Padre's Big Small World

Hello everybody, and welcome to for tuning into the Craning Med podcast once again. And I want to thank my guest today. That's Padre from Big small worlds, his YouTube channel, which has been a a wonderful little find. And it's sometimes difficult to find YouTube channels such as Padres on YouTube because the algorithm just doesn't allow those nice little small hidden gems lying in there to pop up at time.

So it sort of comes through recommendations and that kind of thing, which in the case of Big Small Worlds is exactly how I found it through somebody else mentioning it on their YouTube channel. So for YouTube creators or podcasts out there, yeah, please give people a shout out. I'll certainly do that in in the coming gawk talks when they come out once a month. If I do find a little hidden gem out there, I'll be sure enough to share it with you.

It doesn't necessarily need to be related to the Warhammer and nostalgia hobby realms. It could be something else that I think, wow, that's a really nice channel or content that this person or group of people are making and I'll definitely sharing that with you. So today we have Padre from Big Small worlds and I'll leave a link here in the show description so you can click on that and go and check out his

YouTube channel. It's a narrative style campaign that's been running for a very long time with himself and a group of friends. And yeah, it's, it's a, it was just a recommendation that Emil, one of my patrons and mates there in Australia had had given to me. So he gave me the prod to say, hey, you should go and grab this guy and get him on the show. He can talk a lot.

So, and I said, that's beautiful because that's exactly what I'm looking for people you can talk extensively for for hours on end. And we, we sat down and did a bit of a hobby. I said, you know, if you want to paint, which he which he was doing, I said, I'll do some painting as well. And I said, I want to take up anybody's painting time and hobby time during these interviews, as I know that can be quite precious for most of us with our busy lives. So we did that.

And as we we were talking Padre, which showed me lots of his miniatures on camera and, and got up and grabbed things off the shelf. And it's always nice to see in the background someone's hobby room and, and things that I can sort of just remark on say, Oh yeah, I can, I see you've got that on the shelf and let's talk about that. And it can be of sometimes as the, the generally the

conversations are very organic. They're not sort of pre planned or pre scripted that it's nice just to grab something off the shelf that I think, oh, that's, that's cool to talk about. Or why, why is that sitting there? Or have you ever played this or what's your interest in that and that kind of thing? And I said to Patrick, look,

this won't be a video. It's not a video format in terms of it's just an audio podcast, and that's how it be consumed by people who listen to it. But as he had shown me so many different things, I asked him if we'd be OK if I shared this video on Patreon and I'll keep it free so he can watch it and his followers can watch it and anybody can see it. And he said, yeah, that's fine. So I said, well, that's great.

I might, might ask other people in the future if they want to show things during when we, when we chat, I'll use that footage and stick it up on Patreon as an early access video so people can do that. And then, and then I can then later edit it properly and formally and, and release it as an audio podcast for people. So if you want to see what Padre looks like, because apparently that was the first time anybody

seen him. And thanks for Padre for linking it on his YouTube channel, because it brought in a lot of people to to check it out and come and join as free members, which is really nice to see the interview themselves and to see Padre and to see his models and see where he works and where he edits all these videos and stuff like that. So yeah, if you want to check it out, check out the links below

to click on the Patreon link. You can become a free member and but if you want to become a paid member, that'd be wonderful. I really appreciate your patronage in supporting the podcast and supporting the YouTube channel as you can access a load of videos. They're ad free as YouTube has gone ad crazy as of the 1st of May and splicing loads of ads in

where there shouldn't be ads. So if you want a completely immersive ad free experience then there you go, you've got it. And as I'll be uploading all videos up onto there now and embedded into the Patreon website, so you can access them, access them with with the comfort of knowing that nothing will pop up. No underwear pizzas, but I don't know, dental clinics or whatever

they advertise now. I only get the Japanese ones because of the region I'm in. But whatever they're advertising on other places, I don't know what they are. But yeah. So that's, that's just a small note to say that you can catch it there. I am actually working on a very special probably, probably the end of the month will come out a Gork Talk 50th anniversary. May is the is the month of Man of War. I've decided I've got the bug to get my ships back on the

seascape. I haven't played it this year. It's a real shame I haven't played Epic either and I've got something else planned for that too later. Thanks to Adam Madu one of my patrons who give me the prod and said hey mate you should get get John John back on to talk about

Epic again. So I have reached out to John, he's very keen to do it. So this this Saturday, I believe we're going to get together and discuss the next faction, which would be the Titan Legions and how they get to play in in the game of Epic, which would be great. So, and I hope to get some Man of War on the table soon as well and play that with Paul. And I'm working on a a new fleet and for myself. And there's some other announcements to make about Man of War later.

And hopefully that'll be included in that fifth year Gawk Talks anniversary special. So you get to know all about that. So yeah, I'm working alongside my good friend Owen Staton on that as well, lending his wonderful voice to some Bill King's stories. And I hope you guys get into that. Also, I have the thanks to Matthias and Dave Gilson and the guys behind the deep dives. I have the Wood elves on the editing machine right now and I'll edit that.

And I'll be released later this month as well for your enjoyment. And they're now working towards getting the Cows Dwarves, White Dwarf Presents army book ready to review as well. So loads of content coming and I'm looking for new interviewees to discuss stuff about their either their as creators, as just hobbyists, people in our community on Discord, all those kind of things and discuss their stories. But until that happens, guys,

just sit back. If you're commuting, safe driving, if you're hobbying, enjoy your painting and enjoy this interview here with Big Small Worlds and Padre. Now is your name Padre? Yeah, well, that's an old, it's my old university role-playing and war gaming nickname.

So it kind of feels more comfortable as in it's it puts me in the zone, I know what I'm doing, who I am, if I'm with a crowd that called me Padre and with my old Glasgow University or Huddersfield University gaming buddies and such. Do you see what I mean? Whereas Paul sounds like family, to me, that sounds like I'm with my uncles and my aunties. Right. Well, Padre. Padre. Good on you, Padre.

OK, well, it's very nice to meet you, mate, and thank you very much for jumping on board and taking the plunge into the Chronic Command podcast, mate. Cool. But I'm sure I'm sure many people know you from from your YouTube channel, which is how I discovered you. And I've got a, I've got a shout out someone in our YouTube community. He's a really nice bloke. Tom from the Dwarven Mustache. All right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Watch his stuff. Yeah. I think he's fairly local to me.

Oh, is he really? I think he's probably only about, I think he's Sheffield way. He's probably only about 30 miles away from me. Right. Which, to an Australian, sounds like next door. Well, he's a nice bloke Tom, and I do enjoy watching his videos. I was kind of sad that his initial YouTube channel got deleted somehow. I don't know why but. Yeah, there's a big mystery there. No one knows why.

Yeah, so the algorithm gods deemed him unworthy or maybe something he said without even knowing got him got him per band or something. I don't know. But he came back and and he does a lot of stuff. I just, I just enjoy watching people's, you know, I like just watching people's work tables and they talk about their miniatures stuff they're working on. I find that very close to home, kind of sort of real, real kind

of hobby, you know what I mean? I find, I find the bigger channels less interesting because it seems very, it seems too polished and too kind of forced or fake and I don't like that. So I kind of like the smaller, the smaller unknown, obscure channels that this somehow pop up on my feed every now and again, you know, find some little hidden gems like, yeah, your channel too, mate.

Big, small, big, small world. So Patrick, can you, can you sort of as we're painting, was it both painting and everything, which is good. Can you sort of give us a brief outline as to what big small world is and how it all got together mate? How it all started? Well, it's been running a long time, the campaign, and it started long before I gave any consideration to videos. It was about, I'd say it was like the 8th campaign I've been involved with. There was a bunch.

No a lie, there was a bunch of campaigns with friends from the 2000s onwards. I've been doing it earlier in life, but from the 2000s onwards with neighbors, believe it or not, who turned out to be war gamers. I couldn't believe it. A guy moved in next door and the day he moved in I said to Ruth, wouldn't it be strange if this new guy, Steve, was a Warhammer player and he was, which was just insane. And then we wrote the guy in a

few doors down. But anyway, we did a few campaigns and we were using Mighty Empires, but modified more detail and such. Then I did a whole bunch of Internet campaigns on various figure forums, war games, forums like Warhammer Empire and the animosity campaigns and things. So I was involved with those and that that started me doing report battle reports on the forums and showing work in progress pictures and doing little stories in between when I

couldn't do a battle report. You could earn a point for your faction by putting a story in a fluff story. They called them. Anyway, they all came to a close and I went back to campaigning with friends and that's when the Thailand campaign started. I did loads of research for it. I've got a bookshelf of of Renaissance books about the Medici and the Borgias and Florence and Savannah Rolla and

blah, blah, blah. But as I was doing that, I was putting together kind of like end of season reports and story reports, more for my players than anyone else. I thought, well, it'd be nice for them to see a kind of fictionalized version. Well, not well fictionalized, but in effect, rather than writing dry reports, I'll do them as stories and they'll be in additional to the kind of end of season reports and things they get. So I started putting those on the Internet.

And then, I mean, it's so long ago, I wasn't even hiding the bases of the figures. I don't know if you've noticed but on the videos I use buckets of flock to hide all the bases. All my figures have black edged bases but you can't see that. My God have I poured flock and brushed flock up? It must be an almost infinite number of times I feel like I've

done that. But anyway, I was putting that on the forums as well and people were showing interest and then someone suggested to me, why don't you do do it as a YouTube thing? So I did, which means the YouTube has always been behind where the campaign is currently at. I think it's a game world behind right now. So maybe in about 20 videos I'll actually, I'll have finally caught up around video 150.

I will have finally caught up with the actual real life end of the campaign where we actually are. In turn, I don't know if that'll speed the videos up or slow them down because it means I won't be working on the videos and thus slowing down my progress on the actual campaign. But it means you the videos won't appear until I've painted, made scenery, written the story, done the photographs.

One thing the videos did do though, and I was glad of this, is it made me re as I as I rewrote everything as it just grammar and such. When you read a thing out, you notice things. It's, it's, it's amazing. I would advise all writers to. I'm sure they all do, but always read to yourself as if you're narrating to yourself out loud whatever you've written, because you spot loads of things like repeated words and things that you just don't see when you read

to yourself. So I got to rewrite everything. So I think the videos are a better version of the story, and obviously I corrected the the web version. At the same time I also redid all the old pictures from the first umpteen stories so that every picture had hidden bases. And because the videos need something on the screen all the time I had to add loads of pictures in. But I'm a hoarder so all those bits of scenery and all those figures were still there somewhere.

Sometimes it took me days to find them but it meant I could repose pictures or if I had someone talking I thought Oh no, the the original story has this character talking loads of times and you never actually see him. Well, you only see the back of him or whatever, so you have to find that figure, what was ever, what was in the background and such, reset it all up. It just makes the video better. It was someone's idea, actually.

Yeah, a lot of it's advice. Someone said, by the way, really early on with the videos you need, you need to cut to the character when someone's talking. You'd think that would be really obvious because it wasn't obvious to me. I was just reading the story and whatever picture went with that part of the story I was putting up. Then it occurred to me, no, it's not quite animation, but no, it probably would help if there's usually almost all the time an image of whoever's talking in

that present moment. And obviously it really helps people work out what's going on. So yeah, that's the story of the video, the Internet, the video, the story side of it all. But in reality, it's a Mighty Empires campaign with a standard I can I can risk showing this because even though if the players see this video and try and work out where people's forces are those pins, you don't know if they're scouts 1000 points or 5000 points. So I can risk doing that.

But it's it's the standard standard thing. We did learn, or I learnt from earlier campaigns that you can end up with ridiculous sized armies if you just run it straight as mighty empires. So on top of all the all the extra rules that you can have because you've got a games master, because I can incorporate players ideas, you just cost everything, give them a cost for it and then a chance of success and this that and the other and let the story unfold.

But I realized we needed some way of controlling the bloating of forces because we can't have every battle being a 6000 point game where we literally couldn't fit the figures on the table. So I came up with a subsistence system and it seems to have worked. Part of your supply points every end of season have to be sent spent on the subsistence of your already existing forces. One supply point per thousand? Is it per thousand or per 2000? You'd think the games master

would know. But anyway, it's it's meant that as people get big, everything gets more expensive and it somehow it was the magic formula we needed to stop is becoming ridiculous. So yeah. I told you I would waffle if I wasn't directed. Very. Carefully. Fantastic. I'll get a lot of painting done. Thank you very much, Padre. It's been great.

But yeah, I heard, I don't know if it was from Tom or for someone else that because I was talking about remote gaming through Discord and he said, oh, actually the guy from Big Small World, he's been doing a campaign remotely by I think by e-mail, I think. Is that how you're sort of coordinating everything? Like I think just about everyone else in the world, that was the case during a certain period of

pandemic for obvious reasons. We continued the campaign and we did do in about well two years at worth of gaming and about 6 battles were done play by mail. So by the end of that, I've got quite good at it. It, it was in some ways it was amazing for, for me because, and I could spend ages getting the

pictures right. I could, I could do tables that normally you'd have all these snaps you've taken during a tabletop game and then you'd have to edit out the background from the edge of the table and faff around for ages. But when we were doing play by mail, it took us a week to play the game. I could put my big board my I can't show you it. It's too big to move around, but I've got this big polystyrene sheet with a blue bedcloth stretched over it and that's the sky.

I could literally move the sky around behind whatever side of the field I was I was taking photographs of. So yeah, it created for better reports and a lot more pictures and in focus pictures. But as soon as we could and the players were comfortable, we have gone back to a tabletop games where in person games, I should say we've gone back to that because it's just way more fun.

In fact, I've had, I've done loads of gaming recently because my boy who was 14, my youngest, he's now, let me give him his full title, he's Baroni, Iacapo, Brunetti, Lord of Pollyanna, Capitano del Popolo and Regent of Reso, basically rule it. I didn't. I didn't catch that mate, sorry you. Don't have a second? The second word, I miss it from the same word, but yeah, that's that's that's quite impressive. Yeah, that's that's your 14 year

old son playing that. Yeah, so because he's not a player, hasn't been a player, just one off occasional games when his cousin's been down and such, but we've been doing loads and loads of practice games with his his army, In fact, his army is perpetually out. I wonder, I don't know if I can show it because I don't think I can tick the box, but his army is perpetually sitting in in this box so that it speeds up

the setting up of games. He's, he's played a game against scaven, against dwarves, against undead, against Hawks and goblins, and a lot of games against sort of like standard tightly enforcers. We have army lists that were created for various Internet campaigns. Very rarely do I make something up. I've always got some sort of precedent. It might be a fan made or a fan list precedent, but there's

always some precedent. Which satisfies a part of me that we're not, we're not making, or we might not often be pointing at official sources, although we've got all the supplements and everything. So we do use those as much as possible. But it's good to have precedence. It feels like you've got something to point to if a player complaints, not that the players complain. Well, that's, that's great that you've, you've, you've got the guys around to play in person,

which is which I find nice too. I mean, I do like playing remotely, but there's nothing that beats the feeling of having someone in your presence playing the game together. Yeah. And sharing a beer with, if you're lucky enough. I'm. I'm assuming you're playing 6th edition fantasy, is that right? No 8th Oh. Really. Oh. Right. Yeah, it seems to surprise people. The campaign started when eighth was in full swing, just after I think 7th ended. Because actually, did it start

while seventh was on? I'm not sure. I remember playing some 7th edition games and I remember the first 8th edition. I don't know if they were campaign games, I'm not sure they were. Anyway, when it ended, we just thought, well we've started this, we've got to continue. It sounds like we must have had the longest campaign ever, but no, it's the most drawn out

campaign ever. It's longevity is more because of the gap between the games, which I've made extra long by insisting on fictionalizing everything or storifying everything and turning everything into videos, which means our players get very frustrated with me for being the slowest games master ever, especially when I'm trying to paint every figure that appears and and and build entire cities. You can probably if I turn the camera you'll see some of the

non. So I've got small cities sitting on the top of all my bookshelves and such of film, film, scenery, these kind of things where you, you stick boxes together to create St. scenes. And then if you do the other side differently, it means you've got 2, two different streets out of one stretch of boxes, you know, and all of that. I mean, none of that gets used in the war games. It's used just for the pictures. But yeah, it's 8th edition, believe it or not.

Fan made lists, obviously heavily heavily modified the mighty empires rules. I mean for example the Damien out from Huddersfield, the player of Lord Alessio Falconi of Porto, Maggiore, he wanted a kind of colossus of roads. He wanted a mechanical, a magico mechanical giant to protect his city. So again, you always want precedent, I said right then, well, we could use the the giant from the Tomb Kings list. I forget the actual name Hierophant is it called? Anyway, Tombs Kings list.

And all I did was say if you're willing to pay double the points cost for it and supply it with a wizard, pay for the wizard that was involved in designing it and controlling it, then you can indeed have it. So we did and we haven't had to make up rules for it because we've just lifted the rules from the slightly modified because the some of the rules were Tomb King specific, but lift the rules over and such. He then said, oh, I want to March with it rather than have

it just guard my city. I actually want to go on the I said, right, well, I can allow that, but you're going to have to pay supply points for the ridiculous number of extra reinforced heavy wagons. And you do realise it's going to slow your army so that you go half the matching pace of any other army in the game. And he was fine with that. So you can incorporate all sorts by having AGM. Now you see this is what happens. Babbled and can't remember why. Oh, it's all to do with 6th

edition. Yeah. So that is how much we can play around with the official rules. I mean, most of the players are using a Tilean list, which is a kind of Tilean Dogs of War list that was used in a previous campaign, I think Internet campaign called Treachery and Greed, which we've modified. It had priests of the media. But because I've made more the Church of Moore, like the equivalent of the Renaissance Italian Catholic Church with triple crowns and all the papal imagery.

And I've even got the Riemann soldiers had done in the garbed in the livery of the of the papal guard, the present day papal guard with the blue, red and orange. But but yeah, we use we use that that list. Most players do, although the Pivonian player, just because he's using my old blue and white Middenheim army. He is using the empire list. But yeah, so surprisingly 8th edition, which means I'm forever making hordes.

In fact, I'm currently, I made a unit of Pike for, I mean the war games Atlantic I think they were. No, they weren't lying, they weren't war games Atlantic It'll come to me what they were. I bought some Pike men and there's only 30 of them. 30 is not enough for any Pike regiment and certainly for a Pike regiment in 8th edition.

So I got some war games, Atlantic conquistadors realised there was some Pikes in there modelled and I thought, right, I'll add 10 on the back using these because I held them up next to each other and I thought they're the same size, same dimensions as the men. And bizarrely it couldn't be, it

couldn't fit the story better. His Pike are part of the Gauntlets mercenary company, that companion, companion del Guanto, the Gauntlets and they have a gauntlet as the standard and they're meant to be no, that they're meant to be Empire troops, mercenaries that have been fighting in Australia. Well, I thought, I thought right, well if their ranks have been thinned and they've recruited in Australia, then

they've got Australian recruits. So the fact that I'm using conquistadors, which are meant to be Spanish soldiers, I thought this is brilliant. You know, it couldn't fit more perfectly that the new troops tagged on at the back are actually in Renaissance Spanish clothing. So that's one of the ones I was working with. The trouble is I modelled it up as a test and it's Pike was about nearly a centimetre shorter. So I'm now faffing around. I've coming up with several

methods. He had his pipe Pike snapped just about just at his shoulder and a longer Pike added. So that's worked. Another one test, I actually replaced the type completely with a brush, a brush bristle, which if you do right, you don't have to paint. So the paint kind and it bends without damage. So that's the brush bristle, man. And then I've come up with the best way, which I should have thought of, is you just cut the pipe.

Just done that this morning. You just cut the Pike at the top and then just add a length from there and of about an extra centimetre. That one seems to have worked. You can't really see the join once you kind of brush over with glue. So I think that's the method I'm going to use because by God, that was a lot less fiddly than trying to hack the entire Pike from that man's arm so that I could then replace it with, I don't know how to get this

camera to work there. I had to, I had to hack the the existing moulded Pike from there and then replace it with that. It took me ages. So of course the, the way I've found I should have worked out straight away, which was the simplest way, just chop the end off and had a longer end. But for some reason my brain couldn't think of that originally. All right, well, looks like you're having fun mate and keeping those guys and keeping you busy with all the. My gods, yeah.

Armies and units and stuff. So are you responsible for everybody's army? Is that how it works? Or other people bring their own stuff? Or how does that? How does that all work? Some players do. Some players like my old next door neighbor who's never been a war game. He's the best campaign player for this campaign ever.

He is so Machiavellian. He's been playing Duke Weed, a Bando, got Guida Baldo Gandhi of Pavona, and my God, if I'd known he was going to play the way he was playing, I wouldn't have needed to have orcs and and ogres and rat men and and vampires because he provides, you know, a couple of players like him and you've got all the villains you need.

He's absolutely brilliant. He kicked off the campaign by saying, what can I do that will make me a little bit richer right from the word go and will put me on the map.

Something, you know, shocking. So he he, he banished all the dwarfs from his city, stole all their stuff and start kicked the campaign off by throwing every dwarf out of the city, saying that they tainted the holy city of of Pavona with their presence and and no more right church should have one stone carved or laid by a dwarf and blah, blah, blah. So that's how he started the campaign, because now he's invited the wolf back in again because he's he's talking.

All the money now. Yeah, but he was never a player, so I just, he uses my Pavonian army which I've been adding to and such. Other players use their own forces. Although I am now looking after, if you can see from behind me just how ridiculously over packed this seller is. I mean literally from floor to ceiling on every wall, on every wall. There's no flat space apart from the table in the middle. There's literally nowhere for you to put anything down apart

from the table in the middle. All players have given me their armies to look after, so it's it's ridiculous. I had a lot of armies to start off with. I've now got a ridiculous number of figures here. Yeah, you're loving. It, you're loving it, I am enjoying it. I am, I've been that's good finishing off the skaving players army because a lot of his was just undercoated or just had one colour on it. I've been neatening up the the Puerto Majoran Army.

The Lucien player has given me entire regiments of undercoast figures. Just he's actually given me those as well as his army. Bizarrely, because his army was made for six edition, every unit he had was 20 or 25 strong. So even before he came, I'd already painted 9:50 swordsmen for this unit, 10 pikemen for that unit, 10 Halberry. So when he turned for the practice game a couple of weeks ago, I literally was adding two ranks on the back of every

single one. And it was a scary moment because I thought, what if, What if my red looks pink compared to yours? What if it jumps out as so obviously different? But no, I don't know how, but we laid them down and you honestly couldn't tell which were his figures and which were my figures, which was which was It was lovely. It was a lovely feeling.

So yeah, I provide a hell of a lot of the armies, and if I don't provide them, it turns out I now store them and also do some work on other players armies as well. So the other players are just glad to have space in the house, and they're glad that I'm foolish enough to store it all for them. Yeah, I bet that's, that's a, that's a wonderful service you're providing for those guys. You know, you, you want to keep them on board because you want

to keep the campaign rolling. So you've got to make adjustments and you know. I'm amazed to put up with it because it sells loans. Yeah, well, I mean, it's been nice that it's been going on for so long. Yeah, more than 10 years. Ridiculous. That's. Incredible. So that that that in itself is something to be to be very proud of. I think that the. The War games. Atlantic Renaissance heavy cavalry and Renaissance Conquistador cavalry came with

war dogs. Because I bought both sets, I made the I've already finished the heavy cavalry. I'll show you one finished the heavy cavalry. Oh nice. In Verizon colours. That's an interesting thing. Verizon. My Verizon colours were blue and yellow with red flourishes like red panache feathers on the helmets, or in this case a red Lance to go with the blue and yellow of the rest of the

figure. The player who left me his army to look after a couple of weeks ago, David, and he left me a bunch of other figures for me to have. One of them was a regiment of 20 pikemen and they're in blue and yellow with with red flourishes, a few red caps and things. And I thought he's just given me the perfect troops to be part of the standing forces of the Rezo. Because that's the kind of thing you struggle with in a campaign like ours. Everyone's got their matching army.

Every settlement is meant to have between 200 and 400 points of standing forces, local militia. So I painted a bunch of multi coloured units of Pike, of halberd, of crossbow men, swordsmen, all in every colour under the sun so that everyone could use them for their standing forces. So Varresso, I've now got a unit that's actually in the Verizon colours. Like I was saying, these cavalry came with war dogs. So I'm currently painting the war dogs from both sets.

Plus because he's got a lot of halflings in Varzo, plus it's work in progress. Plus some halfling handlers with sticks and horns and I'm creating a unit of I think it'll be 25. No, Is it 22 Four? I think it's 20 War Dogs, which isn't really a valley. A very particularly good unit in 8th edition.

But when it comes to having something for the standing forces, that would only ever come into play if someone invaded his realm and attacked him in that settlement because standing forces can't move outside of their settlements. But it's nice to have some standing forces that aren't the generic swordsman and the generic multi coloured crossbow men, but some realm specific standing forces. And I feel like I got these for free because the dogs just came

with the two boxes of cavalry. So being half Yorkshire and half Scottish, I like free stuff. Nice mate. Yeah, I've never heard of War Games Atlantic before until recently and now there seem to be one of the big players out there in the plastic injection moulding for toy soldiers department. Yeah, did. You see their their ogres they did a few years back. I haven't, no. I have to look at their website again and check it out mate. I haven't seen those.

They are lovely. I spent a couple of years trying to get them. I don't know why I didn't want to order them. I thought I'll buy them as soon as I see them in a shop. They were always sold out until finally I saw them in a shop. I don't know why I played that game. I think I was trying to control my expenditure by saying don't do it the easy way. You can only buy them if you see them in a shop. But I I modelled some of those recently and they they've turned out really nice. Right.

OK, nice. I don't. Know if you can see it, you can kind of see. Just yeah, just see them sort of renaissance looking ogres. Yeah, I mean that one with a walking stick. So because I need to use them in stories, I need guys who are just walking around or standing and chatting. This guy, I, I made a tankard for him so he can stand there guarding a gate whilst having a tankard. He's in a one of the latest stories you have to play around cutting their arms and repositioning their arms and

things. But yeah, the weird thing about when you do a campaign like this and you're fictionalizing it, you're what you're making stories out of it is figures with axes, waving axes around over the heads. There are very little use because you can only ever use them in a combat. That's true in a fight scene, and 99% of the stuff you're illustrating in the stories is people talking whilst standing around or marching or, you know, scouting. Or so.

I'm forever trying to find figures with more static poses, which is easy to do if you buy sprues because you model them that way. But with metal figures, there's entire ranges out there where I absolutely love the range, but everyone is throwing a spear or shooting an arrow and you think, well, I can't have him standing in that posture talking to his friend Jeff. It makes no sense because he's literally shooting an arrow the entire time. That's a very good point, actually.

You bring up there, yeah, in a narrative kind of saying like what what you're doing with the campaign we have like I'm, I'm thinking about the old Citadel Talisman miniatures or their city folk, all those kind of really old ancient ranges where they had a lot of miniatures catering for that. Because I think Second edition Warhammer had villages where there were, you know, occupants of these villages and they would sort of interact with the gameplay somehow.

There's hundreds of them in my in my videos, right? Yeah, right. OK. Yeah, I've noticed on those popping in, I've started watching your videos all the way back from the start because I said, yeah, I want to go back and start from the very first one and work my way all the way through them because I'm sort of coming in. I sort of came in, you know, way, way much, you know, many years later, five years later. So having discovered the channel.

So I really want to go back and check them out and start from, you know, word going and go from there. But look, I'm going to ask you some more questions. We've got way more things to talk about and model models to paint and do. Let's have a quick, quick break and when we come back mate, we're probably going to delve into how you got into war gaming initially and talking about your collection. So we'll be back in just a moment, just after this outbreak.

The Chronicle Man is proud to be sponsored by Scott at Black Arrow Minis. Scott has a range of second hand miniatures from several manufacturers which include Citadel, Grenadier, Rau Partha, Battle Tech and many more. Collections that I enjoy pouring over are the old Perry Empire, Allie Morrisons, Marauder Dwarves and the old metal models for Epic Space Marine. So go take a look today and head over to Scotts website at www.blackarrowminis.com.

OK, so let's dive into, yeah, firstly, how how did you actually find war gaming? Like what actually prompted you to start collecting and painting and getting into miniature tabletop gaming? That's the mists of time, is

that we're talking. Let's imagine a summer's afternoon in 1977 in a cul-de-sac in West Yorkshire where me and my brother and just about every other kid in the street are using Airfix soldiers to invade each other's gardens in anything from mediaeval wars to Napoleonic wars to what we used to call sci-fi. In fact sci-fi, we used to use

Airfix figures. I think it was the early 80s Airfix started selling or lots of shops started selling off their Airfix stock because the hobby was going out of fashion. So you could buy 1100 Panther tanks and things like that. But we were turning them into graft tanks and into all sorts of crazy science fiction vehicles by doing what we didn't know back then was called kick bashing.

Yeah. So honestly, as far back as I remember, even before I knew rules existed for these things, we were in effect, in a childish way, war gaming. My favorite story from that era of the Garden was is the nuclear age setting. We bought quite a lot of ethics fighter jets and they had missiles under the wings. So we realized you can just paint the missiles and then we can launch a missile from a silo, which tended to be a aerosol can painted in camouflage.

That was your missile silo somewhere in your garden would launch a missile and you would nuke the neighbour's garden and and win the war. So they started creating anti missile launchers. And they'd have these little missiles again from either silos or little vehicles are modeled. And if you launched a nuclear missile, they would send their anti missile and the anti missile would hit your missile and destroy your missile. So on our missiles we had anti

anti missile missiles. So each missile had a missile packed piggybacking. And if your nuclear missile was attacked by an anti missile missile, you would send your anti anti missile missile off the back and hit the missile that was trying to destroy your missile and therefore you at the Garden. At which point we banned

nuclear, nuclear weapons. All we had to do was build ever bigger clusters of of model missiles and count how many missiles we could knock out on the to destroy our original missile. So yeah, we actually had nuclear proliferation aged with children aged between 7:00 and 12:00 in our street had the we had a nuclear preference. And that was before we even knew rules existed. It sounds like a Monty Python sketch, That one with all that.

Yeah, it's funny. But we started playing Traveller because it was the only role-playing game I could find. We started playing travel, and it sounds tough because we should have been playing D&D, but I never got into D&D. We started playing Traveller. We'd play in the garage. If it was winter, my dad would put on a Cala gas heater for us as he left for work. I mean, it's so dangerous.

Modern people would get in trouble for leaving children with a Cala gas heater pumping out heat all day in the garage. But anyway. And then we realised, you know, now we've got some rules, we can use these rules for anything we like and somehow don't ask me how. So I've, by the way, I finished painting the bases of all of these so I can actually concentrate on what I'm talking about now rather than just not really even listening to myself.

Somehow we turn the Traveller rules into rules for everything we wanted to do. We had post apocalypse games, Mad Max type games where we'd put spikes and machine guns on every kind of little Airfix Jeep and truck and such. We had, we had, we somehow were using Air Fix 132nd scale, that's 54 millimetre plastic figures in ranks and files Napoleonics and we were fighting garden wars with our Napoleonics with the French invading Martin Dakin's garden using don't ask

me how. The route gate rules we're using was somehow traveller role-playing rules. We'd turn them into mass combat war games rules with muskets and such. Because Traveller. Technically it it, it catered for every tech level. It had rules for everything from a Flint spear all the way up to a a laser or a is it gauss or gauss gun. I never know how to pronounce that. But anyway. But then 1983 Warhammer Fantasy

appeared. Warhammer, the mass combat fantasy role-playing game, which to us made perfect sense because our, our war games, our mass combat games had been rooted in some role-playing rules. So to us it's that, well, of course it would be mass combat fantasy role play because they're all one and the same thing that that's what we do. Once that appeared, then it changed everything.

We suddenly had solid rules for what we were wanting to do and we started melting our leading leading Gots and making Prince August moulded armies. Our parent. I can't believe my mum was allowing my brother Andrew to melt in pots lead over the kitchen stove so he could pour them into these little moulds and such. There's just health and safety just didn't exist. My kids would never have been allowed to do anything like

this. But yeah, I mean, we somehow created very large armies on very minimal budgets by finding every way we could of of doing it cheaply. And Prince August seemed like a big expense when you bought the moles, but you could churn out armies from them. So it wasn't. And then yeah, I just stuck with it. I played first, second and third. By the time I'd gone into university we were using third edition rules.

I skipped the 4th and 5th of Warhammer because they were two Hero Hammer and I've got, I really liked my rank and file and the idea that it looked like a battle. Basically. It sounds daft this, but I'm glad I told you the nuclear proliferation story.

To me, 4th and 5th had done to Warhammer what nuclear missiles had done to our garden wars in the in the mid 70s it suddenly the IT didn't really matter how many rank and file regiments you had on the field, it all came down to a couple of monsters and some powerful Wizards and characters. You can think well why did I bother painting the rest of the army if they were going to decide the battle.

So we avoided and then I rejoined the official hobby with 6th edition, went through 6th, 7th and 8th and then I've stuck with stuck with eighth. People keep saying why don't you move the campaign onto the old world now that it exists?

Warhammer, the old world. But not only would you need to rebase literally thousands of figures, but the admin, the bureaucracy for a games master like me to try and alter everyone's armies to the new lists and and rejig all those house rules and rework out all the points values and such. I just thought this campaign's slow enough as it is. There's no way everyone will take a six month break while I do the office work required to convert everything into into a

different set of rules. So we're stuck now with 8th edition, which as far as I'm concerned feels like old hammer because, you know, it is quite old. But we're stuck with 8th edition now to the end of the campaign. Yeah, it's, it's, yeah, I, I understand with 4th and 5th because you almost got to make a gentleman's agreement, but you didn't do that when you were kids. Like, you know, like you got to say, well, you, you can't take that dragon that's going to kill all my guys, you know, and I

promise not to take that. That magician with the, with the, you know, the, I think one of the magicians in Empire had that rod that cast total power if you turn with every spell and that kind of thing. So, yeah, it's kind of the same

kind of thing. So I can understand where you're coming from totally and I think you probably made a better choice if that's the way you want to play and especially playing in huge, you know, huge armies like you were saying, like there's 6000 points or something. The guys have got their arms up to now, which is massive and. Well, yeah, in previous campaigns, but nowadays I think the biggest armies we've seen in the Thailea's troubles, the the The Big Small World's videos is about 5000.

And they've only really existed because of alliances. Damien spent a real life year on the diplomacy and politics and such. I mean, he had to go and attend weddings and attend crownings of, of young kings and stuff, but it took him a year to create this alliance army he was going to face the vampires with. So he had about 5000. And the sad part of the story is, is we lost a player because of it, A vampire player who was kind of wired to play tournament

games. You know, he, he, his ideal would be everyone's got a 2000 point army and you play it like a Football League. You know, you have a final semi finals, 1/4 final semi finals. Anyway, he turned up to this field. Now he's outnumbered. That happens a lot in the campaign. Doesn't always mean the outnumbered player loses, but it

happens a lot in the campaign. He's outnumbered, but he got really annoyed that the Alliance army had 6 empire cannons and four engineers and he thought this is ridiculous, it's all stacked against me, this is completely unfair, how can I win this? And indeed, in the first round of the first turn, his undead dragon and his mortise engine were destroyed by these cannons, so I can understand why it was miffed. The crazy thing is though, it

wasn't his main army. This was his army led by a Lieutenant. So his character in the campaign was still alive in the north, bless him. And well, it was her with his main army, so he'd not even lost his main army. And the only reason that weird situation had happened is he had three. Damien had three other NPC states with him and each state

had decided right. How would you have a little standing army from which you would build an army should you require it to proper army in a time of war? Well, you would need some sort of missile troops, some sort of melee, some sort of horse where the lights are heavy, and some sort of artillery. So 1 you one state had some Pike and some crossbow and A and a cannon. Another state had some long bows and some swordsman and some

light horse, another sort. But every state, if it had a cannon, I thought, right, someone officially has to look after that, which is meant to represent the, the kind of arsenal in the, in the capital city where they keep. So I'd given them all an engineer. Everyone tended to have some sort of hero character and an engineer. So it's purely accidental. It was literally because of story reasons. He'd he'd got all these states to join him.

They'd slightly bulked up the forces, but of course brought the standing army, which was there all the time, professionally trained and ready for just such an emergency. So by accident, 6 guns were on that hill and there were four engineers. That's because 2 NPC states had brought their engineers and he had two engineers. Now you might say 02 engineers in a in a 3000 point or whatever it was he had on the field that day, 2 1/2 thousand.

That might seem like a lot, but he that had to pay double the points for the 2nd engineer because the army list said for each subsequent engineer you have to pay. So the sad thing is, I mean, obviously we just sounded, I just sounded like I was making excuses to the guy when I tried to explain all of this, but he got so annoyed. He didn't just leave the campaign. You know, it's upset me ever since, but he left the hobby as a consequence and I was really hang on, you're in a.

You're in a campaign. That involves politics and diplomacy. Machiavellian assassinate. All of this is going on. It's all incredibly closely GM down to each individual point that's been spent on stuff. And yet, no, it was it just couldn't deal with it. It was so unfair. I mean, the other players were just confused by it because I think they knew what they'd signed up for. But yeah, it's, you can tell the fact that I'm telling that story now.

It's it's upset me ever since, you know, I might have recruited a lot of people to the hobby, but I also accidentally made someone quit the hobby. That's funny. Yeah. Well. That's obviously, yeah. I mean, I mean, when you come into something like your campaign, you've got to come in with the right right intentions, right reasons. So I suppose it's going to just rub people the wrong way depending on what their expectations are.

And especially if you like, say, if someone's like a bit more of a competitive player, then yeah, they should not. They definitely shouldn't play something like this. I've somehow got paint all over my screen. I didn't notice that earlier. On today I must have, I think. The black eye opened, spattered. You call this Splatter? Splatter. Yeah, exactly man. Exactly. You're doing, you're doing a good job there mate. You're doing it in style. You're doing it the right way. Yeah.

You see in the campaign the. Players are in effect, I mean, it's role-playing. I think it's more role-playing than war gaming because each of the players plays one individual. Like my son is a halfling, Baroni, Acapo, Brunetti, that's him. Everyone else in the world, apart from the seven other players, everyone else in the world is an MPC.

So if that player, if that character dies, they're out the campaign and that character, they might have authority, but if they allow that authority to slip away from them, then they have less authority. You know, it's meant to represent. The idea is you are playing a ruler, a power in the world, rather than you are this army or you are this realm. No, you're the commander of this army or the ruler of this realm. So really it's it's more of a

role-playing situation. I mean, I like, for example, if my son has to make a decision, it's a bit unfair asking a 14 year old to come up with some clever Machiavellian idea. But if he's got to respond to something, what I tend to do is I'll play the part of his advisors and I'll always do three. I'll do a timid advisor that tells him, oh really, we shouldn't really get involved

with that. And maybe if we just wait a while and, and, and, and, and harbour our resources and you have a middle of the road advisor, maybe if we send half the troops or if we can get those to help us with that situation. And then an aggressive advisor. And I, I plead all three with equal conviction and then allow him to choose which one to go with. So I haven't actually influenced him. I've basically given him every option across the board, from timid to carelessly brave and foolhardy.

But when it comes to NPCS, that that process I love, although it can be very frustrating. You think, oh, no one, an NPC ruler has to make a decision. Well, I can't make it for him. I'm the games master. It's not my job. So what I tend to do is I've got the precedent of the kind of decisions they've made before, so I already know whether they're clever or brave or foolhardy or impetuous.

I'll make a little chart with six options. 123-4566 always says roll again, and I have to come up with six different, well, five different options and roll again. The number of times you roll that 6, which forces you to make a new chart with even more crazy options for how to respond to the scenario. But it's great because the end result is I don't feel like I've made-up the story in the way the author of a novel would. Even when it comes to the NPCS.

I've come up with options and then a dice has decided the number of times the dice has picked what I think is the most boring option. And all the others looked far more exciting for the story. But I just stick with it because then I can hold on to the fact that I'm, I'm being carried along by this story as well. And I'm not.

I'm not trying to control it, you know, But yeah, you'd be surprised in a world when you populate a world like this, there's a hell of a lot of NPC powers that have to operate convincingly. Again, I don't know what you were originally asking me for some reason. I'm telling you the mechanics of how I how I make your mind up for NPC. Well, did you, did you find? Did you find? Another player to replace the person who left. And you knew his character. I know when. You got him out of the.

Character became an NPC I'm afraid. Got you, but I had the way. He'd. Operated to to inform my decision making charts for for the character. But yeah, I mean the video, I think it's already happened in the video. So I can tell you there's some things I was some stories I was about to tell him. I thought, Oh no, I can't tell him that because they haven't happened in the videos yet and it would be spoilers for anyone watching the videos.

The undead have finally been defeated already in the videos. Bioguino has disappeared off into the swamps of of the blighted marshes sort of thing. So, yeah, not that that big, you know, was ever was ever. His MPC was the Duchess Maria, his character, his initial character, the vampire Duke. I think Alessandro Sporta, he died really early in the campaign and it was one of those.

It's like in Game of Thrones when you've got a favorite character and then suddenly they die and you think, oh, that's that. Then, Well, in an early battle he was fighting against a hero level character who happened to have this fairly weak magical item that gave him award save on A6 plus or something. And the guy just kept rolling

sixes. And somehow this Lord level Uber vampire, which which Damien was playing Damien, sorry, Daz was playing, was killed by a hero level character who just in that particular game couldn't roll anything but sixes and just kept saving again and again and again and eventually combat resolution and finally killed the vampire character because the undead lose, lose wounds according to combat resolution, I think, can't remember how it works. But anyway, he died.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that's the other thing about running a campaign like this is you really don't feel like you're in control of the story because the players can make can give orders and things, but that doesn't mean the orders are going to succeed. And on the battlefield, even a force twice the size that should easily win the game could have some crazy dice situations swing it all against them. That's right. It makes for a fascinating,

well, I think fascinating story. The only thing that stops it being fascinating is how slow it is, so it sounds like you have quite a backlog. Of the story to continue on to the videos and you just haven't made the videos yet is that right so the far further than the actual videos are out yeah yeah, I think there's. I'm up to episode 126, which is going out just after this. I think there's probably 20 or 25 videos already written and. Illustrated, but I just.

Need to audio record and edit them and put them all together. And I'm also at which point I'll reach the real, I never know how to describe it. The real life end of the, the, the cutting edge, the the actual game play end of the of the campaign where of course I am writing stories and illustrating them that will later get turned into videos.

But at that point, which I think will happen sometime around late this year, the videos, I don't know if we'll come out any less frequently because I'll no longer be be the, I'll no longer be being distracted by the need to create the videos when I should be doing the campaign stories because the campaign stories will be immediately turned into videos, if you see what I mean. It's like I'm living 2 lives.

I'm, I'm creating the videos, which is a history of the campaign whilst continuing the campaign. But eventually the process will become the same thing. Does that make any sense? Kind of, you know. What you're doing, you know what you're doing. That's the main thing. Don't get me involved.

My God, my God, you. Know I'll make a mess of it, but yeah, no, it sounds like, yeah, you sound like a very smart guy and you sound like you've got everything encapsulated there in in your head, which is which is a good thing. There's it's, it's all of this kind of chroniclized into written things on the computer. Like you, you. Play a session and then you write everything down. Is this how you could keep track of it or you just mentally keep in track of it? There's lots of writing.

Going on there's there is a website which I keep secret. My players use it but I kind of keep it secret because if the video watches found the website which is actually easy to find, but if they. Found it they. Would then see the future and I thought, Oh no, that was that's like spoiler city. So but the website is, is where the stories are illustrated as just illustrated stories that

then get turned into videos. The website was originally put together for my in fact, when the campaign started, I didn't have a website. I was illustrating and story finding the campaign on forums and directing my players to read the reports on the forums. That's when I realised that people other than my players were interested in the story.

So I created the website to have my story on it because things like Photo Bucket started saying things, Photo Bucket decide, oh, you've got to pay for your photographs and such. And I thought, oh, that's a bit unfair of them. You know, for years they've offered this service and now they've withdrawn it from us. So I thought, I now don't feel like my photographs are safe. So I had to create my own website to know that they were they were safe.

So there's that. But when it comes to a game, I mean, if the campaign's slow, the battles are slow. Because admittedly, I tend to be games mastering rather than playing. If I try to play it, it slows it down even more. But I've got to take the photographs of of things that are going on all the time because I need those photographs later to create the illustrated battle report. And I'm scribbling notes.

I end up with a pile of 100 sheets of pencil written notes, which I then create the report from. I don't do it. You might have seen a battle report. They come across as stories. The written versions will have little footnotes with various discussions of rules and such, but the videos tend to leave that for a comment later or a little panel at the end of the video. But in order to remember the details and to know I'm accurately describing a battle,

I need that pile of notes. So I've got years and years of these notes like that. And also, as the game goes on, this is this season, I have my scribbled pencil notes next to which are all the communications I've had with the players that that that are relevant to that. So I have vast numbers of files of stuff all the way back so that if I have to go back, I think, oh Christ, there's a character who was there in that

battle 10 years ago. I can find him somewhere in my pencil notes, which adds a kind of veracity, adds everything, can be connected up. It can take me hours to find something, but it means I can ensure that the world seems real and that that that people aren't forgotten or names aren't

changed. I'm sure every now and again something will get muddled up, some Chinese whispers thing will go on and I'll accidentally transform a name to something else just because my memory is failing me and I haven't double checked it because I thought, I think I know it's right, you know, I'm sure that sort of thing goes on. So it's a small big world's archive mates. An archive now, basically. It's like a museum. Yeah, yes, yes. Unbelievable. Yeah, the the files that I store.

This information in keep getting to the full map full capacity, so that then gets put away and I have to start a new one. I've got box files with all these things in and they're all full, you know, so the challenge is even finding which box has got that particular period of the campaign in it. You know, everything's recorded, nothing's thrown away, everything's recorded. Amazing. And like, do you? Foresee an actual conclusion to the campaign or you just want to continue on?

Yes, I didn't for a long time. I was starting to get worried thinking how how the hell do you end this? But I am now foreseen because it's dawned on me you don't need AI mean the the the undead. The the yoga threat's gone. The the Orkin goblin threat was defeated very early in the campaign. The yoga threat burnt its way through and then went back to the border Princess and the vampire threat's been defeated. There's now the rat men is the only sort of classically evil threat that's left.

And they've meant to have been there. There was there's in I think the second story of the campaign. There was a kind of, there was a part of the story linked, how do I say it, an Easter egg. Not not an Easter egg. That's the wrong description. There was a clue that they were involved right, right from the word go, even though they haven't done anything for years and years and years and years. And they only became a play of faction quite recently.

But I was thinking, oh, surely you need some big grand Lord of the Rings style battle where the evil powers are finally defeated. And that's, and I was thinking, Oh no, I don't know how I can how I can bring that because I'm not in control of the story. What if the bad guys win? What if the good guys, if you can call them good, never get their act together? I can't force the story to go in any direction. But then it dawned on me.

It's called Thaila's Troubles. The troubles will never end. At some point, I can bring it to a conclusion where everyone's still arguing, everyone's still assassinating each other, everyone's still locked in cold wars of vengeance and this. And you can just bring it to a close there because it's kind of like, yeah. And the story comes to an end, but it's obvious this is just going to go on and on and on in

ever different connotations. So I am imagining an end to the campaign in I think real world terms, maybe 2 years now. I don't want to do it too soon because my son has yet to have an actual campaign battle. It would be crazy to have him do all this practicing and say the campaign's ended before he's actually fought to battle in the campaign. Absolutely be very disappointed. Yeah. Absolutely, mate. Well, that's, that's incredible.

I just find it amazing that you sustained it for so long and that you've had the players also endure. Obviously hope hopefully John as playing one, one guy had to quit and quit the hobby all together. But apart from all that, you know you've had all these other guys, including your son, a part of that. And what's the secret, mate? What? What do you think the secret is?

Is there something about yourself that you think that in captured the imagination or the players that you've motivated them, you've heard of them like nerds, heard of them along to probably along or what? I honestly don't know. It might. Be just dumb luck. Maybe the campaign wouldn't have lasted this long if, well, actually it wouldn't have gone on this long if I hadn't made the videos, because it would have. Everything would have happened quicker and it would have come

to an end quicker. The fact that I tried to record it on the website and then tried to record it on the videos, that is a major thing that slowed it down. I think the players would have. You'd expect the players to get frustrated then thinking this game never happens. We we, we're lucky to get one or two battles a year. Yeah, but admittedly with NPCS, whenever they end up in a conflict, Ioffer it out to the players to be the the the

commander on the field. So very often they get games in because they're standing in for an NPC, because it's better if a player controls the army instead of me. So that keeps them involved. But the big factor, I think the players like the fact that the campaign they're part of the

story of has become the videos. So any dip in enthusiasm due to the gaps between gameplay and such is compensated for by the rise in enthusiasm thinking, wow, I'm part of this story that people are actually watching and commenting on. So swings and roundabouts and a lot of dumb luck. Yeah, no, that's that's good, mate. That's great. Well, I hope it. I hope you get you to see it out the next two years and conclude the campaign and everybody's happy.

No one quits the hobby at the end of it. But I'm sure there's other tales and stories you can tell. And maybe you can just have it, you know, on, on, on your website rather than being filmed or something to, to keep it going or something quicker. Now, are there any other games that you do play outside of your campaign like that you're actively playing this? It probably worked out from. What I've told you, this swallows every spare moment of I can just imagine. Because.

You're an author and a photographer and a model maker and a painter and a games master and a player. I mean, it's ridiculous. I've, I've combined all sorts of things into this one enterprise. It does swallow just about everything. I do Warhammer Fancy role play first edition for my son and his friends. So I've got a, I've got a gang of set in the same world but earlier than the campaign because I thought, well I've got the maps and I've got the histories, so I might as well

set it in that world. Although they have been out to the Southlands and such recently. But my 14 year old son and his friends, they're apps. I mean, they're playing what we played in 1986 using those, those rule books, and they love it. He gets bugged by his friends at school who say, can you get your dad? When's your dad running the next session? They're desperate to play this

game. And the parents think it's brilliant because these kids who spend their whole life on tablets and phones spend these afternoons where no tablets or phones are involved. And the. Parents can't get their heads around the fact. That there's something they're willing to do that isn't electric, isn't a computer game, you know, Yeah, but I do that. I'm trying to get them to play D6 Star Wars with me, which I loved. I did a lot of a lot of stuff

for that. And I used, I used some of the, the stuff I'd used earlier for Traveller and for those old games of sci-fi, you know, I still have them in the attic. So you can repaint them and convert them. And, and I mean every, every, even the role-playing games, I do them as miniature games when we play Warhammer Fantasy role play, because I've set it in Thaila, all this scenery and all these figures, I've painted this vast cast of characters for the

Thaila, Thaila's troubles. They, they provide all the characters I need for the role-playing game. So everything can be 3 dimensional. You know, even when they go on the ground, I've got the tunnels that they're going down. And this, you know, I do everything I've got into, I've got the insides of, I did the insides of an entire monastery so there would be a dormitory. And it just grew and grew and grew across the table.

So, so yeah, I'm trying to get them to do this D6D6 Star Wars, which I really enjoyed when it was out in the 90s, I think it was, I was playing that. But they won't do it because they like Warhammer Fantasy 1st Edition so much. They don't want to try anything else. You know, I don't know whether it's a 14 year old thing, but they've become obsessed with this little world. You know, Although by it's funny, every now and again you

get reminded how young they are. Two of the players who were rogues had told me they wanted to pursue the outlaw chief career. So I said, well, you can pursue the career, but in order to do well at it, you're going to have to actually get a band of outlaws to be the chief of because you can only really succeed as an outlaw chief if there are some outlaws and you are their chief. And they went right, got it. We'll do that.

In the last session they met some escaped prisoners, a desperate band of escaped prisoners from Pavona who'd all been unfairly treated in a kind of Robin of Sherwood Will Scarlett way. You know, one was one was a debtor. Another one had was a priest of tile who'd struck a nobleman because he whipped his horse too cruelly and always. So they were all good guys turned into prisoners who'd managed to escape.

And the players, I thought I've literally, I thought, oh God, they're going to realise that this is, this is, what's the word? Not telegraphic. It, it was just too easy. I just thought it's too obvious. There's literally a band of outlaws looking for a leader here, right? And they're nice guys. What do the two players do? They gallop off to tell the Pavone and soldiers we know where they are, they're over there. You need to go and arrest them.

I was thinking you just told me you want to be outlaw chiefs. I've gifted you a band of outlaws and you still haven't noticed, at which point I broke the barrier. You know, normally you keep everything in the game. I just went, guys, do you remember you said you wanted to be outlaw chief? So yeah, Yeah, they're looking at me. I said. So there's a band of outlaws that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you've just told on them. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yeah. But they haven't really got a

lead. And you could see them go. Oh, yes. So they went back to warm the outlaws. The Pavonens are coming this year. Only 14 year olds could fail to. Know. It's wonderful, isn't it? It's great, yeah. I mean, one of fantasy 1st edition role play was I got those books where I made of mine at school because he was wanting to sell them for 50 bucks. So I got that and the Enemies Within campaign, I think.

And I didn't really play it when I had it, but I was always interested in the books and the artwork and everything like that. And it's only recently that one of the guys in a discord, Matt started this mega hammer thing, which is basically kind of what you're doing actually, Padre.

It's got got the Mighty Empires campaign as kind of the, the sort of out of skirt kind of thing where you know, people can control regiments and play one of fantasy 3rd edition have castles, domains and that kind of thing.

And it zoomed in on to the one of fantasy role play where each person has a character and they all play a part within the story within the world of Warhammer. Which has been really nice because I, I've got to play a few sessions with the guys and it's just been lovely to go back to those times when you had the

old original. I found, I found original character sheets from 1995 from back home, you know, and using those again, it was just amazing, you know, and, and yeah, I loved looking at all the career paths that you guys can go. You know, your characters when you roll them up, everything's done randomly. And yeah, it's good. It's got a wealth of adventure and imagination. So I'm really happy that that your son and his friends are involved with that.

I think that's great. You might be interested. Years ago, again, about 10 years ago, I think I put up on the in the old Hammer forum, me and some of the guys, some of the guys who were involved in this campaign, we did a reenactment of a first edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle game where every figure had to be a figure that existed in 1984. And we use the original rules. And it's long before.

But I've been tempted to turn it into a video actually, because the pictures are there and the text is there and I can read it out and set the pictures to it. So I might do that. But if I put a link in the Crown of Command Discord, please do or I might, I might. Actually have already done that I'm. Sure, I put the link somewhere recently in response to someone, but anyway, it's interesting to see just how different, how familiar, but also how different things were done back then, you know?

Yeah, wonderful mate. OK, well, we're. Going to have to take another quick break. And when we come back, if you do have some time, Padre, we're going to just close the show asking you a few more things about your hobby and collections and everything like that. Be specific, otherwise I'll ramble. Yeah. You ought to be specific down to yes, no. Answers that would be. Brilliant. I'm sure we can. Do better than that. So we're back in just a moment.

Thank you for listening to the Chronic Men Podcast as we celebrate five years since its launch on the 5th of May in 2020. Bringing you the voices from the community with their personal stories and the hobby we all love. If you would like to help support the podcast and YouTube channel, then please consider becoming a patron. You can join as a free member to gain access to Gork Talks and other video content, or if you upgrade as a paid member, you'll have access to early access

podcasts and AD free videos. So please consider joining our community there today at patreon.com/the Corona Command podcast. Look, let's talk about your collections because we talked a lot about, you know, the, the campaign you're running and the the miniatures you've been painting. And I'd take it you've been collecting and painting models for for decades now. Can you talk about your extensive collections and exactly what you actually have there stored away in your small

attic area there? Cellar. It's a seller. I am in a dungeon. Quite literally, there's no better. Place to beat me, I think a man and his models in a dungeon. So you know, what stuff have you collected What, what kind of things really well this is this is what this unit looks. Like so far my war dogs being driven along by their their war games Atlantic as well. By the way, they did some halflings to war games, Atlantic Classic Fantasy range it's called and they did some halfling.

So I made some I made my pipe units and my war machine guys out of it. I used to you'd be amazed put it this way. In terms of collections, if you watch any of my videos, certainly the big battles at the end, there'll be several pages where I try and list the manufacturer. Sorry, I'm getting confused with my carpet. You wouldn't think a carpet would cause that much trouble. the IT takes me ages. It can be. It can be one of the longest parts of the process. Just listing.

I feel obliged to list every figure and some of these figures go back to the 70s. Every now and again I'll fail. Cannot find them for the life of me, cannot identify them. I'll go on to some forum to do with identifying figures or old hammer, and 90% of the time I'll get an answer from them. But once in a blue moon, there's just nothing. There's nothing to go on. It'll be some old obscure historical peasant from Mini Figs in 1917.

There's just no means of identifying them because there is no photograph anywhere to even connect it to, Certainly not one that's been uploaded. But yeah, the figures for this campaign come from so many different manufacturers. It's it's it's dizzying what's involved in the campaign.

We're going to be all sorts there from Essex Miniatures and the the really old stuff in the 80s that we were using Grenadier and then all the way up to really modern stuff like War Games Atlantic and Oathmark and Frostgrave. And I made an, I made an army of Morite Church of more cultists and I used the cultists from Frostgrave for them. That army then got defeated in battle, finally fighting the vampires. So I had to, I had to make an

undead version of the same army. So I had to combine ghouls and zombies and these the hoods and cloaks and such from the cultists and create and now. But luckily I found a shortcut and I love it when I find shortcuts. I realised a lot of the original army had fully covered faces, she couldn't tell if they were alive or dead. So I thought, oh great, all those armies can go into the zombie units because no one knows if there's a zombie underneath that or not. Half the figures were already

painted. It was great. Good mate, That's nice. That's a nice. Hobby hack? Yep, excellent. So do you spend a lot of time painting or is it mostly just doing the research and editing and all that kind of stuff and and script writing? A hell of a lot of time painting, I think. But the periods of time when you kind of don't have the mojo, the the, the enthusiasm. But yeah, I spent a lot of time painting. I'm supposed to be working on these things I've had for ages.

They're games workshops. Yeah. I've come up with a way of painting the riders. You kind of stick drill a hole in the bum and you put a screw into it so you can paint them and then you just twist them off the top. I do that with quite a lot of things, so I'm working on those. These are some of my players scaling, which I've just decided, right, I'm going to undercoat them again and I make them look.

They're going to go on the back of this unit, which I did recently, which is I think they're Oath Mark goblin slaves, but I put human heads on them to turn them into a human. Slave unit driven by Scaven. But I realised I needed those Scaven with the whips to drive the giant rats.

So luckily the player had given he'd given me five of these all badly painted the old metal 1, so I've just quickly undercoated them and I'm going to redo those so I've got enough whip armed scaven to drive 50 giant rats and 30 6 human slaves into battle. So excellent. It's amazing the. Combinations and such you. Can do I mean some some armies have got such a range of

components in them. I mean those those slaves there, they're both marked goblins, but they've got in fact, I wrote it down because I need I realised at some point I'd have to ID them in a video. They've got frost grave cultist heads, fire forge games N men rabble heads, frost grave ghost up archipelago seamen heads, and they've got old citadel Bretonian peasant Archer heads instead of the goblin. Heads that came with although one.

Of them the standard bearer. I gave him the goblin head because I just thought, right, he's just going to be a particularly ugly man Lucky him. OK, lovely. All right, that's. Nice mate. Well, it sounds like you've got your hands full. It sounds like you've got a seller there that you could spend like me, probably hours and hours and hours in just tinkering around, painting, putting models together, converting, you know, and enjoying your hobby.

And Padre, it's been really nice to talk to you, mate. I'm, I'm really happy that you've, you've come on and I, I want to say thank you to Emil as well for the recommendation to bring you on that podcast. I'm glad I've done that. And mate, we've got to get you back on again at some point because I'm sure we could talk about some other stuff. And yeah, yeah, yeah. But. Yeah, definitely, definitely and.

If you. If you tell me that we've got a specific topic rather than meandering from garden games in the 1970s to the obscure origin of of several different manufacturers heads on one unit of slaves. I mean, yeah, I'm sure I could give you some actual insight into something if if, if I had more direction. Well, we can talk about your direction.

I mean my own. No, no. No, but I think we. Should we, if you, if you, if you can, you should draw in our Splat and Natta live streams and oh, that'd be great with us. Yeah, mate. Yeah, while I'm painting. That'll be good. That'll be good. It's nice to. It's nice to paint while those things are going on. Yeah. Otherwise painting can be quite a lonely experience. Yeah, that's one of the reasons

why we do the splat. And natta, so we can do that and paint and talk and have other people listen and paint and interact. So yeah, mate, you're more than welcome. It's it's an open, open door really the spider natters. So anybody's welcome in to come and say hello to us. But until then, mate, look, we look forward to your next video. And I'm sure a lot of the subscribers and people who who follow your channel will be eagerly awaiting that. And that the next one,

literally. Is coming out within the next hour. I'm going to do that and then I'm going to get on with the rest of the things I need to do for the day. But it's all done, I just need to upload it on to YouTube which can take me some time with my old machines as they chug through things. But within an hour. Episode 126 with Scaven and Wood Elves making their first proper appearance in the campaign. The wood elves I prefer. To in the Scaven of Voices.

Rather than the wood elf voices I'm I'm actually just putting together. A battle report as well so it might with also with what else So what else seems to be the flavour of spring it seems but for people who want to check out your YouTube channel, it's called Big small worlds. I'll leave a link here in the description of this podcast. You can go down there and click on that and we'll send you directly to YouTube to find Pedro's wonderful YouTube

channel. And you'll find hours upon hours upon hours of very highly choreographed and very well scripted narrated story of this Is it? I call it Tilia, but you is it Tilia? I know I wish. I wish, Tilia. Yeah, I call. It tilia because I don't. Need it written down. That's it. It turns out the entire. Rest of the world. Calls it Tilia. Oh, cool. OK, you've. You've created the entire world so entirely. It is OK.

So the world entirely and all the battles and protagonists involved in it. But Padre, look, mate, we'll definitely, we'll definitely speak to you again and again. Thank you for your time today and appreciate it you you enjoy the rest of your day preparing for the weekend, mate. Excellent, Tata. Take care mate. OK, bye, bye.