Thanks again David for re changing the time for our meeting today. I apologize, OK. That's OK. I cleanly forgot about my wife's birthday of. Course. Oh dear. Don't tell her that. Don't tell her I. Didn't actually forget about her birthday. I just thought, Oh my God, that's right, we've got a meeting at like 6 and then I should be cooking dinner and all this kind of stuff. So I thought, Oh no, I'll have to ask David to just reschedule a little bit earlier. So thanks.
You can do that, mate. That's great. That's OK. It's it's quite hot in the UK now, so doing it a bit earlier is is fine. It's it's a bit cooler tell. Me about, I've got, I've got something to cool me down over here. I can tell you now mate, it's still 72% humidity 33°. Oh wow, that's hotter. That's about as hot as it was yesterday, I think. In the UK it's getting really hot, isn't it? I saw. That yeah, it's a bit of a heat wave at the moment.
It's a, it's one of those late summer ones. It was really hot yesterday. I think it's a bit cooler now. I think it's going to be going to be cooling off. It's not going to break though. It said it was going to break in a couple of days, but I think it's just going to keep on being warm and just kind of Peter out. So yeah, we're getting the summer eventually. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because I know you had guys had a lot of rain or something.
It sort of wasn't a real, yeah. It started very slowly, but now it's gone to now it's gone to full warmth. But yeah, considering we, we virtually didn't have a summer last year, so that at least it's all saving up for this year. Yeah, that's good mate. That's good mate. Just to ask you, do you work from home? Is that right? Yes, I do. Yes, OK. OK, So you're like me, so you're kind of flexible with times and, you know, getting stuff done or whatever. That's good.
OK, nice. Yeah, yes, it's all, it's all fortunately in, in, in the spare room that has now been taken over by this, this, this channel and all of its associated technology and bits and pieces that I need to to keep it running. All right, City, I'm getting an auto queue delivered today as well, which is another piece of technology. So that'll hopefully help out some bits. So may I ask, are you doing this full time? The old and demon thing. Kind of yes. I mean as full time as I can.
I can manage around other bits and pieces, but it, it, I would describe it as probably half full time, but it, you know, it's, it's a, it's a nice little thing. I, I can, I can truck a lot of time at it, but I still can't truck the kind of hours that, you know, professional Youtubers and people who, who do videos every week can, can Chuck at it.
But I've, I've got a decent amount of amount of time to Chuck at it, which is just as well because it's, it's quite demanding in certain areas, because every new topic that I want to do involves learning a new piece of software or learning something else or learning a new piece of kit. But yes, I can, I can put a, a decent amount of time in it. But yeah, I'm, I'm still not at the level of, of the people who have editors or, or things like that.
And they can, they can really churn the content out. But yeah, that's not something that I I can financially do at this point. No, that's understandable mate. Not like tabletop tactics. You know that Ed's part of Ed from Mini Swords. Yeah, yeah, aim of people that, you know, do the editing one does the editing one's like full time painter, you know, some people are filming and then they've got the crew to do all the gaming and stuff.
It's incredible. I, I, I just think it's just amazing that they can do that and. Yeah. I mean, financially that's that's, that's an impressive little get up that they've got. I mean there's a there's a few of them out there that are basically professional recording studios and there is a a big team behind them and they can financially generate that
revenue. But unfortunately with the dynamics and the mechanics of YouTube and the way that it's, you know, the older channels and certainly the channels that are recording and doing things during the pandemic, they grabbed a lot of market share of the people who would pay.
Because at the end of the day, you know, the, the money comes in through either adverts or a little bit of subscription money and that's about it. And if you know, if your, if your subscribers are already subscribed to all the people that they were subscribed to five years ago, there's very few of them left to, left to, to, to and, you know, a couple of pounds every month. But yeah, I mean that's just the the dynamics of of YouTube and market share, I guess.
It's good to see your last videos kicking ass on 117,000 views. Yes, yes. I mean that's yeah. I mean, this year I decided to take a, a slightly different tack for the channel after last year. Last year I went very kind of niche. I mean, last year was the first year and I did at times go very niche and very experimental, especially around the Christmas area. And a lot of the videos just bombed.
And that was the time where I've been told put your really good content out before Christmas because it'll get the, the good click through rates or good advert rates. And I went experimental instead. And it they both, they all bombed. And then at the end of the year, I thought, OK, I probably should do some, some big hits so that they could actually generate kind of views and money.
Because, you know, I did things like the gear video and that didn't really didn't really capture the audience. And then I did a kind of mini battle report with the great Devourer. And I thought, oh, if I, if I make it really, really pretty, but I make a really small one, would that help? And it didn't really help.
But yeah, this year because we also, because we've had quite a few nostalgia adjacent releases, we've had Epic effectively under a different name and we've had well, Hammer, the Old World. And now we've just had Age of Sigma, which was going to be a fairly big release. But I thought I should put out something, something old Hammer related around that just to kind
of capture the demand. I mean, that's a that is a thing with YouTube. If you can, if you can put a big video out at the moment that Games Workshop do a big release, there's this big advertising bubble and you can capture a part of it and then sail through. But yeah, I mean, yeah, we're fortunately, I think it's Kill Team next. It looks like they're teasing Kill Team for the kind of quarter four release, and that's not really old Hammer adjacent. So I can do other things.
I can go back to doing battle reports and things like that. Oh, good. A. Lot of my sorry, I know that a lot of my listeners and people on Patreon, you know follow you for the battle reports so they'll be very excited to hear that so. So yeah, we've got them. Well, the Great Devout, I'm going to do a proper video on the great Devourer, which I, I kind of didn't really give it a good enough shot last year. That is, it's scripted. There's still a few things
coming before then. It's I've got a Talisman review that I need to rush off and edit after, after this call, because of course, Talisman version five came out. That's another Games Workshop, a nostalgia adjacent release. So I thought, OK, I'll do a video on that one as well. And then there's there's another video planned. And then hopefully I can get around to doing the great devourer because I've got all of the you've.
I mean, if they, if they follow the channel, they've probably seen the kind of trailer that I did last November, December, where it was all of the units are done and the like the, the, the map is all done. But I just need to actually get round to doing a break by like a turn by turn breakdown like I did for the other ones. Plus I've got a, a special thing planned for it that I've just discovered that I could do, which is going to be hopefully some themed merch to go with the
battle report. So we'll see how that works. All right, nice. Because I've just learnt Affinity Designer and the reason I did that is because I've done a big channel rebrand I finished off yesterday. So we've kind of moved away from the kind of gradient demon head thing that wasn't entirely retro adjacent, but it, I thought it was a bit like a golden demon demon.
And we've moved into that kind of retro bevelled effect that you got on the 90s publications where they had all had the kind of light gradients going over a kind of 90s metallic background. So I just changed all of our my logos off to that after learning affinity designer. And so I thought I could probably do this kind of effect for other other games because I've got a big stack of those old, you know, white dwarves and and codexes and things like that.
And they've all got these lovely kind of winged, glowing, metallic kind of bevelled effect text and logos on. And I thought, well, I could probably make a few of those or just like a non IP infringing version of a few of those. And, and that'd be, that'd be quite interesting. So yes, it short answer, yeah, the bad reports are coming. They just take time. And I, I kind of, it's kind of scope creep. It's everything else that I want to do with it. And I think, oh, that'll be a
good idea. I can Chuck batting with it as well. Because yeah, I've only got, I mean, I think I looked at how many there were and there's only about 15140 thousand battle reports that you can realistically do on YouTube. So I thought I, I got to kind of space these out for my own sanity because they're quite, quite demanding edits as well when all the, the models start moving around. But yeah, the great devourer is
coming. And then possibly I've also got one scripted for the the howling Griffins as well. But again, that one keeps getting pushed back because it's not not as finished. Great to hear mate. Yeah, I'm looking at your rebranding logos right now on your YouTube channel and yeah, make that look very swish. So very, very nice indeed. So I think a lot of people enjoyed that they got 393 likes. And so yeah, I think a lot of people are quite happy with the new rebranding image imagery
they can see there. So that's awesome, mate. So let's talk a little bit about because, you know, obviously I think most people know you through either YouTube or Instagram because you run a very successful and very well known painting competition that's been running for the last, I think, 4 years. Is that right, David? Yeah, it's since 2020. It's the old and demon painting competition started like all the other good things during the
pandemic. I think it was, It must have been 2020. I can't exactly remember why. I'm pretty sure Games have probably announced that due to the pandemic, they were cancelling the Golden Demon competition. And so I thought, oh, I'll do a, I'd had this idea floating around in my head for a while and I thought, oh, I'll do a kind of retro Oldhammer theme painting competition myself and I'll just post it on YouTube and yeah, not YouTube, sorry, host it on Instagram.
And I thought, OK, we'll do that. It'll, it'll probably only get like a dozen or two dozen entries. That'll be, that'll be good. And yeah, it, it just, it just really took off. It really kind of captured the imaginations of a lot of people out there. And yeah, we, we got some amazing, amazing entries In the end. I was, was not expecting them to be as good as they were for the first year we did it. And then I was like, OK, well, I could, I could just keep doing this every year.
And every year I just thought, OK, and people aren't, are going to be bored with this now. They're going to move on. They're going to move on the next year. I did it and I was like, OK, well, well, we'll, we'll do it this year and we'll see if anyone's still interested. And we got more entries and they're even better. And I was like, wow, OK, so I just kept doing it and kept doing it and it, it's, it just keeps growing and growing and growing. And yeah, this year we did it.
And I to popular demand I, I split the categories in two. People were saying, OK, do a, do a sci-fi category and a fantasy category. So you can kind of split the, split the winners between the two. And yeah, we've got two amazed. We've got loads and loads of amazing entries, but some amazing winners on the first,
second and third. I mean, it was, it's, it's really tough judging this thing now because they are really, really talented people out there who are very happy to paint up incredibly old models for this competition. And yeah, it's, it's just grown and grown and grown.
And last year, well, this year rather, I partnered with Matt Avis from the Miniatures Compendium, and he's also done things for Cult of Paint. And he created an entry form so that people could just log onto a URL and just send pictures of their entry directly to that place. And then I can just look through it all quickly download them all
to use in the videos. And yesterday I, I finished adding all of those links in and he's, he's made a little gallery for me. So you can see everyone's entries for this year now on my website if you're on the front page, because that's another thing people requested and they was like, oh, we can, thanks for the everything. But we, we'd like to really see all the entries, everyone's entries, because there's like there's like 200 or nearly 200
for each category. And so, yeah, if you, if you head to oldendemon.com now, you should be able to see on the, the top menu the 2024 entries. I've also updated the Hall of Fame so you can see everyone's or the top, however many winners there are for each year. And in 2024, you can see smoothly, it'll go through to a nice little page where it'll have a giant scroll of all of the entries for, for Olden Demon, the painting competition this year.
So yeah, it's yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on in the background here that I'm trying to trying to do, but yeah, that's, that's another thing that we've got going on. But yeah, it it's, it looks really nice if you look through the the entropies and the fact that Matt Avis has his Blood Angel space moon as the first one is pure coincidental, but that's just because. Now I'm looking, I'm just scrolling through it right now. I'm really glad this is put
together. So please thank the the gentleman who's responsible for doing that for you, because that's it looks like an awful lot of work. Yes. It's, it's a great accreditation to all those people who put on those hard hours and all that work into, into creating these beautiful, beautifully painted miniatures and then submitting them. And then everyone can check and everyone can look.
So this is wonderful. I'm really I'm really enjoying just scrolling through all these excellent 90 miniatures, painted so well and all in different. Stuff yeah, I recommend throwing Mat some money. He he runs the Golden Demon compendium. I think he's got a Patreon page to go with it. So certainly sign up there if you, if you like his work, because he's really donated a
lot of his time and effort. Because there's no way I would be able to do anything, anything remotely like this for, for myself because I do not contain the appropriate knowledge. But yeah, it looks amazing. Now. It's just a, a long page of all of the entries. And there are some, there were some amazing entries in there that just, yeah, yeah, the quality is so high now. Stripping the, the top three away from the, the, the
commended entries is hard. And then stripping the commended entries away from the, the rest of them is, is incredibly hard. I could have just kept adding more and more to it, but I had to cut myself off eventually. Yeah, now Matt's one person I need to get in touch with and get onto the podcast too, because, yeah, he's done a remarkable job. I think I visited his site several times to check various different golden demon entries from the past and yeah, he's
doing a spectacular job. So yeah, we need to get him on there and, and have a chat with him mate, because you know, we need people like that and like yourself to, you know. Archive a lot of this stuff. Yeah, he's he's doing a fantastic job in his in his website, which if you've not seen it, the the golden Demon Compendium, it it's effectively just a going to be a full list of all of the old golden demon.
Well, every Golden Demon entry sorted by event and and things like that, because, you know, a lot of this stuff was only really, you know, the the golden Demon entries, you know, there's after they have the awards, especially in the 90s and the early 90s, it just kind of gets forgotten. A lot of this stuff just just vanishes.
And if it wasn't for a few websites that actually probably only, I think it was a Golden Demon winners free website that held most of those things for the far last like 20 or so years. And if it wasn't for that, it would just, it would just have gone completely vanished for the Internet. So yeah, he's hopefully he's be he's his website's looking lovely. Yeah, no, it's great. I'm looking through some of the entries now. Bit of a shout out to Max Desmond. I love that Wahama cows quest
Chaos Warrior he did. I think it's absolutely glorious. I think maybe it could featured in your latest video actually too, I think, David. But it's a beautiful, beautiful rendition of that old classic model. I think Gary Morley sculpted this one and it's one of my favourite all time favorite 90s Chaos Warriors It looks like exactly like one of the artists there. Oh, I keep forgetting his name, it's terrible. Gary, are you thinking of Wayne England? That's it.
Thank you very much, Wayne. England style. Wayne. 'S name yeah. So Wayne England's sort of art style in that miniature and that Gary reproduced in a miniature and the paint job is just stunning yeah. So I really, really enjoyed just really enjoying looking through this. I didn't actually know that was a gallery here until now, so I'm just looking. To know it, I, I added it in to the website literally yesterday because I thought, oh, I'm
going, I'm going on the podcast. I've got to get the gallery sorted out. I've got to get the Hall of Fame sorted out. I know you're going to ask me about all of this stuff and I better get it all working, working ready for the podcast. So I thought, OK, just we'll, I'd work through the heat. Just keep, keep sticking this stuff up there. But yeah, we've got a, a little search function at the top which worked really, really nicely.
So I was very quickly able to to search for Max Desmond and then bring up the the Chaos Warrior in question. But yeah, it's a, it's a lovely job. I mean, there are so many lovely, lovely old models out there that that need to get shown off because they are just otherwise just just kind of kind of vanish and and get forgotten about. Some are actually upside down, which is quite funny, so apologies. Yes, there's a few that got in that that need to be rotated.
Yeah, I, I don't know how people did that. They, I think they must have. I don't know how that would have have happened. Maybe they held the camera at an angle, taking the camera, then submitted the picture in. Because there's so many, so many images in there. There's a few of them have unusual angles. Hold your laptop at a. Hold your laptop at a 90° angle and you should be able to see it fine. Inquisitor Lord in Terminarama 1989 by Timu Pesonen.
I think that's how you pronounce their name. Sorry if I butchered that one, but really nice looking Inquisitor Lord. Yeah, that's that's wonderful. So yeah, there is just a smorgasbord of 90s goodness, all painted in beautiful. High saturated colours. So if people are listening to this, please go and check out the old and demon website and go and check out the entries for 2024 and you can see them all there and see your name and
lights hopefully down bottom. If you did submit your entry, I actually did for the very first time submit it in this this year. Azag the Slaughterer is not very happy because he wasn't. He wasn't the winner. Obviously he wants to be the winner because he's Azag the Slaughterer. He was going to fly over to the UK and hunt you down. David, I saw him. No, no, don't do it because that's not a very nice idea.
There was a very nice gentleman. He he knows and it's a very tough job how to, how to judge all these things. So he understood in the end, very begrudgingly. But yeah, but that was fun. I'm really, I really enjoyed entering the competition. I'll again, we'll do it next year. And I'm just so happy that it's growing that you, you know, I can see it's getting more and more popular. And like dates from Anvil of
Doom, he entered as well. He's got a really, really nice looking troll Slayer. That, yes, yeah. Here, and it's wonderful that everyone's celebrating what I think, and I think you would feel the same. David is like the, it's the penultimate time of miniature sculpting. It was the, IT was the greatest era of, well, I think anyway, of Games Workshop, you know, as a brand, as, as an identity, as a tabletop.
They sold tabletop miniature gaming through these glorious pictures of photographs of, of miniatures on the battlefield in White Dwarf magazine. When you walked into a Games Workshop store, you'll just embrace all this, you know, this, this, this red, glorified red around the walls and everything, you know, wonderful and sparkling and you know, you, you just fell in love with it because it was hard not to.
You just mesmerize with it and you know, these painting competitions and everything that represents 90s gaming and painting, you know, sort of exemplifies that, uh, to the NTH degree. And I, and I think it's really wonderful that people are celebrating that still in 2024. So long mate shot, you know, hope it continues for many, many years, uh, going forward, mate. Honestly, it's great to see. Yes, excellent. I hope so.
I hope so. I think, I think we've we've hit the point where I I stopped thinking, Oh my God, it's going to fail next year. But yeah, hopefully it'll, it'll continue. I mean, there's, there's certainly a huge demand out there to see this kind of stuff because as you say, you know, this is this is possibly the, the era of peak creativity in that kind of 90s bubble.
Certainly that's what what a lot of the, the, the designers and the, the fans all say is that there was something very unique about that little bubble that they had in Nottingham in one room where they had all of these sculptors, all of these artists, all of these games designers just feeding off of each other. And, you know, they could, they could produce these amazing pieces of not only miniatures, but but artwork and, and graphic design and logos and things like that.
And then unfortunately, as all things do, once the business becomes a little bit larger and a little bit more global, the, the, the, the, the, how should we say, the creativity kind of drops off and it becomes kind of more about how do we market this to 200 different languages? And as they, as they attempted to in, in Gorkamoka, they attempted to, to sell Gorkamoka to, to loads of different languages and it did not work. And I think they learnt a hard lesson there.
And yeah, and, and unfortunately it kind of watered it down a little bit. But again, I mean, it's, it's a nice little time capsule, a little bubble of, of artistic style that would it be special if it was still around or would it be special because it went away? That is the question. Yeah, like all things, you know,
nothing lasts forever. So I suppose, and I always wondered about that, whether it was just mainly an age group thing where we grew up with it. We first associated the self against worship through this era. So we have a kind of connection and nostalgia connection to it where the, you know, new people coming to the hobby don't have that connection when they see these old metal models and the way they're being painted, they don't just don't have that kind of love or affection towards them.
I don't know. But then you see guys like Darren Latham, who's like a very, you know, he's a big personality online. He's he's a heavy metal painter with gang swish up now currently him painting a model with Wayne England's artwork that he did for a White Dwarf cover for one of his Deathwing Terminator captains, you know, and that's then presented to a new a new audience. And of course they would embrace anything he does because everything he does is, you know, to a very, very, very high
standard. And Darren's an exceptional painter. So through through those people, I think through social media, Goblin Green, like Will's another person too, that's very popular online and is a very exceptional painter as well. I love his work. I think they're popularizing this kind of style. Maybe, maybe I'm wrong. I think I mean really, really big influences there in doing the hobby.
Is yeah, the hobby is so large enough that there are different styles that have kind of built up over the years. And I think the Blanche Jih Tzu style is another style that kind of has has emerged out of this. You've got the, the, the, the modern heavy metal style painting, which a lot of people kind of gravitate to. You've got the kind of Blanche Jih Tzu style that other people gravitate to.
And yes, there's a kind of resurgence in the old, old hammer style, which is another visual style that that people can embrace and, you know, build armies around and, and paint miniatures around. I think the the hobby is that is, I mean, you know, you've got two ways of thinking about it. On one way the the massive global expansion did allow more
people into the hobby. And it also allowed more space for for different styles to emerge and different people to, you know, look at something and say, OK, that's what I want it to look like. I don't want it to look like the other things that they've produced. I want it to look like this thing. So yeah, it's just larger, More space equals more different styles and more room for everyone.
Yep, absolutely, mate. Yeah, I've, I've, I always, you know, even the, the, the modern Games Workshop. Well, Golden Demon, I suppose that now there's the current competition that's running around in different parts of the world these days. Yeah, I, I can look at those pieces of work and artistry that those painters put into an artist put into it is incredible. I can't, I can't achieve that level.
I mean, it's, it's gone beyond anything that anybody could ever expect, miniature painting and sculpting and a whole host of skills that goes into making those entries. And you just sit there in awe or thinking, wow, you know, how do they do that? But then we thought the same thing back in the 90s when we saw Mike McVeigh paint something for White Dwarf magazine, thinking, how did he do that?
You know, it's that that is very exceptional and very talented people that in that really, you know, get involved and enjoy this this hobby called miniature painting. So, David, are you an actual painter yourself? Yes, yes. I mean, I think I can paint. It's just, it's the the channel and everything else has subsumed a large proportion of my time, so much so that the actual art, the, you know, painting to, to this degree just takes so much
time. And even painting an army takes so much time that I just, I would, I would literally have to just stop producing videos in order to complete a variety of projects. But yeah, no, I've, I've, I've painted a, a variety of things over the last couple of years, but much, much smaller than I, I used to do before I was making YouTube videos. But yeah, I've, I've painted the last thing. Oh, can't.
No, the last thing I painted was a bunch of Legions Imperialist model because that was a, an epic thing. And you can see those on my Legions Imperialist review. But the thing before that was a one of those I, I painted Darren Latham's Speaking of the man himself, 90s Marine Challenge with the, the Monopo Space Marine. And I decided like all the good things to take it over the top. I painted it in the style of like a Rogue Trader Minotaur with the yellow and red stripes all down it.
And yeah, yeah, it took an incredibly long amount of time because obviously it's, it's chevrons on every single, every single surface. But yeah, I, I do enjoy painting, but unfortunately there's only so many hours in a day. And unfortunately I don't, I mean, I wonder if people would enjoy seeing a kind of painting video for me on the channel or I'd just sit down and paint
something. I, I do think that could be a potential output for something, but I just don't know, don't know what I how to, how to how to do it, what people would like to see me paint. I think I could do a nice commentary on on some kind of painting a little, maybe a spoof of the the the usual paint commentaries that you get for these videos. Yes, I, I found myself doing painting videos really, really difficult. And I really admire people who can do a wonderful job on
painting videos. They're not easy. And yeah, great, great, great appreciation for people who can really pull it off. I'm just actually looking at your, your final entry for Darren Latham's Plastic Space Marine. It's really nice, mate. So it's, it's wonderful to see it because, you know, obviously people are going to say, you know, can David actually paint? Why is he judging this competition? Well, you're, you know, I can see by this image here you're a
very skilled painter. So where are you looking at? Are you looking at on the site or I can't remember where I I posted it? Looks like you posted it on on your own Instagram so oh. Yes, yes, yeah. So, yeah, very, very skilled painter. So that's that's good to know. And and yeah, so that's great, man. I'm, I'm glad you get to enjoy painting yourself sometimes. And looks like you have by the
imagery on here. I've seen it on on various different photographs and websites that you have a lot of the hexpots, the original hexpots from Citadel. Yes, I went on a, some would say obsessive compulsive binge a while back. I think it must have been, it must have been kind of spurred on by the pandemic when everyone was just kind of getting really into nostalgia. And I thought, oh, I could, I could buy or I could, you know, buy a, a collection of the, the old 90s hexpots.
And I thought I, I, I basically got a couple of eBay auctions where I got about 60 to 70% of all of them in mint kind of sealed format. And I was like, that's easy. I could, I could really easily finish this collection of, you know, mini hex pots. It wouldn't take me that long at all. Turns out it is actually quite hard to get some of those colours.
So obviously the, the ones that appeared in all of the painting kits and things like that, those are actually fairly, fairly easy to get hold of mint examples of them. But there are certain colours out there. I've, I've completed the collection now I've got all of the colours all sealed. But it, it took me years and years. Which one was it? It was polished blue. That was the, that was the real
problem. And that took me a couple of years to just find a, a, a part of that just pinging up on you on eBay somewhere. But there, there are certain colours out there that people just didn't really seem to buy and whoever did buy them just ripped them open immediately. But yes, I've managed to complete the collection. And then at the moment it's sitting in a really useful box over to my side. And I'm thinking, how do I, I probably should get something to display these in?
I'm thinking maybe maybe I can put, I think it's nail Polish racks people use and they stick them up on the wall. I should probably get one of those, stick them into a nice little, nice little rack and then I can show them. But of course, the the by product of this is that because I was like searching through eBay auctions, I have a lot of spares. I have a ridiculous amount of
spares now. I mean, I don't know if you've got a, one of the 9 litre really useful boxes, but I have a nine litre really useful box just full of opened hex pot paints that are just spares that I I accumulated just to get the sealed paints. Yeah, it it took, it took years and years and years. I think I God, was it last year I completed it, it, it, it must have taken at least three, possibly even four years to complete the full collection.
And that's just really annoying because at one point I think I saw someone actually ebayed a full collection of mint sealed paint at one point. And I was like, and I was really close to completing my my version. I think I only had like three or four left and someone said, OK, I'm going to sell a fearful mint collection. And I was like, oh, should I? I can't, I can't buy a second
batch. I really should have done, but I ended up not doing it and and then of course, it then took me like an entire year from that point to find a sealed pot of what was it? The the metallic blue, polished blue. That's the one. It took me an entire year to find that, that paint again. But yeah, it's, it's I, I really need to display it. But now I'm really concerned about, you know, the sun hitting
it and then being bleached. And I, I kind of want to kind of want to give them a second look to make sure there's no like imperfections in the, in the, the, the stickers and things like that to make sure they're as clean as, as possible and they're as nice as possible before I stick them in that kind of display area. But yeah, that was a that was a little thing because I thought, you know, yeah, I can. The thing about collecting old Citadel models is you don't know
what to recast. Someone somewhere has been recasting those Imperial Guard Praetorian models for the last 20 or so years. And at this point, unless they've got like layers of caked on paint on to them where you can tell that it's someone who's been painting in the 90s, you don't know what to recast. So you can't really boast too much and the blister packs are way outside of the budget of everything. Anyone to have a mint blister pack collection of anything that's that's gone, that's long
out the door. But I thought for hex pot paints, I could probably do that. And yes, it did take me a long, long while, but I finally got the, the entire thing. But yeah, it, it is a collection. And I'm, I'm quite happy with it finished now. I'm quite happy to not need to search through eBay every day and have lots of eBay searches set up for various paintings in various wordings to get the
correct paint. But yeah, at one point I think I was genuinely considering paying an import fee of nearly 50 lbs to get this one pot of Polish blue that turned up in America. And the guy was like, I can't see the shipping is going to be about 30 lbs and the paint it sells 10. And I was like, should I do that? It would just complete the selection and I didn't. And then fortunately I can't remember what happened in the end, but I saw a pot ping up in the UK after years and then I
snapped up as soon as possible. And then and then that's it. That's that's my collection done now, which is all finished. Wow, David, it's amazing. I've seen, I'm seeing some images on your Instagram of those hexpots that you've mentioned, all sealed. And I've always wondered that when I saw those, I thought, is that real or is it being like, you know, taken from another photograph duplicated somehow? But no, there are real genuine sealed pots that you've
collected. You've you spend your hard money on and collected all those the years and now you've got a full set. So that is wonderful to hear, mate. That's excellent. I think there's not many people around that have a full collection of sealed hex pots from this is kind of their third, third iteration of paints. They, they had at least two, they had one that was sort of round pots and they went to another second round pots with the Bob Naismith covers and then they went to the hex pots.
That's kind of when I went to the UK, that's when they were around 9495 or so. Yeah, there there was a part of me that says should you start doing the 1988 like circular collection And it's like, no, no, no, no, that's that's enough for me because those ones are even harder to get hold of. They they almost certainly don't exist anymore. I, I would, I would be willing to put money that the, the 1988
circular ones. I don't think you could do a full collection of those that were mint in box because that was before the big expansion. So you would have to find, I don't know, someone who just bought a giant set, put it in their loft and then forgot about it forever. I've got a, a few of them because again, I, you know, you know, these things got merged together when I was collecting
the, the, the mint ones. And there's a few of them that I've got, but they, I don't know anyone could do a, a 1988 one. A war colours had like a nostalgia 88 and a nostalgia was it 9495 set at one point. I think they're all out of production in war colours now, which is very fitting and thematic. And I was tempted to, to just get a selection of those and stick them on my wall at one point instead, because it was so hard to complete the, the, the,
the originals. But yeah, it's, it's, you know, connecting this old stuff, is it? It became a, a mild hobby. And then, you know, eventually I thought, I've got quite a lot of this old stuff now. What we should do in a YouTube channel about this? Good idea mate, and we're going to talk more about that in just a moment. We're going to go for a quick short break and we're back in just a second.
What more Crown of the Command content then Look no further my friends, as I have you covered for video battle reports and live stream interviews, please head over to the chronic man games YouTube channel to see some classic games, the 90s, such as one of a 5th edition, one of 40K second edition, epic Space Marine painting tutorials and much much more. Follow the links in the podcast description below.
But mate, thanks for coming back and I really wanted to ask you about because you talked about, you know, you're obviously a painter and you're a very skilled painter at that. Mate. What? What kind of games do you play? Well, only board games these days. The the the miniature games are more of a kind of a kind of multi time yearly, but not
really kind of weekly. I used to do you know, miniature games with the the group that I'm with at the moment is a kind of weekly board game set up. I mean, the last miniature games that I played was leading to Imperialis for my leading to Imperialis review, which it's an interesting one. It's it's it's obviously not a finished game and I'm not sure whether it ever will be a finished game, but yeah, it was,
it was, it was all right. It's a it's a nice experience playing the old miniature game occasionally. I think the casual setting is much, much more fitting, I think for a miniature game. Obviously, I played a lot of 140,000. I mean, I think I've played that every edition. I think you have to just to just to give it a shot to see how it's like.
But it's the the meeting up and getting everyone to to together to pay play with painted armies is is quite a tricky one for for my my group, but mainly board games, to be honest with you, because which is very appropriate because I'm about to review Talisman, the new edition of that. So luckily, for whatever reason, I, I have a lot of experience with playing these games. So I can use that experience to fully kind of take apart Talisman and what it is and, and
how it how it got to this state. But yeah, a lot of board games basically were you interested in the board game look or were you were you more interested in the the miniature game aspect? No, I, I, I just talked about it recently on my, on my patron natter. Actually, I, I played here request on the weekend with some guys, some friends of mine. I recently just painted all of the all of the models and miniatures and furniture inside it. This is like the the original here request of course.
Oh yeah, I. Really cut my teeth on board games, you know, that's all I played. I didn't really know. I didn't know anything about miniature war gaming, tabletop war gaming. You know, I played board games, and Ultramarines was another one that I really enjoyed. That was kind of after your request. It was the Games Workshop. These are kind of supplementary games.
They were basically, you know, Ultramarines was basically Space Hulk components, but then had all these Marine scouts and they'd fight over resources on the, on the map and you'd have the inner lid with all the hit and miss locations and you'd roll you, you throw your dice in there. And it was a really quick, fun intro game to get you into, into the Games Workshop hobby. And I really enjoyed those a lot. And through my whole, you know, gaming career, I've always enjoyed board gaming.
I I've always liked it because it's either because of the theme or the miniatures involved, or maybe sometimes there, there are no miniatures. It's just more of a getting together with people and socializing because that's what's part, you know, part of, you know, tabletop war gaming is the social aspect of it. And I think board gaming opens that up to many more different people and women included and younger, older people, whatever. So I think it's a very inclusive
kind of a hobby. So yeah mate, big big time board gamer. Yeah, no, I mean that that's the thing about board games is that if you, if you're playing with one other person, a miniature game is, is perfectly fine.
The moment you add like three or five or an odd number of people or even 4 people and you all want to have the same experience, suddenly board games become the easiest way to have a social experience with a large number of people at the same time without effectively just having multiple different tables all playing separate two player games. And you can do that. I mean, card games and things
like that certainly do that. But just the the kind of into multi interactive experience board games have have definitely got, you know, miniature games. Well, miniature war games don't necessarily work when you start bringing in multiple different players to play the same game, because you'll end up with one person effectively kind of taking over the general strategy or another person where their army gets destroyed or big chunks of it just get waylaid for the bar giant portion of the
board, but jump also at a time. But yeah, and board games, mainly Euro games. What are we playing? I do like a bit of, I'm on board game arena as well. We're playing a bit of Terraforming Mars, Arc Nova. What other things? Hold on, I'll just bring it up and heat. That's another good one. I'm just going to pick up what I'm what I'm playing at the moment. Heat, sea salt and paper cartographers, Nova architects of the West Kingdom, Terraforming Mars. There's a bunch of other things.
Ultimate railroads load quite a quite a diverse spectrum of, of board games. There lots of, I mean there's lots of different things to to play. There's lots of different mechanics that you don't necessarily get it. It kind of really is a, a different beast in comparison to, to miniature games. I mean, you can, you can start and break one down and put one together, break one down and and no one needs to paint anything.
No one needs to glue anything. It's a, it's a completely different kind of spectrum to the the current Games Workshop produce and their current business model. But yeah, it's yeah, I found the board games to be absolutely fantastic. Yeah, mate, me too. I, I really enjoyed them. Every time I get the experience of having people around a tabletop and we can to play a
game. I introduced Talisman's second edition to my high school students when I taught English here in Japan and they absolutely loved it. I mean, it was great to see. And he requests as well and, and those kids as high school kids really got into it and it was really fun. It was really nice to see. I just don't think, and I, I talk about this sometimes with people or on on the podcast or whatever, you know, approaching somebody with a war game, tabletop war game is a
completely different thing. I, I find sometimes depending on the complexity or depending on how many components, depending on how, on the theme of course, as well, where a board game can be very approachable. I think it's, it's something you can say, you know, especially these cooperative games.
I think that's sort of kind of new or new trend these days where a lot of games are becoming cooperative and I, I really like that aspect to it. We don't need AGM, we don't need someone running it. You've got a, either an app that runs the AI for you or it's got some kind of card generated. I think Wyoming Quest is a really good game in terms of that where I think got to experience it again not so long ago with guys on Discord and now around Discord group where it's
a card driven thing. You know, the cards decide where the monsters are, which room you, you discover what quest you get. And I really like that aspect to it. So we can just concentrate on defeating the game where there's no, there's no, we don't need another person controlling everything for us. And I I really like that. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. I mean that, I mean that you can do so many things with board gaming and it's, it's so varied as well like that.
But I, I think on the on the, the, the topic of Talisman that you were talking about, I've got a review coming up for that. And I mean it is on to some expect to some respects. It is a 40 year old board game that feels like a 40 year old board game, but it, it gets the, the, the thing, the, the kid, the, the critical thing for it right is it is incredibly easy to learn. It is incredibly easy to put in front of a new player, our player who's, you know, a bit
unsure about board games. And there's as I, as I'm going to shoot my own review in the foot by giving you all the gossip first. But but basically, you can put some of these, the technically better games in front of people and they will just bounce straight off of them because they will take a long while to learn a long while to get your head around. Some of them are incredibly deep and incredibly comprehensive and and a lot of them are very
unforgiving as well. You they are effectively competitive beasts where you are very competitive with people at every stage of the game. And a competitive player will just win with with no almost no kind of luck or variability in a lot of these big games. And there's a place for that, but there's also a place for a kind of Talisman style adventure where the rules are, you know, a paragraph long, you can explain
it to someone in a second. You just pick up this this piece, move it, roll the dice, move it around the board, and then something new will happen wherever you land. You either draw a card from the deck or you pick up something or you attack someone or you roll on whatever random table is on
the board. And there is there is a a niche for that steal in in the kind of board gaming ecosystem that that kind of has to be filled, or at least should be filled because it is just a a excellent intro game. I think Talisman and Hero Quest are both two games where they, a lot of people were introduced to both the hobby of painting and war gaming and board gaming and this general kind of fantasy hobby that we all kind of collectively share.
Whether whether that be many things to different people through, you know, these games where they've they've they've picked it up and they've gone, OK, I like the the fact that it's plastic models and I can paint these plastic models and they've gone and done that part of the hobby.
Or they've gone and said, OK, this is kind of just like a role-playing game and they've spun off and got into role-playing or they've spun off And, and I thought, OK, well, this isn't that competitive, but what if we had a competitive version of it and they've spun off into that direction? There's certainly, you know, certainly a call for these kind of things to exist and and they certainly did in the in the
public spectrum. But you know, Hero Quest and Talisman are are very much cornerstones of it. I mean, God, when was Heroquest released? Was it late 80s? I think I think it was. 89 I
think man. 89 Wow, yeah. And the 1st edition of Talisman was 88. And you know, you know, they don't technically work particularly well these days with, with all of the advances of, of everything, but it's, it's, you know, it's a bit like going back and playing, I don't know, Duke Nukem, not Duke Nukem, but what am I thinking of? Wolfenstein?
You can still play it, but you can you, you have to understand that it is of it's time and it, it's still enjoyable for what it is. But you know, it it it's very much an entry level into what will become a much larger and much, much tighter and very, very competitive sphere of industry now. Yes, yes, absolutely, mate.
Advance, your request is another board game that I should mention because it's one of those games I picked up and I still have the original when I bought it in, I don't know, 1991, whenever it came out and was obsessed by it, but I'm just didn't have the people to play it. I think it was just the time when that play group sort of split up. They went on to university or whatever, or they moved, moved to different cities or whatever it might have been.
And I sort of hung onto it and got to play it probably in the mid 2000s, probably 2010 or so with some people and very briefly a couple of sessions. And then I only got to play it again in a solo adventure on my channel. I thought, why not, you know, I can just play it solo. You know, I've got no one else to play it with. I'll just play it and I really enjoy it. I think Jervis Johnson is, is a great game developer.
He's he's he's developed some of the my favorite games, Blood Bowl, Epic Space Marine. He's been involved with a lot of the 40K second edition stuff. Of course, he's been involved with as well. He's just got a really keen mind for stuff and advance here. Requests is just one of those titles that just had some extra stuff in there that just made it a little bit special and very memorable and yeah, I'm really glad I got to experience it myself, but.
Yeah, there's certainly A level of nostalgia involved with with board coming. I mean, that's sad. That's the popularity of these things as well, that you, you kind of play it when you're younger and you think, yeah, that was, that was quite fun and what it would be like. I wonder what it would be like playing it today. That's how I introduced Talisman to my gaming group. Because a lot of them are saying thing, saying things like I played, I played that when I was younger.
I wonder what it would be like if I if we played it today. And the answer is it doesn't really hold up particularly well. But you know, there's, I think there's AI think there's a niche that it slots into quite neatly. Yeah, absolutely. And it's good to see technology working alongside board games as well. We played HERE request using the new Here request companion app All. Right.
And it works perfectly because all the scenarios are all based on the original Hasbro or then Milton Bradley game. It's now run by Hasbro and another company. And yeah, all the scenarios are the same. It's all basically US edition. So we got to use the app have four players don't have no, the basic the app is your GM and it it it sort of tells you where to to go and where the doors are and where all the monsters are laid out and that kind of thing.
And it rolls all the dice for the for the monsters as well. It's wonderful. I think that's the beauty of, for me anyway, the dungeon exploring. It's that sense of anticipation. You don't know what's going to be behind next, the next door, the next corridor, what treasure
you're going to find. It's that that sense of adventure that I think tabletop war games don't give me, and I think I really love that dungeon crawling experience that board games give me that I just can't get anywhere else.
Yes, I, I mentioned Gloom Haven in my review and it's like a super advanced version of what, what dungeon crawlers kind of have have over time merged into and you can kind of see how you know it it, it Gloom. I don't know whether you have played Gloom Haven. I haven't either. It's a technically fascinating game.
It takes a long time to set up and breakdown, but if you can move past that, it is a it is an amazingly tightly themed and very interesting game that I'd absolutely love to play a campaign with one day. It it's kind of like everything that dungeon crawlers could potentially be. It's very, very clever the way that it it handles all of the mechanics and and things like taking injuries and then levelling up and things like that. It is so tight and so well balanced.
Yeah, I'd, I'd sorry, I'd, I'd, I'd recommend Gloom Haven because if you're not interested in the 200 LB mega adventure that currently takes 200 hours to finish. They do smaller versions as well. And I'm definitely tempted to, to pick up their, I think their new one bugs and I think it's buttons and bugs, which is basically, I don't know the size of, I don't know, I'd say a
phone. It's just, they've managed to compress Gloom Haven into a tiny, tiny, tiny box and keep most of the mechanics pretty much the same and just have a, a very small little scenario that you play through. It's, it's really, it's really, really clever. And I definitely, definitely remember if you like hero quest, I'd definitely pick up Gloom Haven.
And, and if you've got, especially if you've got a group of people who who are happy to play a campaign, that's what I'd really like to do because you effectively you get a a deck of cards and those that deck is quite small. And those cards represent your actions and also your, your health as well. So you draw your from your hand and you can use one of these cards and they're like multi, multi use. So you can use either the A side
or the B side. And if you take a hit, you have to then discard a card from your hand. So it's quite a quite a tight little designed thing, but very, very clever. Yeah, I definitely, definitely recommend that if you're interested in in hero quest, probably it's it's a different beast than Talisman. But yeah, definitely if you're a dungeon crawler, I would I don't know if you can get Glenhaven where where you're based. Actually, it might be excessive on the import charges.
So. Yeah, well, it's funny to say that because I go to a a little games club here, or games shop, I should say, called Miniature Forest. And in that shop in Japan, in Chiba, they have a, you know, a wide array of board games that people can play, all in Japanese, of course. And one of the guys who who organizes some of the events has Glenhaven.
I've seen it played. So it's good to see that a lot of the Japanese players embrace a lot of the games that aren't translated necessarily initially. They do all the translation themselves that that's been gone on for years since like Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, you know, backed since then. They always rely on one person to translate all the rules into Japanese and they teach the whole group and they all play it, which is awesome. So I have seen it played here in Japan.
I have seen other games which I thought, oh, I'd like to play that. I think it's a Seamon game and it's also Dungeon Crawl and I just can't remember the title of it. It was. Oh, they did. A few of them, yes. Super tiny adventures. Or was it something like that? I can't. Something darkness, something, something, something darkness. And I really was interested in that. I think that was a really cool
looking game. And I saw some Japanese players playing and I thought, oh, I'd love to sit on that and just, you know, see them, just watch them play it or just get involved and have a go at it. So yeah, I'm always interested in those kind of things, especially when they're really well produced because Guillotine games especially and Seamon games do some really, really top notch level presentation on their work and they look very enticing.
They also did one and I I almost backed and I backed out of it. It was also another dungeon crawler that set in a fantasy world against a lot of zombies and stuff like that. I think it's called Black Plague. Oh yeah, a a zombie side is another zombie side kind of 1, yes. Well, I've never played zombie side. I know it's been massively popular. I would love this one as well.
So yeah, there's a like you say, there's there's a whole host of games that you know, you just don't have enough time, money and to get around to playing all these things. And of course you need a dedicated, dedicated group to to enjoy these games with as well, which is another big thing about board gaming. But yeah, I mean, they both have their pluses and minuses, pros and cons, you know, tabletop
ball gaming and board gaming. Board gaming necessarily sometimes means you need more than two people to play it. And then tabletop gaming, you need only two people, generally two people, you know, tends tends to work best. So and they both have different levels of commitment. Some need to be paid. You need to paint an entire army something. People just need to open the box and get the components out and the way you go. So, but both are equally fun and I both we both enjoy both
obviously. And I think that people who enjoy tabletop ball gaming, enjoy board gaming, card play games, computer games, You know, we all have a very and wide range of tastes in, in, in gaming. So David, mate, it's been wonderful to have you on. I'm sure we could talk another hour or so about various different things. Oh yeah.
But mate, I want to really want to thank you for your time and from the crown of community, crown of command community as well for you to come on and Share your story and tell us all about old and demon. And again, I just want to say to people, if you haven't checked out the website, you can go to that now. I'll leave a link in the show notes where you can see what David's been doing in terms of
the painting competition. Of course, there is now the gallery that you can go and look through all the wonderful work that all these people have submitted all around the world. You've got a merch store that you can purchase a merch from David as well to help to support him. He's got a Kofi page as well. If you want to join that and support David on his on his very hard work in creating a lot of those wonderful battle reports and other videos he does and
watch his YouTube channel. So you know, you've got lots of different avenues that you can enjoy. David's content and also through Instagram of course, and keep keep in touch with the next old and demon 2025 mate, which I'll be definitely working towards painting something special for that. Excellent. Well, thank you very much for having me on your podcast. Mate, it's been an absolute pleasure and enjoy the rest of your day mate. Will do, will do.
Thank you for listening to another cracking show here on the Crown of Command, but I hear you cry for more. Well, you're in luck. Join Gork and Mork's Org Mob on the Koranic Command Patreon, where the Org gods deliver you ad free audio and video content, including painting tutorials. So head on over to patreon.com/the Koranic Command Podcast.