Saturday 19 December 2015

There and Back Again....



"Testing, testing..."

I'll get straight to the point. As a kid, from roughly 1982 until 1987, I loved Fantasy Wargaming. More specifically it was Games Workshop Fantasy Battles Editions One and Two. The first ruleset was purchased by a school mate from our local toy shop in Melton Mowbray, which is where we'd bought our first miniatures from. It's worth noting that none of us really knew what 'to do' with them other than they looked cool and collectable. A lady in the shop had mentioned something about her husband painting them, so given this cue we dug out our old humbrol enamels and started gathering in each others bedrooms for (some rather amateurish) painting sessions. There was a memorable moment when I was banned to the arctic wastes of the garage to pursue my new hobby after getting paint on the carpet one evening.

The rules suddenly gave us a whole structure and impetus to collecting the figures. Even though we didn't fully understand them, we started to have some fun games just rolling dice and moving the figures around the living room floor. I recall having some old Hinchliffe Arab figures I'd bought from a Wargames shop in Plymouth, and even they got involved some how.

Humble beginnings, but those early days have always provided a basis for my Wargaming. "Am I having fun? Does this inspire my imagination?". If it doesn't then you're probably ready to jack it in and take up fishing..or console gaming perhaps.

Fast forward and I came back from living abroad and hooked up with my local Historical Wargaming Club. I have to say, that what attracted me was the lively community aspect, the broad range of games that people were happy to play ("just paint up some figures and get them on the table!!" was how one member replied to my enquiries about where to start). It was also fantastically creative with loads of scratch built terrain and models from all different manufacturers. This last sentence is probably quite telling when compared to the journey GW has been on over the years - and probably something I don't really need to go into right now.

Anyway, the last number of months has revealed to me the wonderous entity that is the Oldhammer Community and in particular the Oldhammer forum. When I started reading the posts and following other blogs on there I became determined to start exploring and painting some of the original figures again and buying up the early publications. The picture above is my first couple of purchases in getting my old collection together again.

I've also bought a significant amount of lead (lots of Undead, some lovely Kev Adams Dwarves and Goblins etc), so expect some photos of my painting endeavours, battle reports and other waffle.

To quote a song, sometimes "you've got to go backwards to go onwards"

1 comment:

  1. Looking forward to reading more of your stuff Matt :)

    You may want to add a "follow" button on the sidebar too?

    ReplyDelete