it's not just I wanted to go back to 1994, but I remember popping out once to Manchester model shop and I had an Imperial Guard army at the time. And then this new game called Warzone would come out with this wolf being commandos in and they just look like they're slots straight into my Warhammer army.
And I just bought them there and sort of like got ten of them and had them with an assault cannon, which are counted as a heavy bowl to it. I think it's an HMG actually.
And I like the idea that we're living in a fresh golden age of miniatures where people have got their old armies, people have got their existing collections, but they kind of think, right, I'm just going to get a little bit of flavour in here, a bit of Indycred. I want to get something a bit fresh rather than having another army where you have that
monopose plastic. Gretchen, you've slotted in your Diego sort of like fantastic set of nightmare miniatures, Gretchen into it. You've got your Macrocosm dwarf commissar slotted in and it sits alongside the old miniatures. It's that that's the idea that it's a bit more pick and mix or a bit more so like customizable. And that's that's very exciting about this age of Kickstarters. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. To get your project off the ground, that is it. Macrocasm, Macrocasm, Macrocasm.
Yeah, They do some wonderful stuff too. I think they're a Spanish company, aren't they? I think it's Chris Nichols in the UK, but in this age of the Internet, it's not acceptable to know within 30 seconds. Well, it could be Spanish, yeah. OK, it could be could be a different project that I'm thinking of, but they did some space slam and what else was? That, oh, that was Redguard, wasn't it? They did the baseline and the space. Ocrans. And that's the one. That's the one.
Yeah. Brilliant. Yeah. The Ocrans are just amazing. I mean, I'd, I'd love to have those for my walk. Army. I think they're just, they're just perfect, perfect aesthetics. Yeah, yeah. His, his photography was completely on point with the hills that he had as well. And he's got some of the old fugu huts behind him as well. I, I, I want to say to slam myself actually to have his auxilia, because the painting on them was great. They weren't just sort of fat little frogs or sort of stringy
crew. They were just the halfway in between, which sort of like made them nice and leggy and sort of alien and Mesoamerican. It was, it was, it was great. Yeah, and hats off to Maxi who did all the painting for them. He did an absolutely brilliant job on those. Just. Yeah, he the like, I'm not a Lisbon person, as most people would know. I don't particularly like lizards in fantasy or space, but those models are really, really nice.
They're really good. Yeah. And I think that the paint jobs themselves that Maxi did just knocked them out the park. Absolutely. I'm glad I'm. Glad he didn't do space dwarf bikers actually, because he did some little jump troopers and he did. And I'm thinking, Oh, no, everyone's going to be sort of a, you know, sort of tired of space dwarf bikers this year and we're going to launch mine. So, so, you know, this is space enough of us both to do bikers.
Macrocosm have done some bikers recently and they're they're great. And there's that Spanish company have done some bikers recently as well. And I think hardcore have done some bikers as well. So you, you spoil for choice really if you want space dwarf bike, but get mine, but get mine. But you know, other options are available. For me personally, I think yeah, you're doing the best, you know, squat aesthetical models out there at the moment.
And like I said Chris, I'm really looking forward to seeing what comes in the future. You've got some exciting plans in your head already. You've got a prototype there Is it of the EXO Armour model you have? Isn't it a nice EXO suit? Yeah, he's got a hammer in one hand and he's got under slung. It's like Gatling cannon in the other. And I just trying to work out sort of like what are the weapon options I give him as well really so that I can make it a whole squad's worth, you know?
Do we start doing like over shoulder missile launches? Do we start doing kind of like loads of flame weapons? Do we start doing sort of like axes instead of hammers for the guns? I'm not sure. It's, it's exciting times. It's world is my oyster. Now finally, do you have like some kind of discord or community group that you can interact with your fans to talk about these ideas or your processes and that kind of thing to get feedback? I've been taking a look at
trying to set up a discord. I've never quite worked out how they are, so I'm lurking around in the Warhammer 40,000 second edition discord. I used to say, I used to say that Twitter was the best place to interact with me, but ever since the Elon Musk take take over, I found that sort of like it's only about 10% of the people on there than they used to be actually. So yeah, I should, I should really sort out a Discord. I know that you've got a very successful one that sort of join.
Ours mate, I was going to say just join ours Chris, you can you've got heaps of people there to interact with you straight off the bat. I mean, I know, I know the the 40K second edition one is there as well. I think I'm still a member of that one. I don't really visit it very often. It it seems to be very well. Last time I, last time I visited, it wasn't that active, but our, our group is very, very
active. So please feel free to come in and share as much as your stuff as you want all your painted model, everything, everything. You know, it's, it's open for everybody just to, yeah, like it's, there's no rules on, you know, showing off your wares and, and trying to get sales. We encourage that. So I'm always happy to have creators on board to share their wonderful work and to, again, just to give more exposure to what you're doing. And so yeah, please do that mate.
I'll send you a link and please come and jump on board. Consider myself invited. OK, Chris. Well, it's been a pleasure talking to you. I really appreciate your time today and again, have a wonderful time at bringing out your lead. And please say hello on my behalf and the Chronic community, Chronic Man community, to all the people you
meet there on the weekend too. Well, thank you very much for having me on and thank you for your kind of completely inadvertent plugs for the terrain and you're completely advertent plugs for this campaign. So brilliant, no? Problem mate, I hope, yeah, like I said, I think it's going to be very successful at the first one and long may that continue. The more successful it gets, well then the more projects you can start. So that's excellent mate. So happy to happy to support you
doing that. OK mate. So thanks again Chris and take care and I'll catch you again next time mate. See you soon. Bye, bye, bye.