YouTuber Stompie51

Hi guys, it's. Josh here from the Credit Command Podcast. Thank you very much again for downloading this episode and listening today as we have another interesting interview with another interesting individual, another person out there making videos on YouTube talking about sort of old hammer content but a bit of new hammer. It's a bit of a bit of a blend of the both, which is nice, you know, looking at like alternative miniature companies

and things like that. So for sort of sort of miniature agnostic games that Stompy enjoys playing with his friends and colleagues where he lives in, in the UK. So it's always interesting. I'd like the way he presents the videos and talks about them and and that kind of thing. So that's why I asked Stop Beyond to say let's talk about it, let's talk about your history, let's talk about how you got into the this wonderful world of tabletop miniature gaming. So I hope you look forward to

that in just a little while. In other news, I have a a whole stream of guests. I'm really trying to get as many people and trying to keep the podcast on a weekly basis. Now if I can and or if free two weeks or so. But at the moment it's going pretty well. So as long as I've got the guests coming on and you know wanting to come and speak with us then the podcast will be more on a regular basis which is great.

And so we I had a extensive chat with Adrian Wood, a former long time employee of Games Workshop, 25 years in effect. So Adrian sent it all from the game inside the games, Workshops, you know, Dark Veil or the Iron Curtain. He's know, he knows everybody you know well, a great deal of people within that company. And we had a great chat, very wonderful guy to talk to, very open about everything.

First he was very reluctant to come onto the podcast but later he changed his mind and reached out to me and said I want to really want to come and have a chat with you.

So I'm really glad he did because he felt really good about it which is lovely and we have we both have a a love of Epic Space Marine the 2nd edition version of epic space Marine. So it was really good to chat about that and and I'm I'm going to bring him back in on a live stream at some stage so you guys can interact with him directly and and talk about all those classic articles of White Dwarf and battle reports that he partook in with other members of

the studio staff. So that'll be really fun to look forward to and more details about that in the future. So that podcast will be the next one coming out after our chat with Stompy. So I'm sure you guys are looking forward to that and after that there's going to be a bit of man of war with me, Chris and Cameron talking about particular. Fleets and races that we like to play in Man of War. As it is March Man of War Month,

but really it had. We haven't really delved into a lot of Man of War stuff apart from the Kraken Wakes video that I shared in the last little minisode that Cameron talked about Man of War and how to get into it and I hope you enjoyed

that. In other news, there is a well you can listen to the Adrian Adrian Woods interview if you if you are a Patreon of mine, it's now up there on Early Access and there will be also a patron exclusive because it was like a almost like a three hour conversation.

So the first hour I've cut and edited up as an Early Access before next week and then there'll there'll be another almost two hour length sort of in the middle of that conversation basically covering more personal stuff for sort of, you know, the need degrees of working for big corporations like gangs, workshops. So I hope that's going to be really interesting for people who can access that in the

future. And also Speaking of the P word Patreon, I did upload my very first painting video we which centers on the Ork eagle Suns knob and just painting green skin like the actual skin tone. So just focusing directly on his face and painting and completing that face and that'll be like a stage by stage. Each week I'll upload a new video the next one covering like his power claw and like his chest plate in red and the next part may be looking at some free

hand. The next part looking at maybe doing non metallic metals and and each week we'll have a sort of a you know, 2020 minute 25 minute video. They're much more in detail than the videos on my YouTube channel. So it's basically just me talking through the process and giving you tips and hints and that kind of thing along the way. So I hope that comes becomes very successful and it also becomes a very useful and practical tutorial series with the Ebola master master class underway now.

So I'm really excited about that. I'm really glad it's out and it's it's started and it gives me it. It gave me a much better way of delivering those videos rather than trying to paint in a time miniature in one session. It just wasn't just wasn't practical for me to do that. So hope you can join us there at Patreon and check that out if you are interested in painting.

If you're not, then you can access all the other exclusives or you know, sort of before they come out, kind of early access videos or audio on there as well and support the channel. Anyhow guys, I want to leave you to it with Stompy, 51 and his story about how he got into this wonderful. World of War gaming. Thanks very much for listening. Take care and see you on the other side. And so stoppy, thanks very much for coming to join us.

I am excited to be part of your kind of wider social network because one thing I've learned, you know, you, you, you bring together so many different people from so many different facets of the hobby. You know, the old hammer kind of Nottingham. Great to, you know, random nobodies like me who are, you know, on their path to becoming Mr. Beast in in in their in their mind's eye. And so I I I'm excited to be here. Mate, you you. Yeah. I found I stumbled across your content.

I don't know how, but somewhere on YouTube it sort of popped up maybe. And I just saw this Stompy 51 and something like a tagline with an old hammer or something. So I started clicking on that, checking it out and then realizing wow, you know, you do some really nice stuff. You covered some Golden Demon 19901991, I think Books of the time, which were fantastic, and some codexes or you know, army books or what have you, what have you.

And you've got a a wonderful collection of miniatures from your attic or garage that you pull out and bring out and showcase on the channel. And it's just nice listening to you talk about the history of the miniatures or the projects you're working on. Well, well, I mean, that's very kind of you to say. I mean by the old Hammer content that I generate does tend to be wildly more popular than everything else. But The thing is, I wouldn't describe myself as an old hammer channel.

I I call it as a laugh, a Stompy 51 miniature adventure. We can talk about why I call myself Stompy 51. Silly name as it is. But the reality is it's it's, it's each of us has our own personal journey in this hobby.

And you know, I've had my own distinct kind of journey and I just thought to myself, you know, some of it can be a lonely journey because there's different facets to the hobby, you know, you've got assembly, modelling, you're painting, you're playing and gaming, you've got law, you know. But The thing is only some of that involves other people. And I thought, you know, I've had my own journey.

I've, I've loved watching the journeys of other people, you know, obscurities and miniature, you know, was one guy, Scruffy Crows, another guy, Johnny Watson gaming. And I thought to myself, why don't I share my own little journey? Some of it is old Hammer, because that reflects my age, the geography of where I've been. But The thing is, a lot of it just reflects great miniatures I've had.

And in many ways my channel is almost a response to the downsides of Games Workshop. You know, Games Workshop has given us all so much. I would never kick it. But equally by the same token, you know, as I've seen now, it's been kind of backed up by a number of people who have left. Their business model is, you know, we need to go big. You know, we don't get out of bed for less than whatever it is, 10 grand for a particular product.

We're not interested in in in the Grognos con yards, whatever we're called, you know, because basically, you know, we have an 18 to 24 month cycle. You know, we need to grab as much as we can from whatever the young demographic is. They're only going to be in the hobby for so long. And then we just replace all the books, you know, update all the miniatures. And I found myself thinking, you know why, why I'm not a whale. I'm not designed to be something

someone else's business model. You know, I've got a garage full of of lovely miniatures and you know, just because they're kind of intellectual property of some particular company which has its own, you know, impetus, its own imperative to kind of constantly keeping everyone buying you stuff. You know, why do I need to do that? There's been this explosion of miniature agnostic games, you know, and I do know people who are happy to play them.

And so why, you know, for me the fun thing is is just taking these miniatures and kind of going counter culture, going counter to what all these companies expect and just using what you want when you want with the people that you want to play with. And you know, if I can hit bash something, you know, which is a piece of old hammer, a piece of current GW plastic, a piece of something 3D printed, you know, and then my very, very limited green stuffing skills.

And I can make that a distinct unique thing, which I find fun. Well, and then get it on the table painted, you know, to play someone in some some game system that though created by some random guy, is much more fun and much more interesting than any Games Workshop game. Well, for me, that's part of my little Stumpy 51 miniature adventure.

I thought, why not share that? And so I would say probably a good proportion of the videos are just random stuff like that, you know, from random bits of collection. Some of it I do open new stuff and I do a bit of unboxing. Some of it is, you know, for me, when I'm stuck out and about on my travels, you know, I can then look at the videos of all these books that I've recorded and people come back with feedback, you know, feedback on my miniatures.

It's often positive and warm and lovely, but sometimes it's like, mate, you have no understanding of the color wheel. Do you, You know, you painted that guy in an orange jumpsuit with a kind of a flesh, you know, a skeleton kind of head, and there's, there's no spot color and this thing is just met, I think. Do you know what? I've learned something. That's good, man. I'm glad. Really.

I'm really glad you you, because I think it's a brave step for people to to expose themselves on on YouTube. It's a massive platform. There could be, you know, hundreds of thousands of views. So, you know, I think it's a big step for anybody to to merge out of their own little hobby space and then make it public. You know, record it, show people

what you've got. Especially painting, because I know painting is very, very much a personal thing and people are just like, oh, I don't know if I want to show my stuff because I don't know what reaction I'll get from people. I I don't think that's really an A case that people should be concerned about. I think just just doing it, making the content, making something original, making something for yourself and like you said, it's like a miniature

adventure. It's kind of like you're, you know, you're, it's a video blog of your hobby history or the projects you're working on. And for me personally, I think it's just really interesting to see what you're up to, even if it's not old Hammer centric. It's kind of just, you know, interesting for me to have playing in the background and watching what you're tinkering, tinkering with on your hobby disk and what you've been painting that week or that month

or what have you. So yeah, no thanks mate for making it. And I think hopefully after this podcast, people will be more attracted to come and see what you're doing on your YouTube channel and check out your content there. So let's go back in time. Let's pause for a moment and just just highlight that point to anyone who isn't, you know, listening to this. The first thing you need to do is to stop this, go onto YouTube and subscribe to my channel and then come back.

Because, you know, as I discussed at the beginning of this, I'm, I'm looking really ultimately to give Mr. Beast, you know, and you know, Sniper Wolf, a run for their money. You know, if if they can have like, you know, more viewers than like some countries in the world, I don't see why my little hobby channel can't do the same. So that's, that's what the people should stop doing. The the thing I would say though is, you know, we're very lucky in the hobby community.

You know, people are much warmer than in most parts of the Internet. You know, particularly with the politics going on these days, we're not going to talk about any of it. But I've been beyond horrified at how polarized and how nasty people are to each other online.

I remembered listening to to this one history podcast and they were talking about I think the American Civil War, the English Civil War. And they were they were talking about how, you know, in like a kind of 50 year horizon for whatever ridiculous ideological conflict, people stopped saying, you know, I'm an American, you're an American.

We disagree. It was like I'm an American and you're the sporn of Satan. And the same thing with the English Civil War. You know, I'm, I'm in English, you're not English. You know, actually you're some different religion to me, you know, effectively annualist form of Satan. And then after 50 years of this kind of horrible fighting, there was a civil war.

And so there's like this long pause as everyone looks at the historian and says, don't you think we're at that point now, you know, in the kind of 50 year kind of, you know, trajectory And the historian kind of pauses because he just realizes what he said. And then he's like, yeah, so in the war gaming community, we're nowhere near that.

We're nowhere near that although you know it was that it's that by Jerry on on tabletop talking about like slaying people for like using square bases instead of brown ones. But other than the the round and square base kind of you know division and the hobby which is often the most controversial part of any new kind of miniature agnostic game. I think we're a lovely bunch and people are really kind of

supportive. And the other funny thing that I was listening to the other day is a mates of mine is in I won't say the word because we'll we'll kind of, you know get picked up by the wrong people. But you know there are bad guys in the world who want to do many bad things and he's part of the security services who kind of track them online and try

tracking down. And he was talking about following the finances of it and he was explaining how some of it's impossible to follow because there's something called WADA whereby, you know, I don't know if you've heard of this. If you have well done, you know, I only just heard of it. Basically you you have one guy in one part of the world and you say to him, I'll give you $1000 and can you call your mates in this other country and tell him to give my mate over there

$1000? And those two guys trust each other enough, they just go, OK, so nothing has been tracked, nothing has gone on any system and that's impossible to follow.

It's called Paula. And I remember thinking the gaming community is so close that if you go to like, you know, old Hammer Facebook trading groups, you know, I'm, I'm happy to post something to a guy in the States off the back of him having pictures of, you know, Felix and Gottreck from 1992. Because my assumption is if he's showed me a couple of pictures of them, you know, in different positions that he's got them and someone who has Felix and Gottreck isn't going to screw me over.

And so, you know, in terms of opening yourself up to the community, you know, this is one of the most unjudgemental communities out there. And we've basically got our own kind of wireless system going on Facebook swaps. The other thing I would say though in terms of kind of painting and painting kind of quality, I mean, listen, I'm not you. My painting is great. I like to think of it as kind of table top plus.

But The thing is so many people have like this mind block about painting because of the concern that they have. They think that you have to be golden demon or you know what was called in in in the in the white dwarf magazine is heavy metal. You know, you don't need to be heavy metal. You know, I'm intensely relaxed about playing whole games with just an under coated army under coated grey because the view I take is this is a hobby, It's our hobby. You do what you want and no one

paints chess pieces. People have played chess their entire lives and never thought they can't play because one size black and one size white. You know, I played an amazing game of Kings of War with my mega old Hammer Dwarf army, which I've been collecting from various manufacturers for at least 20 years, and none of it's painted. And I've played three games of Kings of War with it.

I mean, obviously it's been helpful that I've won every single game, but mostly because I have a lot of bombards, which is naughty. But basically it's been great fun. The opponent hasn't complained. His army's painted mine's not. And so, you know, I I say to people, don't hold back, just give it a go. People contact me, you know, and say there was one guy, lovely guy. He's F notch. I think he comments on your stuff.

He's a Finnish guy, lovely guy. We've been exchanging messages, you know because part of the fun of my channel is you know when you're sitting in a bus stop on a train for work or whatever, you know you can just look at comments and write something back and you've done something fun and hobby related in what

was otherwise a dead period. And and he was saying to me saying to me like Oh yeah, no, no, I I haven't played a game because I'm waiting till I get to 1000 points painted of of old hammer to go to this local group in Finland to play. And I was like mate, just get on with it.

No one there is going to complain, you know otherwise you know, you're you know you're you're at a certain age and you're thinking, Gee, you know I haven't done something because I was worried what people would think in this hobby. No one is worried. Anyway after your your, your Swedish to the Lovely's. The other day you said you never got a word in edgeway, so I'm going to ask it quiet.

Good old Krell. Yeah they were classic bunch and I'm sure I'm, I'm sure I'm going to throw in a little bit of a promo about the this the what this in this case was Friday White Live. Usually it's a Saturday White live or a Sunday White Live but the boys from Sweden, Krell and Jimmy join me on a Friday because I took the day off because of Final Fantasy seven of all things. So if you haven't checked it out go to my YouTube channel and

check it out. When you after you subscribe to Stompy 51's channel, then go and come check out the the Saturday Sunday night White White Lives, because they're quite. Fantastic. Because again, one thing that you really do with all these amazing podcasts is you give like flavor and color to how different people have approached

the hobby from different angles. And for me, over the years, you know, listening to a bunch of Aussies talking about Blood Bowl or a bunch of Americans in the Midwest talking about, you know, how they were, you know, about to go to some massive convention, but then some kind of hurricane kind of went through hurricane alley, which is where they live. And, you know, all these things give kind of local color.

So hearing how, you know, there were Swedes going down to like some kind of local marketplace talking to a Swedish Rastafarian to try and get some old Hammer Marines and sort of some kind of discount and the haggling, you know, that was great fun. I love that. Oh mate. Yeah, Krells. Krells the best. And Jimmy too. They're just wonderful guys. And interestingly too, you would before when you were talking about Games Workshop and sort of attracted to the younger

demographic. Is that really the case? Because I just saw like photos of people lining up to get the old world, new rule books and it's all Gray, mate or no hair at all. So I, I I just think, you know, compared to the 90s where they're not targeting young kids anymore, it's kind of like the, you know, late 30s, early 40s demographic. Would that be the case do you

think? So look, neither of us are currently sitting in their boardrooms, but there's there's one podcast called The Painting Phase and they seem to have, because they're quite they are younger than us, I think. And they seem to have contact with people who have recently left Games Workshop and one guy who I think was from their whichever department kind of designed paints and knives and

whatever. He said we had some kind of internal principle which was, you know, if it's not, you know, we don't get out of bed for anything less than 10K. You know, if there are some people who you know have some kind of interesting idea which could, you know be attractive to kind of old hammer guys, you know, you know, that's good for

them. They can pay off their mortgage with it. But as far as we're concerned that small beer, you know, we need something that's worth a company of our size doing it. And so I think, and I'm surmising here, that this whole old Warhammer and the old world thing is the exception that proves the rule. I think their internal kind of commercial ideology is, look, the real money is in happy to spend £100 or whatever on a computer game. We get them to buy £100 box set.

They're in and out. Forget about people like me, you know who who who are interested in 1520 different miniature companies and have all the miniature they need till the day they die. You know, I need to get

realistic at some point. I'm never going to paint everything I have at the rate I'm painting, but I still like having it. So I think what they, I think it must be when they saw the success of Kings of War and they thought do you know what that might tick the box of being whatever sum we need to make a business case, you know for return on on investment to get out of bed on this project.

And and I think that might be why, you know, they've already run out of stock because you know, they budgeted for X amount of stock it's sold and they just don't think it's worth redoing it or either that or they've got some kind of massive logistics problem going on. OK. Interesting. Interesting point of view about that. Yeah. Because you know, for me, I mean they're not targeting me. They're targeting I think the generation before me.

I think they're targeting the sort of the Lord of the Rings crowd, personally, you. Know are they all German? I know the Lord of the Rings here. But there's it seems to be that that kind of there's two generations, there's Heroquest generation and the Lord of the Rings generation. I think the Lord of the Rings generation and the people who wrote the rules are from the guys who wrote Lord of the Rings. So it all seems to fit in to me in that. Yeah, no, that makes sense, what I mean.

It's that, sort of. 35 to 45 kind of, you know, age gap where they're trying to capture those guys who got into 8th edition and that kind of thing. So but it's interesting you, you know, we were joking before about, you know, basing being the subject most likely to lead to a kind of the gaming civil war. So the reason I haven't got into this game other than the fact that, you know, there's about 50 gaming systems I've got that I haven't fully played out, do I

need a 51st gaming system? But I thought to myself, you know I've got an Empire army on 20 mill bases. There is no way I'm going to cut them up and put them on 30 mill bases. You know, I've got Orcs and Goblins not doing that. The only kind of totally unassembled army I have that's not either on 20 more bases square or on, you know, age of Sigma. Basing is scathing and scathing is like the one unsupported army

or woman in the old world. So I thought to myself, do you know what You know, I've I've reached this kind of crazy accumulation bit. Maybe I've never had Bretonians. Who doesn't like Knights. I'll I'll get some of those. So I ask my friendly local gaming store and I say, look, can you order these for me? And they go, they're already out of stock, kid. We'll order them when they get read, when they get done. So and nothing has been

forthcoming. So I haven't really got involved in Warhammer and the old World and I'm doing fine with Kings of War. You know, my, my, my dwarves are fight for Kings of War. My empire is fight for Kings of War. And obviously there's Dragon Rampant, which, you know, both of these are fantastic gaming systems for people like you and me. You know, we've got young youngish families.

You know, we have busy jobs. You know, I all the other bugbear I have with some systems, particularly by Games Workshop is. But there are others. They think that you've got nothing else to do in the world but to but can't be sucked into the micro world of their gaming system. Now, you know, maybe I'm a person who's a bit of a grasshopper, and I absolutely am. But you know, I'm not sure in this day and age if there are people who are wholly sucked

into one gaming system. You know, you've got the Honest War Gamer. I love listening to shows sometimes, but you know they are absolutely immersed in that world. And I'd be interested in your view, What proportion of the gaming community is genuinely sucked into being a whale? You know who's on a hook being sucked into constant cycling? Games Workshop purchases.

Very little in our, I think in our community like in terms of modern Games Workshop stuff, it's almost 0. I mean there's there's the Meld that like you know for now currently there are people actively playing the old world. But it's more about the Meld made to Order section of this revival Hammer. It's it's the classic models coming back the the people are more excited about that than the actual game itself. I think the game is kind of secondary, so. And I think.

How many of those marauder giants do you think they'll sell? Because I think. There's 10s of thousands, hundreds of thousands maybe, I don't know. But I'm really interested to see how much it's going to be worth, like how much it will cost the end dollar, because that is a hefty amount of lead and I just hope and pray that people can afford it when it comes out and. I'm going to, I'm going to take a punt at £55 because they actually have to sell it. I reckon £150 man.

No, yeah, I reckon. £150 you can bank. Well, I've got one, I've got one. If someone gives me £150, you know, No, I mean, I can buy my kid a bike or something. No, no, you know, I wouldn't sell it. And the joke is, I think this has been discussed in your channel before. But most of the old Hammer stuff I have, I didn't buy in the 90s, in the 80s or the 90s because I never had the money then.

These things were bought in the 20 tens when these things were kind of just about affordable, you know, for a reasonable amount of money on eBay, you know. And so that's where most of my collection is from because no, no one wanted an old Hammer more or the giant in in in 2012, strangely. And so I was going to put this question to you later, but I'll put it to you now. Do you regard yourself as a hipster, you know, by being

interested in Old Hammer? Because, you know, isn't that part of being the hipster like in those Ladybird books? You know, it's people who find some more, like, esoteric interest that no one really kind of follows. And then they kind of pride themselves saying, well, I don't do the mainstream stuff, collect like vinyl records of a certain era. So, you know, maybe the Marauder Giants is just going to target wargaming hipsters.

Maybe so, yeah, I'd I'd like. I've always been attracted to games that were not so commercially successful or well known, like Confrontation from Rackham, Infiniti from Corbis Belly. And so during those days they were very underground games, very small companies making

really nice products. And I've always been, I've always been attracted to that kind of, you know, those games sort of simmering under the the, you know, the popularity of of gaming if that makes sense, so. I think, look, there's I think you've got to distinguish between companies with a system which was good, but they never knew how to run a business And they went by, yeah, they went versus you know, companies where, you know, the gaming system wasn't that great, you

know, and that's why it kind of went fast. Yeah. So yeah, I'm. I'm always interested to see what the smaller company's doing even more now. I think because there's so many good companies out there making the most beautiful models, if not just the game itself, but beautiful artwork and that kind of thing. I'm more attracted to that than them sort of the mainstream type gaming companies and their games

and miniatures, I think. I think the smaller companies are just more and more interesting to me personally. Well, there's a lot, there's a lot of innovation amongst these smaller companies because if you're in a bigger company and people listening who aren't bigger companies, they know that, you know, it's quite hard to kind of just change thinking,

you know. And and there's all these articles that have been written around like I'm trying to remember is it there was one company that they they were the big kind of like zero. Maybe it was Xerox or something. They did all the the photocopying machines and they knew that digital was coming. They knew that digital cameras were coming. But The thing is they it was so politically dodgy internally to kind of basically pioneer the end of your own company. And you know that they just

didn't do anything. And then ultimately someone else picked up the idea and just kind of changed the grass, grew under their feet, changed the entire environment. And then they just went bust. They went, they went to kind of be being a nothing. And so I think that that is one of the advantages of, you know, all these little companies who

come up with their little ideas. And I mean in many ways, a lot of the games that I play, like Xenos Rampant, Dragon Rampant, I'm going to embarrass myself because I'm so bad at names. Is it Daniel Mersey, You know, so he's come up with, you know, this amazing high level conceptual system where you know, you don't need to have like exact points for exact, you know, IP protected kind of units. You just conceptually have 10 different kind of units.

You can sex them up, you can sex them down and you can use this kind of sandbox system for absolutely anything. And it kind of got changed to be also for the Pazenos rampant, you know, which is kind of not just fantasy but kind of everything from World War One to kind of, you know, June if you want to play it. And there's so much kind of creativity in that which I think bigger companies just don't risk and so many of these Games Workshop systems.

Amazing. The Games Workshop is, you know, you buy the book and I used to buy it with trust thinking if they charged me £30 for it, they must have thought this through. They must have made this a playable game that is now a stable game that, you know, I can keep going with for for for a few years. And instead, you know, you buy these games, you know, they're not that slick, that they're full of mistakes, they're not necessarily that fun.

And then they have the cheek after like 2-2 years to say, oh, we're releasing another edition and the £60 you spent on all these books, you can, you can torch, you flush it down the loop, which is exactly what's happening with Age of Sigma. You know, I find, you know, I play Age of Sigma because there are other guys at the perennial local gaming store who do, and I've got gorgeous miniatures and the game is just about all right, you know, it's not one of the best systems I've played.

I, I, I bought a couple of of newish rule books about a year ago. And I was just listening to the Honest War Game YouTube channel. And he was proudly explaining how, you know, there's new Scaven out because Scaven are going to be in the box set for the 4th edition of Age of Sigma. And I was like, are you kidding? Nice. Yeah, so. I think. I think miniature agnostic games are just gaining popularity these days, even though I'm not a big fan of miniature agnostic games. I like.

I like the company to give me the rule set. I like them to give me the miniatures. I like them to provide everything for me as one solid package. But I can see I can see the advantages of having miniature agnostic games for someone like yourself or other. People have an enormous range of models, things like what's the other one? Shadows shadow shadow deep. Range of the Shadow Deep. I've never played that. It looks like a really

interesting system. I like the concept of it and it's like you can bring all your old school, you know, D&D models and you know, use those in games and you know, make terrain and that kind of thing as a solo experience. I think that's a really cool idea. I've never got to play it though, but I think I like the concept of it. Look, I absolutely don't want to kick Games Workshop on this score because as you say, there are upsides and downsides to everything.

And the downside of you know, I would say even Zenos Rampant or of Dragon Rampant is, you know they're not necessarily that crunchy as systems. And also you know it's sometimes quite hard to you know if you want to have the idea of a dwarf conceptually as you know rugged with heavy armor but slow moving and high morale, you can part you can do that through these kind of sandbox systems. But it it, it doesn't quite feel

like a dwarf. You know, it's kind of like when you watch Star Trek and they make gags around, you know, when that, you know, they have that kind of artificial like 3D print that kind of makes food and they always make the joke like, oh, you know, this doesn't taste like real peanut butter, you know, You know what I mean? There is a degree of that with with these miniature agnostic systems.

So they have their place. But equally, you know, having something where someone has carefully thought through the law behind this and match the exact, you know, points and system to the law for that little creature. I mean that that is a fantastic thing in itself. The problem I have is that the grass grows on your feet every time you step onto one of these systems. You know, by the time I bought it, I played two games.

You know, because time moves slowly for me, you know, to actually have a job and a family and then suddenly there's another addition and then you know, there's another layout or the most insulting thing, they expect you to rebase, which as we've described, it's just a great way to start a riot in our in our community. Yeah, please do not rebase your miniatures. It's the only thing I'll say to people. Don't rebase them. It's always better. It's always easy to go up then

rather going back. You know the when you go up, you can't go back. So you can increase the base, yeah, And then, well, anyhow, it's up to people's personal preferences. But look. I've I've I've sterilized my Auch and Goblin 7th edition army because I rebased it for Age of Sigma and then they removed orcs and goblins you know from age of Sigma. And. I don't and I'm and I've abandoned it, you know, I'm. I'm just not doing it. You know they are now the Dragon Rampant Army.

You know and and and so what's it called? Saga Age of Magic. That's another nice. That's another one. I'll be interested. It's. Kind of. Resource based system which is quite fun. That looks really cool too. I'm I'm really interested in actually in playing that and giving it a go. Actually, I think that might be a good game. But anyhow, look, we're going to take a quick commercial break and we'll be back in just a moment to talk more about your history and how you got into war gaming.

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Short little promo and we were talking about various different things with Stompy about the miniature agnostic games that you're interested in and that kind of thing. And I I think they're taking more prevalence in the smaller companies out there making rule sets for those because you know to endeavour upon making an actual miniature range is quite an expensive outlay for any small company.

So just making rules to adapt to the miniature ranges you have seems like a much more of a better proposition to most people out there, I think in smaller companies. And I think is it Osprey games, You know their whole business model has been fantastic. They're almost like it's kind of like, you know, seed investment capitalists, you know, where they they'll have a portfolio of like you know 20, a hundred start-ups understanding that like 95 of them are going to

fail. But one of them is going to be like, you know, Google and or Amazon or whatever and they do well out of it. I mean the Osprey's hit rate, I would say to be fair is a lot better than that. But, you know, to be cruel but fair, you know, one or two are great concepts, but, you know, they could have done with a bit more play testing and they don't kind of have legs, albeit some of them, I don't know why they die.

I mean there's Dracula's America, for example, which is basically the, you know, miniature's agnostic kind of cowboy game with, you know, unbelievable depth of law for all manner of kind of esoteric fantastical elements. And, you know, it didn't seem to do well. The author felt a bit bad. He sort of posted and said, you know, they've said, you know, it hasn't sold like they hoped and you know, so there's not going to be any kind of follow-ups.

But I've played, I've played it loads in my local gaming store and it kind of unlocks you playing with obviously all the amazing War games, Foundry, Cowboys, you know, all you know, I think Black Scorpion miniatures Cowboys and then a lot of the North Star kind of weird and wonderful. The 19th century creatures from Gothic Law. Right. Yeah, there's so many, there's

so many good things. Like I recently came across a game called Lucid Eye, and I don't know if you're familiar with that, but basically it's a, it looks like a small British company, and they've got Rick Priestly to design the rules for it. And it's all basically like elves versus elves kind of thing the whole. This is why I think there's only one race.

Is the Red Book of the Elf King. So Lucid eyes name of the company and and again I haven't played that game but the miniatures are brilliant because it's a beautiful solid. So there's a number of sculptors and they would definitely grab your right because you and I think share an eye for a certain kind of miniature you know so but in Contra distinction like you know people who go mad on 3D sculpting with Z brush and every micro detail is there and the hands are the right size and the

weapons are very thin. You know, I'm not interested in that. You know, I like the kind of Nick Polya, Matt Bickley, Mark Copleston kind of concept of. You just need enough detail on there to differentiate it from what it's not so people can see what it is and people will enjoy painting it. And it's got kind of pronounced but not unusual or ridiculous kind of features. And that's my kind of miniature, and I think that's why Old Hammer retains its kind of Brad for so many people.

You know in in 50 years time, all that Old Hammer, Trish Morrison stuff from the late 80s will still be amazing. Whereas how many people will have even the lovely Warhammer underworlds plastic scalps from Games Workshop and think that's brilliant? Yeah now the the when you when you said Matt Bickley their their new Viking range for Futsal is coming to Kickstarter soon. Which looks absolutely incredible.

But I've never, I've never seen Viking models look so good the way he's posed them, the way he is, you know, giving them sort of like they're moving or they give them some kind of dynamic pose. But yeah, they. Want these metal sculpts? Yes, one piece metal sculpt. That's right. Yeah, that's right.

Exactly. And I love One Piece metal sculpts after coming through the through the Academy or putting Infinity miniatures together for many years and is saying that's it. That's the last Infinity miniature I'll ever put together. You're having those One Piece miniatures is just so nice. It's such it makes it makes cleaning and assembly just a joy rather than the absolute labor. So they look amazing.

So they're again like I like, I like on table tops with Jerry's Indie of the Week. I really enjoy that segment more than anything else because it's basically showcasing someone out there with an incredible range of miniatures that you know they make. And it's always something new that I've never discovered before. I was even looking at Foundry's website yesterday.

They're historicals for like Barron's War, because I was looking for some like peasants and that kind of thing to use as green troops and they've got a wonderful range which is not that expensive and they're all beautifully hand sculpted, designed by, I believe the Perry's even they've even got. Like. They've even got like the old original Citadel Barons, which are really nice too, so.

I think there was some case. I tried to find it for a laugh on one of the search engines, you know, there was. I think there was some case which sort of said, you know, that a consultant basically owns the intellectual property to what they've sculpted unless there's some kind of contractual arrangement otherwise. And they and I think Games Workshop just couldn't put its hand on all the contracts with all those sculptors from the late 80s.

And So what Games Foundry was like great, you know, designed by the Perry's. Perry's have said we could use them. And so you often see on eBay some very naughty people who I think must know better. Taking those kind of barons war figures from the late 80s and saying OOP. I'm like mate, those are not OOP. Yeah, that's right. I I saw on Nick's channel, Medieval War Gamer.

He's doing the Barons War so campaigns at the moment and he's he's got one miniature that is from the war games foundry that he bought in the 90s when he was studying at university there. And that miniature for me just stands out from all the other stuff because it looks so cool. It looks so old. Hammer. It looks like something out of like the third edition rulebook for Warhammer Fantasy. You know, it's so cool. I love it.

There's something about that. There's something about those old miniatures and this this style which they were designed that just pulls me to them so much more than a lot of this modern overly detailed too extravagant type of miniatures. You know what I mean? It's. I suppose it depends on the setting, but yeah, I think simple is better. And it's not just a Games Workshop thing, of course. You know, for example, today I, between various things, finish painting a trolkin miniature

from what's it called? What's that game called? It's set like in a steampunk universe and it was very big by Privateer Press for many, many years. Suddenly just went quiet like War machine the whole. And so I can't I have these mind blanks, which is why I prerecord stuff of course, rather than live and brave like you. And this miniature is a beautiful miniature. And these troll kin, they're basically like steampunk towel and this guy's holding this humongous like kill every mother

stuffer in the room. Kind of like hand cannon and even just flogged all my Troll Kins years ago because I thought this game was going nowhere and it was too fiddly in the 1st place. I thought even though it was very popular, but I kept this miniature and then I realized that there's effectively a similar kind of unit type in man to games Dead zone. And I thought the moment has

come for this miniature. You know he can enter the stage, he's going to be painted and it'll be a game in the next few weeks and he will, he will, he will be great. And I looked at it and even though it was a beautiful one piece miniature, there was just so much unnecessary detail. I don't know if a sculptor is big into kind of like leather and you know, buckles and whatever.

There were so many things that like someone like Nick Collier or Mark Coppleson would have just said you don't need that. It doesn't add anything. It's going to irritate the person playing it. No one is so painting it, no one playing it is going to see it. You know, to give you an example, it's a great little detail, but this guy has big

huge hands. These troll kin are like towel with oversized hands and and slightly orkish comedy and he's wearing and he's holding this huge massive mega cannon fine and he's wearing like gloves that I bought. They're called gloves that don't like have your fingertips. And I looked myself and it took me a long time to realize halfway through the paint job that his whole hand wasn't going to be blue. Half his hands was going to be

blue. And I was going to have to form some kind of executive decision on what color the gloves were going to be in circumstances where he's wearing a massive leather jacket full of buckles all over the place and and and silver. And I thought, why? Why have they? This is a hobby you write, why they created an unnecessary problem for me. So, you know, I think unnecessary detail is just something that people should think about if they're

sculpting. Well, I say that, but I paint, I paint a lot of the confrontation miniatures from Rackham back in the, you know, late 90s, early 2000s, which I absolutely adore. And then they they, you know, they set the president for like overly detailed models. But I love them. You know, I I enjoy that challenge of painting those models because they're so beautifully, exquisitely, you know, designed and made so it it yeah, it depends.

For me it really depends because that is like each individual model is like a character model. It's not we're not playing Warhammer where you have regiments of various different similar, you know design models. This is like these three goblins are all differently posed. They're all got their own different identity and you know, that's wonderful. I think that's their charm in the in a small skirmish game like that. So it's you know, it's whatever, whatever, whatever people desire.

Some people thrive on details. Some people like the simplicity of the older designs and and you know I suppose historical gaming. Now that I've sort of looked at that a little bit more, I like the heraldry and you can have a very simple looking night. But then with a with a particular paint job and the and his, you know, motifs or colors and that kind of thing can make a big difference. The heraldry is, I've always found, very challenging.

You know, you've got to be an actual artist to be able to do that kind of thing. But The thing is, what becomes particularly complex is most of the places where the heraldry appears aren't flat. So you've now got to imagine what this, like double headed eagle is going to look like on some kind of fold of a cloak. And I'm like, mate, that's like a level of artistic, you know, intelligence that I just don't have. And it does. You have it, but not everywhere else is.

So mate, look, we're going to talk about how you got into miniature gaming. We're sort of done, we've sort of done this back to front, so. That's all right. Listen, we're assuming people are still listening or, you know, they're sitting there. They're sitting there painting. That's we hope so we hope. So we hope they.

I mean what I would say is you know you've got to give people a sense on on when we you have chats like this that we aren't actually talking about the hobby because there's this balance between all these like really fun and funky kind of anecdotes which have nothing to do with gaming but give life to who we are and the prison through which we see gaming. But equally you will talk about the hobby.

So it's done well. So I I I collected some thoughts that by all means interject, because I recognize that you know. Please. Go for a. Conversation. So did you just tell us what was the catalyst? What got what got you into war gaming? Was it through your friends or fathers or, you know, was it through just going by a game store one day and picking something up? But we're talking like earliest childhood here. You know, they talk about the

kind of collected gene. But I I had the war game in Gene. So, you know, when I was like, so, so I think my, my, my, my mom in particular had a massive interest in kind of like history. And so she would see things and then just buy them for me, you know, thinking oh, you know, vicariously, you know, my kid, my kid will have the the interest I do. And it was an amazing gift she gave me. And so I grew up in South Africa and I don't know exactly what

they were. They must have been, they might have been Airfix, but Airfix obviously did 172. But I did a range of like 54mm, kind of like, you know, there were Egyptians, there were Romans, There were only like, I think 12 in the pack. And they were huge. And you know, the kid couldn't swallow them. So when I was like two or three, she might have bought them for me. And so I used to play with

those. And then if you think about it, you know, all the movies that we watch as kids are gearing us up to be, you know, gearing you up to be a gamer, you know, So, so obviously there was like all the history stuff.

There was a military History Museum in Johannesburg with all the tanks and stuff that they basically captured in North Africa. And they had this amazing moratorium where they would play like, you know, the best, like military movies of like the, you know, the 60s and 70s, like the guns of Navarone and Battle of Britain. And you know, all of that stuff. And I used to go watch it.

And then obviously there was all the sci-fi stuff, you know, the the cartoons and sci-fi stuff and fantasy stuff, which you might not think of as fantasy. But, you know, if you look at like Burrows and badges, you know, like animals set in a kind of medieval setting with weapons and a bit of politics running, you know, I used to love watching the secrets of Nim.

I watched it so many times. I don't know if you know that there, if you ever saw that cartoon like Don Bluth, I think, and you know, it was all about these kind of like rats. You know, they're basically scathing, you know, living in this farmhouse, like these small Scaven having their own kind of like, you know, Game of Thrones of all fights and stuff. And I and I love that as a kid. And you have The Black Cauldron and the Sword and the Stone and Disney's Robin Hood and all

that. And then in terms of sci-fi, you know, I've watched the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And so for me, and it's continued to this day and I hear other people talking about this. You know, the miniatures that you choose to play with or paint that week are the ones that you were inspired to do. So like something you've seen in popular culture or book you've read or ATV program you've seen.

And so for me, from the earliest age, I would kind of reenact out the things I've seen with the with the kind of these plastic miniatures I had. And I remember my mom also got me these, I think they're they're called Britons. They were very expensive, so we couldn't buy too many. But they were like these kind of like lead figures that were kind of painted. And I think she got me some Germans and Brits from World War 2 and our and and this quite big

plastic German U boat toy. And I remember there was, I was only 6 and I was talking to this mate of mine and he said this stuff is amazing. He goes, do you have any more of this? And and I said, yeah, yeah. And I've got all of this stuff. You know, I've got like a little U boat port like from this particular movie. And I've got like loads of these Brits and loads of these Germans. And he looks at me, he goes, you don't do you. I was like, no, I don't.

But I wish I did. I imagine that I will one day. And and then there was this like after school kind of club where they where there was this guy's he's passed now his name was Les Netherton and he used to write these books about model airplanes but not plastic kind of ethics airplanes, but the ones that you kind of construct out of wood like you know stick an elastic band on turn you know turn the propeller and kind of

throw through a park. And the and I went, you know when I was like 10 years old, 1011 and it was very fiddly and I used to love it. It was with balsa wood. But the but The thing is, after a while I thought to myself, you know, I'm spending ages making these planes. You know, you get out there, you know, you pull your elastic band, you watch this little plane soar through the sky and then it smacks into a tree and there's all these struts.

And, you know, you've got to get this paper and, you know, this particular kind of glue and, you know, it's it's basically the same as being like, you know, a ground engineer in the middle of the Battle of Britain, Like, why must I spend, like the next two weeks fixing this thing up to smash it into a tree again, This is pointless, you know, And and I thought, look, no one's going to care if I just rock up with some ethics, you know, planes And. And he was a lovely guy.

He'd basically been in the war in South African Air Force in North Africa. And he used to always tell us stories. You know, if you're 11, it's fantastic. He used to say like, oh, like once we captured this, this German pilot, you know, we shot him down and we drove him back to the base.

And you know, he's sort of sitting there with his kind of like Iron Cross or whatever and standing there, you know, his full kind of, you know, uniform, you know, sticks out of see how arm to show us. You know, you might have captured me, but we're going to win the war. And all of us S Africans are also sitting there probably like Aussies, like, you know, wearing half of our own clothes, half of official uniform, you know, and and swearing and saying, you know, we may just get on with it.

Anyway. So he was like and he he liked me and he was supportive of of my various efforts. But he used to sort of say to me, like he said, listen kids, you know you are, you are an absolute grasshopper. You know, you just, you just leap from one scale to another and you know you need to focus. And I was like, why do I need to focus? Who cares that some of my miniatures are on 172 scale and some of my miniatures are in, you know, 156 scale, Who cares? These are just toys.

And in many ways that that is the nature of my channel. You know, there's a lovely guy, I think, I don't know him at all. He's got a channel. It's called Scruffy Crow at the moment. He's, he's diligently pursuing Warhammer in the Old World Army using miniatures from I think the 90s and early 2000s, you know, from the Beastman range. And he's been collecting these diligently. He's been basing them diligently. He's been painting them and then

he's going to play with them. And you know, for me actually, I've got like 10 or 20 different projects kind of steaming along at different speeds. And as time goes on, I kind of like top each one up. And I like to think they're all getting somewhere. But even if they don't get somewhere, I've got enough to be doing in each case. So I'm still that kind of grasshopper kid.

And then over time, you know, I just thought to myself, I, I I really want to have that kind of, I want to be able to play with this stuff. What's the point of just building it? But remember, I'm only 10 or 11 and I used to go to like the WH Smith, you know, CNA. It was called with my parents and they used to look at the

papers and buy a magazine maybe. And I would go look at the War Games Illustrated magazine, which we could get, and War Games Illustrated would have, you know, miniatures by the Perry's line drawings. There weren't too many photos in it because I think it was expensive to have color pages.

So a lot of line drawings but there would be loads of articles on kind of how to build buildings how to build ships and there was one article that was like it it it just changed my hobby understanding there was 1 bloke of you know in some pretty suburb of England, which for me as a kid you know who knew where that was. And he obviously had a lot of, he had a tiled garden with grass, whatever. And he had like these flower beds.

And what he did was he basically recreated like an imaginary 19th century Europe like a kind of risk board with, you know, like the the Austro, Hungarian Empire, Britain, Germany, in different parts of his garden out of concrete and plaster with like these little towns and cities. And he made like little ports. And then he built these like

pocket battleships, basically. And he had and he painted these must be 50 some whatever the Britain scale is, you know, it can't be 75, it must be 52 mil, something like that. And he built armies for them. And he did an article in What Games Illustrated about how he would basically do solo gaming in his garden or you know, battles of on the high seas, you know, in the 1850s, eighteen 90s, whatever it was with the occasional kind of land battle. And I thought to myself, do you

know what? We've got a table tennis table at home. I'm not a sporty guy. You know, I've played on this thing twice. I'll ask my parents if they don't mind me in the spare room opening up the table tennis table because, you know, in South Africa we had more space. In the UK this would be unimaginable. I don't know what Oz is like. But yeah, in South Africa there was, you know, we had space in in in homes more than people do in in in Northern Europe.

And and I thought we've got all this like cupboards stuff in this room and what I'll do is I'll take my kind of like 172 scale little miniatures, you know these tanks and these planes and and all of that. I used to collect Eshy and ethics figures which are one 7220 more scale. And I I've, you know, I've forgotten the name.

It might be Osborne. But they used to produce these books with cardboard pages where you would cut out like a castle or a medieval village or a Viking village and you would glue it together with kind of white glue. And I thought, great, so I've got like little towns and cities and I would delineate like with string the borders of these

different imaginary countries. And then I built like these little ships with like very Games Workshop 1980s, you know, with like bits of like, you know kitchen roll and and and you know cans and things and I and I and I made some, you know, what I thought were quite impressive little battleship. You know, there's loads of food that comes in something, you know, something broad the shape of of a, you know, a, you know, the line of a battleship with straws for guns and things.

And my mum was like said this is great. She even played with me once. But, but The thing is, I had no understanding of rules because, you know, this is before the Internet. You're not connected into what are the actual systems. It didn't occur to me that you could use dice for this. And So what I would do is I would take wooden clothes pegs and I would, I'd take one peg and I'd attach like the other pegs. So this thing was basically a bomb because they're not really

that well attached. If you Chuck this thing and it goes kaboom. And then basically I would just, you know, when countries declared war on each other, you know, I would just have these like little bombs and I would just sort of Chuck it. And whoever basically had whichever had the most figures called down, they lost, you know. And this was great fun to do as

a 10 or 11 year old. And it was also again, so I would re enact, you know, things I would watch on TV and I would just any 172 scale miniature I got would go to topping up the French, the Germans, the Brits, you know. And that was all good fun. And then what really kind of fuelled this was what is, I suppose, a salutary lesson for us all. My mum saw an ad saying, you know, loads of gaming stuff for sale, you know, come over and we

can talk. And we turn up to this posh suburb of Johannesburg and there's this very kind of, you know, high faluting lady. And she looks at us because we haven't got a great car and she's like, you know, great some kid and his mum and and so she she takes us into this garage so that her husband's dead and she's trying to work out what to

do with the stuff. She speaks very dismissively of all of us. I remember this very clearly, even though I was like 11. So we all have to think about what our partners really think of these garages full of miniatures that we have, you know, Anyway, so she was very diminishing about all of this and and she goes basically you can't look at any of that stuff over there that's all painted, that's going to sell for good money.

But over there is like this massive pile and I mean this guy must have collected like 30 years of 172 scale kind of buildings for more railways. And I I didn't realize that at the time but you know in in like modern money, each of these little 172 scale buildings was like, you know, 2030 quid. And and there were boxes and boxes of like ethics stuff and ESHY stuff and tanks and Pegasus Bridge and all manner of things and things which frankly I I wish I'd kept because I think

these things have a value now. These things have all they didn't survive and and move to the UK. But anyway and so, so I said to my mum, how much can I spend? And she said, well look at it, take 50 Rand or whatever, you know, which side we call it £50 in today's money, I think. Great. So I pick this and I pick that and then she says I thought about it. You know, it's obvious that this is an amazing poll, you know, and we just won't spend more on this stuff for a while.

Take 200 Rand And the lady looked at both of us and said you're going to spend 200 Rand stuff. And we were like, Yep, and and she, I mean, we just literally filmed the boot, the back seat, you know it was the most amazing. It's the most I I basically bought, but another like four boxes of miniatures for the next two years. Yeah, that's wonderful. That's. I see your mother to do that for you too. That's lovely.

Oh, she listen, she was in my house today, and we've always been vaguely interested in in kind of art. Not not heavily, but it's the but anyway, so I got out some Cyborg miniatures terrain. He he does absolutely beautiful like faux Warhammer 40K. What's it called? Dark. Grim. Dark kind of. Stuff. And they're like kind of broken statues of, you know, Space Marines clearly. And they're they're beautiful. And so I bought a few, but they don't require, you know, great

artistic insight to paint. They've been spray painted grey. And I said look, can you just take, you know, some of these, these, these, these, these dark washers and then we'll just dry brush these and you know, and I'll base them And she had so much fun. She was, you know, she did about half of them and and she's she's she's a savvy lady. She was like, you know, this army painter stuff, It doesn't quite flow as well as the game's workshop.

When I'm like, no, she goes, I'm not really sure of value, it's actually adding to kind of, you know, wash it with this dark tone. I said, you know what, I think you're right. And so we just mix the dark tone and non oil together and listen it. It's terrain, you know? And I thought I've always had a very relaxed attitude to the quality of terrain versus to miniature. I don't know what your view is.

I think, I think, I think, yeah, I really, I was actually looking at my mighty fortress behind me actually, I I need to spray that up at some point and get that painted. It's one of those projects that I that I'm looking forward to doing. But yeah, Terrain has been something, because I just talked to Mel, the terrain Tutor in the last podcast we did last week, and yeah, I find. You nice to listen to that one. Yeah. OK. So yeah, well, you you only discovered about my podcast today.

I'm. So embarrassed. I'm such a fan of all of your content. It's possible arranging products and you know you need to. You need to cross-platform it. You know, you need to sort of talk about, you know, each different element, each different element. Yeah, I'll have to do that now. I I didn't realize there were people out there who didn't even realize there was a podcast called The Chronic Command.

They just because it's it's it's interesting any of that that's that's a different topic for a different day. But yeah, I think terrain has become something that during the time when we started playing games, we didn't have any terrain. And terrain was a very much a secondary thing for us. And we plied our trade to try to find, you know, foam and what was then sort of mounting feature frames and that kind of stuff. We would get that to make ruins for 40K second edition.

Then Epic already had all the terrain in the box, so that was easy. And. And yeah, all that kind of stuff we had like and then the 4th edition, 5th edition boxes had the, you know, the house and tower in it. So we just made like hills and but nowadays, like now coming back into the hobby the last four years, yeah, getting back into making terrain was a really big thing for me. And I really wanted to replicate the the images that other people like.

My good mate Yipe Denning from Denmark, he's an absolute genius, that guy. Not only like a fantastic painter, but he actually replicated all those buildings and to reign beautifully like out of the White Dwarf magazines. So a bit of a shout out to him. Tangents are are the the watchword of any podcast, so don't worry, we can get back to my story in a moment. But but basically my my top of mind got drawn to the idea of, you know, playing with are they 5052mm managers.

There was that kind of there was that Games Workshop game that came out maybe very late 90s, very early 2000s, where it was based on like an A number of a small number of miniatures in the grim Dark World played at a much bigger scale.

I've forgotten the name of it because I've got a shocking memory and I thought to myself, do you know what I think this game is now free to download or there's like a fan version And I thought, you know, with 3D printing you no longer need to pay like £50 for you know, an OOP eBay miniature in the scale for this short lived game. Yeah. You can just get it printed up, you know, I don't have a

printer. We can talk about 3D printing, but you know, you can pay someone to print one of these things that you can buy the STL, pay someone to print it up for like 4 lbs for this beautiful, huge miniature. And there's this one sculptor who I think the sculptor Games Workshop, but he's got a Patreon and he's clearly doing, you know, miniatures, which you are from the world of.

What's it called the the kind of the, the, the Spire world with all the gangs, the under Necromunda and and if you remember rightly there were these kind of like brat gangs, these kind of like rich kids who wear this kind of almost Eldar, like Harlequin, like kind of, you know, sashed kind of hit. And he's done some amazing measures for that. And I thought, well, you know you could just get those printed out at the relevant scale but not that much.

And you could play. But I thought crikey terrain, you know, am I really going to design, you know, even if it's a four by four, am I going to design a four by four of the under Hive at, you know, 52mm scale? And the answer is no. So you know, terrain is not the mine killer as such, but it is. It is the concept killer. Yes, very much so. Yeah, I think, you know terrain plays a massive part in games now, especially now where you've got like a lot of skirmish games.

So the terrain is really important for that kind of thing. For mass battle type stuff like Warhammer, it becomes, yeah, essential, but you don't need that much of it, you know to. But it it obviously it, it gives you some sort of strategic elements to the to the table and of course some aesthetically pleasing looking things like contours like hills and that kind of thing. So it's not just necessarily all.

Flat. But things like Ward Heim and Necromunda and a lot of other games now, yeah, involves, you know, pretty terrain, heavy boards, so. But I think companies are doing pretty good with like card stocks, buildings and that kind of thing. Nowadays I even play with like. Card stock, buildings. That is too nice. I think some things are best left in the 90s. I think Card stocks. Well, some some of some of the things that.

Like we played like. Just using 2D terrain like a 2D forest, a 2D tree or whatever, you know. And that that works really well too. And sometimes it looks kind of like you're you're looking like in a top down RTS video game where you're moving the miniatures in this sort of scenic area on the board that's clearly marked out using this 2D piece of either mouse mat or cardboard. But it's doing the same thing.

It's it's, it's kind of aesthetically pleasing and that it's all nicely coloured and, you know, digitally created for you. This man's opinion is that if you've reached that level of abstraction, you need to go and be a role player. You know, I've never had any type of role-playing because you know, I know so many people who love it and you know, you can be so creative and you can immerse

yourself in the world. And I'm like, look, I want to roll a dice and and have one miniature that looks like something, shoots another miniature that looks like something in a building that looks like something. So you know, we all, we all have our lines. Yeah, I think there's some, there's some good innovations out there. That's what I'm trying to say. There's some good innovations to get what you want to do on your table top looking pretty, you know what I mean?

Without, without an extensive amount of knowledge or or things like that. But you know Mel the tarantula, as we alluded to before, you know he's doing it the old school way. And I really respect that because there's a there's a lot to learn. It's it's a hobby like you say in itself like painting or just gaming or you know medalist creating or whatever it might be. There's something really nice and satisfying about making your own terrain, as I've discovered.

Again, you know, making. That happen very much is and I think particularly, you know with Mordheim and old Hammer if you made, you know, one of those kind of concoctions out of balsa wood, you know, and a little bit of kind of, you know, I thought what's called polyfiller, you know, and and cut out kind of, you know, cereal packet kind of cardboard slick tile roofs and painted it, you know, with all those kind of weird kind of, you

know, little bridges and houses connected over other houses. You know, there was something, there is something absolutely fantastic about that. And in my friendly local gaming store, one guy actually combined doing a bit of that himself with some of the MDF stuff you can get, you know, for that kind of type of housing. And it's absolutely fantastic.

But then unfortunately he kind of, he's more of gross hopper than me. He's totally abandoned this more time campaign which I also painted some night goblins for old Hammer night goblins. But you know, it reminded me I will bug him because the the visual spectacular of what he's done is in and of himself. You know, a hobby delight. Yeah, absolutely, man. Yeah, Nice. It's wonderful. Right.

So get gone. OK, So what we might do might have to go to another ad break just quickly and when we come back we might give you a bit of a quiz, mate from Jervis Johnson himself. So, so, so stay with us. We'll be back in just a moment. Have you always dreamed of having your old gangster armies professionally painted in the style of the white dwarf batter reports of the 1990s?

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via e-mail at evyled@gmail.com. That's EAVYLE ad@gmail.com and please check out the links in the show description for my Facebook gallery page. And I hope to hear from you soon to start your dream project, but. So Stompy and you wanted to finish your story, but so please, please continue before our quiz. So that's the end of me kind of being sort of you know, 13 that

period's over. And then I go to the UK and you know I, I, I turn up at you know I see that there's Games Workshop. You know I walk past the stores, you know I go to I think it's called Reveille in Bristol. You know it was one of these war gaming shows and I see I think they call front rank miniatures and you know we've all seen last the Mohicans and instead of having these like tiny impossible to paint little 172 miniatures you've got 28 metal miniatures with like kind of character.

And you know we discussed that length before that kind of amazing you know approach to to to miniatures. You know, because actually strangely, even though it's like 1980s one, 72SG plastics were massively detailed, which you know, a 10 and 11 year old could not paint with enamel paints. You know, I caused mass damage to my bedroom with enamel

paints. And when I say entertainment, you know, I was reading about how some studies come out saying that, you know, a lot of people with Alzheimer's, it's arisen because they pick their nose because, you know, it releases weird toxins and it causes, you know, over a long period causes brain damage. And I thought to myself, Oh

dear. Because if that's the case, just from picking your nose, you know, having thinners all over the place at the age of 10 and 11 with enamel paints must have is, you know, in 10 years, I'm sure I just won't be talking. But anyway, now I saw that there was this whole world out there and that there were games with dice, and it was obviously much better than just chucking, you know, peg bombs at these

miniatures. And but The thing is, these things were very expensive, very, very, very expensive. And so I couldn't really buy too much of it. I'd gone to this British school where, you know, sport was a big thing. And so they would take like there would be like 17. So even the biggest Malco, the person with like, no coordination like myself, could still be on a team and stuck on a bus all of Saturday afternoon halfway across the country to play rugby or cricket or

whatever. And so I would find increasingly kind of cunning ways of not being taken into even the worst team. You know I'm I'm from South Africa you know even the biggest Malco there is just forced to play rugby. So I knew how to play rugby and I remember in this one try I thought to myself what is the dumbest thing I can do just to not get you know taken into this you know, team And and I just grabbed the ball.

He came to me and instead of like you know clutching it with two hands and throwing it and spitting it, like we kind of trained it in South Africa. I just took this thing and just went just threw it over my head and just threw it like, you know forward. And I remember this this British teacher's put his hat. He literally put his hand over his face and was like right, OK well you're not going to you know, name of school you know, next week and I was like

perfect. So. So that meant I had like every Saturday afternoon, like the next five years free and I couldn't afford to get into, you know, all the old Hammer games. And so that's why I have no 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th edition Warhammer. But all those niche games like particularly Blood Bowl, you know, well, that's something any kid could afford. And so I used to play Blood Bowl, you know, in, in, in, in the afternoons and and other guys would be very happy to play it.

And they were just the kind of miniature that we've we've discussed. And then I went to university and again, you know, I still never had the money for it. So I paid a bit of Necromunda. I remember there was one guy from America, he was like literally 7 foot tall and so and he was into Warhammer. It must have some kind of growth issue. But he was obviously, he was, he was a genius and he loved, he loved this stuff and he was very characterful. He actually wanted to play

role-playing. But as I've described my mind isn't in a place, you know, for that kind of level of abstraction and and so so we we played, you know I had Gokumoka figures. Oh yeah, Gokumoka loved that. So I played that at university and then you know, I I got a proper job and I moved to London and I I would go to the Games Workshop store and this was around 7th edition and the miniatures were fantastic and I had Orcs and Goblins, I had Empire, I dip my my foot into chaos.

But basically I never played a game I enjoyed. I would rock up with this heavy miniatures case. You know, I never had a car. I would lay out all the figures and once in a blue moon, you know, I had a slightly weird Ork and Goblin army. You know, my my favorite piece because everyone dismissed Orcs and goblins as like a real force. And I had one Savage Ork boss on a ball chariot and no one realized that he was frenzied and the whole board chart was frenzied.

So this thing hits you. It was like 30 dice or something. But that was my only trick. I was a 1 trick pony And every other kid who turned up, you know, because I was a bit older then, You know, I was young, professional, and most people there were like, you know, kids or teenagers because I didn't really know where, you know, where can you meet people's playlists? And they would rock up with, like dark elves, which would just shoot me to death, or demons who didn't seem to do

anything in any of the phases. You know, they had no morale. You know, all they did was just kill you. So there was no client back. Well, I'm dead. But you killed them. And they all just came back. And so I never enjoyed a single game.

You know, just to tie it into our discussion about the growth of, you know, creative individuals who through Osprey are coming up with these, you know, rules of Gnostic systems which are actually good or romantic, which do fantastic systems like Kings of War and Dead Zone. You know, every time I play Dead Zone, it's a great game. If I lose, it's still a great game. I never enjoyed a game of Warhammer 7. Right, interesting. And then obviously I'm not you.

You know my painting isn't fantastic. It's not bad. It's not bad. It's not bad. It's not bad and and the guys come around to my house to play Mallifo actually his name was Tom Greenway and and and he would say you know Stumpy you know for for someone with no artistic background. You know you're the best painter I've seen.

You know, and I said that's that's a big compliment because you do have an artistic background and you know it's a backhanded compliment but I took it in the spirit it was intended. And where is Tom now?

Tom has obviously started Moonstone Miniatures you know, which is a fantastic game and I need to add to my my collections that's on my To Do List. He left London and went out West here in the UK and you know he has a marketing background and he has a he has he has a background in medieval martial arts as well. So he would, he paid a lot of money for this amazing suit of armor and then would kind of go and bash people up at the weekends.

And he loved Manafort, which is obviously a card based game. And so I think he kind of mashed the best of all of that, you know, all the moves he understood because he understands combat. You know, I roll the dice and imagine someone thumping someone. He understands that, you know, Knights didn't go clump, clump, clump. They were just as skilled as samurai, you know, That's what they were trained to do. That's how they did it. Anyway.

So, so I started thinking, look, this is not a great game. There must be other games out there. And so I dabbled in Malifo, which is a fact, which was a fantastic game with cards. And there was much less what's the word, you know, it was more with resource management than than managing risk. Which which I enjoyed. The downside of Mallifo was it took like you know 7 hours or five hours to play a game. You know, I'm I don't regard myself as particularly thick. I'm not.

I mean I haven't got the kind of mind that can kind of churn you know numerical risk in my mind as I go. You know I just have a go depending on how I see it So, so so I played a bit of that. I played a lot of Blood Bowl in a sense, specialized just in Blood Bowl ECBBL. He did a massive shout out. Lovely people, but mostly I got my butts handed to me every single week. They would have leagues and these were talented people who

just played this game. And so I would say, OK fine, look, I'm not going to be in your leagues because you know, because my job, I can't guarantee rocking up anyway. So I'll just turn up and play pickup games and got my butts handed to me in the pickup games. But anyway, but that was good fun. The problem was, was that at the end of each of these games, you know, I had to keep moving further and further out of London because of, you know, housing prices and you know as

you grow up and have a family. And I would find myself stuck in central London at like 11:00, 11/30 at night with like a two hour journey. And I was like, OK, this is not viable. And I discovered that there was a, you know, a friendly local gaming store very close here and they and they were delighted to get me, you know, you want a grasshopper guy who just got the collection gene in your pretty local gaming store. So, you know, and they are

absolutely lovely. They, they have a number of kind of work streams. They've got, you know, people who are the local community, They've got an online store and they go around the country and to every kind of war game show and just, you know, represent other people.

And that's the pit Gaming Shop and and that kind of totally opened up the world that you and I have just been discussing because I've now got, you know, loads of War Machine figures, loads of Malifo figures, that's old Hammer figures, Games Workshop figures. And there are now people there who will basically play pretty much anything with me.

And that's where I am today. And so a lot of what I kind of put out of the garage, what I painted on my channel, is reflective of what I'm about to play with these people in the store. And that is my tale. Wow, that's wonderful mate. What a colourful and what a colourful story that is too. You've been. You've been everywhere from South Africa to London and collecting various different things from railway houses to to Auckland goblins, mate. So it's quite an extensive

history, yeah. Well, The thing is, you know, I I do enjoy my job, I love my family. But The thing is you've got, I think you do have to do something for yourself. And I was reading a book called which is going to be on my channel at some point in the next couple of weeks. It's a book from 1986 called The Miniature Heroes for War Games or something, and it's a games Virtual book. Yeah, I love that book. I gave it away before I went. I went, I left to Japan.

It's my biggest regret. I like this book, but I'm going to read it put it on the channel and I'm sure we can work something out. You know, welcome to have it. It's just I'm not sure it's in about the 20 foot postage to Japan. But anyway so and they they, I forgot why, why I I mentioned it. Aye that's it. They said, you know, it starts off in the introduction saying you know, in because I think I don't know who wrote it. But there are a lot of deep

thinkers in this hobby. And the guy who wrote this book says, you know, in society we've all become highly specialized. You know, in a kind of post industrial world, in our jobs, what we do is so specific, which means that what we're doing every day is so specific. And he goes, and if you've got, if you want a bit of creativity in your life, you know, this hobby lets you collect, trade and assemble stuff, kid bash stuff in creative ways, paint stuff in creative ways.

And so, you know, we discussed what I do. I'm not going to disclose what it is, but, you know, it's not artistic in the slightest. And this has allowed me to do something which you know, can can tick a certain box and add a small spark to your life that actually enriches you know, your work and and and and and your life with your, with your family because you you can get the kids involved in all this.

I've done that and actually if I think about my work, fundamentally what I'm doing is I'm still making FX kits. People come to me to, you know, create conceptually something which you know is basically just a complicated kit that I've kit bashed. Right. OK. That's an interesting way of looking at it. Yeah, that's good mate. Quiz. I've already shown my flaws, which is my appalling memory. So you're wanting to ask me any question you want, but I'm always going to have a pop quiz.

I'm I'm going to have. I'm going to give you a choice. You've got Gav Thorpe. You've got Andy Jones, Jake, Let's see, Jake, what's Jake's last name again? Jake Thornton. That's it. And Jervis Johnson. So you've got those to choose from. And which one would you like? Which quiz? From which person? Any favourites? So say again, Gav Thorpe and Gav Thorpe. Andy Andy, Andy Jones, Jake Thornton and Jervis Johnson. Oh, Jervis Johnson. OK, so this is Jervis's favorite pub quiz questions.

So Jervis has put together the pub quizzes held at the tournaments we ran last year. Here are five of my favorite questions. Watch out, because they're not all about Games Workshop stuff. So #1 When did Games Workshop become a public limited company? This is the point at which they turn to the side of people. No, that's very, you would say it opens up to wider public scrutiny. I have no idea, but my guess would be it it could be quite late 2005. It's actually October 1994.

You're kidding. No. Yeah, because when I when I worked for Games Workshop, I went when I worked for Games Workshop, and that was I think 94 when I first joined. Yeah, Tom Kirby had already started running that company. Yeah. And Brian Ansel already left. I think he left about 92. I think Brian Ansel left in 9293. So obviously then then the the Tom Kirby era started in 1994, so. There's.

Good for them. Say what you want about them and people do naughtily kick them, but they are the pumping heart of the hobby. If they went, I'm not sure that all these, you know, one man bands would sustain it.

That's right, yeah. Because you know all the guests I have on the show, they all have their sort of lineage in in gaming through either being a red shirt for Games Workshop or having discovered Games Workshop through the local gaming store or whatever it might be. So everyone's come through the the GW induction mate, basically. OK, so two who absolutely will not stop, who absolutely will not stop, might be your savage or big boss. Listen, I'm not. I'm not big on the law, to be

honest. I mean it. It sounds like Gottreck. It says. They just keep going till they get killed. I don't know it. Says the Terminator. The Terminator. The Terminator. I don't really get that one. But who? Absolutely. Who will not stop. And maybe that's like a reference to the Terminator movie. I think that's what it. I think it's that's that's what it means. It's the Terminator movie. Arnold. Arnold Schwarzenegger. I was nothing to do with Games Workshop. No, because he says he.

So be careful because they're not all about Games Workshop stuff. I think that's what that was referring to. I I I would question the localness and validity of the question because you know at no point does the Terminator say you know he will not stop. I will not stop, I'm sure. But anyway, move on to the next. One OK now #3. The question three is is someone actually we we we talked about recently with Tom and some guys in Discord as my one of my favorite painters.

So who is the only person to win the Golden Demon Slayer Sword more than once now now this is in 1996 when this is published. So at this stage at 1996, who was the only person to win Golden Demon Slayer more than once? I have no idea, but I've got all the books I could go and research it, so just share it. Go on. This is a name from the past. Paul Robbins. Now, Paul. We've never got that.

OK, well he he was famous. We we we're just talking about it before actually, and I was, I'm actually repainting my Slayers and my Dwarf Slayers as I absolutely love those miniatures. And Paul did a beautiful diorama, I think in 1992, Golden Demon 92, he made this beautiful. Not a diorama, it's basically just regiments of Dwarf marauder dwarves on this scenic display base and it was absolutely gorgeous. It's my favorite golden golden demon Slayer and winning entry

of all time. So 4 In which hand does Jane Tsar hold the silent death? I don't even know who Jane Tsar is. Jane Tsar is one of the Phoenix Lords of the Banshees, the Howling Banshee Phoenix Lord for the Elder in one of 40K. OK, I don't know her right hand. It's a 5050 question, isn't? It it's actually the left hand. In the right hand she carries a blade of destruction, which would have been an extra point. But don't worry mate, you might

get the next one, The last one. Number five, What are the last words of the talking bomb in the film Dark Star? I've absolutely no idea. So what are the last words of the talking bomb in the film Dark? * All right, so look, everyone in our hobby is a sci-fi and fantasy geek who has seen many films in the genre, but I've never even heard of The Dark Star. Me either. I've never heard of Dark Star either, so let there be. Light is what he's the last words, the talking bomb, Said I. Mean.

That's very funny because of that, you know, Genesis. Genesis, you know, God says, you know. Let. There be light in the creation of the world, and this thing is making a gag in very dark humor because it's about it. Like eviscerate everyone in the room with the story of Genesis and creations.

That's cute. Now of course, if the one thing I love about the the new sort of live streams that I'm doing on YouTube is basically the same thing, but we have the interactions of the audience, podcasting can be a very kind of unknown place because you don't have any feedback. There's no sort of response, automatic response that we could have had a live audience feeding us information about this movie or giving you hints or answers to some of those questions to

help you out. You could have had the like they say in sports, the 11th Man helping you out there mate, during those questions, but alas. Maybe another time. The only thing is, is that, you know, YouTube is obviously a very visual medium.

And because, you know, I don't really want the world to know that I'm deeply passionate about Kev Adams dwarves in terms of my just credibility generally, I I it's not something we we we can do. I mean I'm reminded of when, you know, I went to this, this Blood Bowl club and this guy from work, you know, happened to bump into me and he said, you know, hey, you know, I live around the corner. What are you doing here? And I said, and I lied.

I said I'm just going to go have some drinks for some mates. And he kind of paused looking at me, you know, waiting to be invited. And I said and I kind of just, I half broke down, I'm joking. You know, I said, look, I said you can't tell anyone. I'm going to tell you because, you know, I thought I need to be offended that I haven't invited you out for drinks. I'm going to go into the, you know, the first floor of a pub and I'm going to play a board

game. But you know, which is based on American football and fantasy figures and dice. And we're going to do that for a few hours and, you know, have a drink and a Curry and then we're all going to go our separate ways. And you can't tell me when I work, I do this. And he looked at me and he

laughed. He was a very good-natured Canadian and he was just like, don't worry, he goes, your secret is safe with me. I'm glad that you're doing something which isn't just working till midnight, which is the joys of job. So you know one day when I retire. Yes, absolutely. Now look, so some people look, I really appreciate all this time, it's probably one of the longest podcasts I've ever had.

So thank you so much for giving us so many great insights and telling all these wonderful stories about, you know, the history of where you you've come from and how you got into the hobby and how the channel has evolved into something. Like you say it's something a distraction. It's a it's an escape from the ordinary or the stress of the of

the life and the work you lead. And it's a nice little thing that you can do for yourself and share it with people like myself that enjoy the contact that you make. So I'm really looking forward to the Heroes in War gaming book review that you're going to do soon. I I love that book. So that's really true. Old Hammer in all its glory. Thank you for having me on. You are a gift to the community, you know, because you know all about a workshop. You're a fantastic painter.

Your stuff is educational. It shows us behind the scenes, in front of the scenes and inspires us. And you're bringing people together, you know, and that's what the hobby is really about. So keep at it. Sophie, thank you so much, mate. That's very nice. That's really, it's lovely for you to say. And I I hope that, yeah, I can bring well, more awareness to people like yourself, your channels and the and the the, the people that I like watching and listening to.

Like the bomb, you can, you know, create light. That's right. So and then get in getting to meet you and saying, you know, actually talking to you, which is the best part. So I really appreciate it mate. So don't, don't keep stop, don't stop what you're doing. I think you're doing a really fantastic job out there with with Stompy 51 YouTube channel. So the links will be done down in the show notes of the podcast.

Please go down there because the affiliated links with Rosemary and Co and you know Stompy's channel links will be there. Plus anything else related to the podcast will be there, including the YouTube channel. So you can go and check out those live streams we'll be talking about during today's interview. So with that mate, look, go to bed. It's late. My day is just about the start. I live in your future my friend, so take care and we'll hope to see you and speak to you again

sometime in the future. Stompy. You will keep well, keep safe. OK. Thank you. Bye, bye.