The Road to Warhammer... and beyond...

You may have wondered what happened to this blogger. Did I vanish after a period of jaded frustration, disappearing like a whiff of magical smoke? Was I seriously ill once more? Did the little, blue things that jabber in the darkness of the twilight hours finally consume me?

None of those things. 

The cause was simple and of the material realm... divorce and the financial desolation that inevitably follows. Home gone, belongings lost and the lead pile scattered. One day during lockdown I had a family and the next, I didn't. 

The years that followed involved moving from one temporary home to the next. Then, just over twelve months  ago we were able to buy a little rundown bungalow in the depths of Essex. And by 'the depths' I really do mean that. Its a tiny English village with a cricket pitch, a pub, a village hall and a huge village green. That's it... though a very large pond spreads beyond my front garden where herons and deer drink in the misty mornings, the very bank dropping from the edge of my lawn. 

I share this home with a nice new 'non-lead loving' lady and our offspring - who rotate around as families of this type do. 

All my logins for Facebook, Blogger etc were stored on what was the family computer and it took time to get the machine back in my possession but it was old then and I had difficulty getting it running again. It sat under a desk for years with me occasionally glancing at it and reminding myself to fix that damn thing, even if it was to just get the photographs from my children's early days back. 

Providence struck recently at work where during training the security system was updated. We ended up locked out of our computers and iPads and the technician who arrived to disentangle the wires and unpick the technological scramble sat in my room pontificating. As he worked he showed me how to retrieve passwords as an aside, and I stored that little nugget for future use. 

School ended with carols on the playground but a sickness bug at home. I found myself at last adrift in a house full of poorlies isolated to the spare room. Suddenly, the urge to set up the old computer raised its groggy head and with trepidation I put the thing back together again... many hours later I managed to retrieve my account details and port them over to my new computer. I thought to clear my profiles as my new partner and I had a very serious 'no social media' agreement out of necessity but with the passing of time and the defeat of those to set out to make our new chance in life as difficult as possible, I decided to retain them, at least for a while. 

Fiddling around on Facebook trying to clear out my old life, I saw a link posted by old GW staffer Graeme Davis about an Oldhammer Youtuber. This caught my interest as when this blog was started over twelve years ago Youtube and Facebook were very different entities. I was astonished at what I saw... hours of carefully put together Oldhammer content and a mention of this very, long dead I might point out, blog....

The Youtuber is called Jordan Sorcery  and the post he put out was called 'The best Oldhammer resources online' 

I was amazed that anyone would still be looking at my old ramblings let alone recommend them to others but they very much are, and some of you were kind enough to inquire about where I was and what I was doing.

So here I am. A week ago I planned to wipe this blog and disappear into the unknown. But it seems that on a whim my plans will have to change. And I'm going to have to do something about four years of spam on my previous post. 

Enough of the lamentations of days past and celebrations of those enthusiasts that came after me.  This blog was never meant as a personal diary listing life's many woes and should quite rightfully concern itself with it's raison d'existence: Old School Warhammer. 

But why this particular hobby? And why this particular era in question? How did a quiet school boy who ate alphabeti spaghetti on toast and watched Wack-a-Day during the holidays become such an fan of fantastical little lead men and the designers who created them? And why did he end up writing a blog for many years, inspiring so many others, meeting his heroes and painting up more miniatures than he could count?

What not football, like so many of my contemporaries? 

Or motorcars?

What on earth drove my to amass such a varied collection of memorabilia over twenty years or more?

Having pondered this question this morning, I think I have already answered my own question. It was a journey of influences big and small and the culture of 1980s Britain that instilled in me this fascination, perhaps former obsession, with a particular range of tiny little men. I suspect that you all have similar journeys, though unique in their twists and turns. 

I'm calling this my 'Road to Warhammer' and curiously enough this list and the idea for this blog post has lain undisturbed since I left it here unpublished in 2017. Of course, I have totally rewritten it for the present for this is a very different era than the one that saw this blog first published. There was very little online about this era in 2012 save The Stuff Of Legends and the Citadel Collecting Group. Now, you guys are swamped. 

Anyway, Back to my 'Road to Warhammer'. What influences lead me to picking up that copy of WD all those years back and falling in love with the imagery and ethos of that time? Well we have a curious collection of TV shows, films, computer games and even breakfast cereals!!? 

The Road to Warhammer 

Lets get going down that road shall we?

He-Man

The first stop along our road has to be He-Man. I don't think its the little lead men that fascinate me as much as that '80s aesthetic, no doubt tinged with nostalgic memories of the comfort of childhood. A time when men were men, and women women and they both wore leather and fur swimming attire as they did battle with the evil forces of the rival toy line. 

He-Man is probably the start of my fantasy loving story that ends with Warhammer (as shown in its 3rd edition) and the late Bryan Ansell's vision for his Citadel Miniatures. I had many of the early figures and have plenty of happy memories of playing with them and of course watching the TV-Show. Here the archetype of the musclebound hero made popular by a strange concoction of Robert E Howard and Arnie in the early '80s classic Conan the Barbarian. It would be many years after, when I was at university, that is discovered this connection of course but to my '80s self He-Man was as wonderful and as original as anything else. 

The heroic proportions are all there, the bright colours, the single poses the simple but striking designs and of course the fantastical landscape in which they resided. It being an American show, the struggle between good vs evil is very evident and not in anyway subversive, as it was in the UK at the time. 

Robin of Sherwood

Richard Carpenter's gritty take on the story is tinged with fantasy and dark peril. Here the roles of good and evil are not so clearly defined (Ray Winstone's Will Scarlett in particular) and the outfits are more realistic than the tripe that is served for the so called 'modern audience' - whoever they might be.... many of the wood elves from the earlier '80s have a very Robin of Sherwood vibe to them, at least in my eyes and this classic slice of British TV was another stepping stone towards getting into Warhammer. 

As I said with He-Man, there is a vibe to fantasy in the '80s that I just love. You can see it in the episodes of Robin of Sherwood and you can see it here with Skarloc minus his elf rangers. Its a vibe I find hard to define at the moment but hosiery (the medieval kind) and fur fashioned swimming trunks seem to be very much it, along with a kind of fantastical realism I suppose - no improbably big weapons in oversized hands yet.

Dungeons and Dragons TV Cartoon 

Can't really not mention this classic from the '80s. Its all there you know, the bright colours, the simple yet defining character designs and the fantastically realistic look of the costumes and equipment. Also, could it be argued that Venger's wings make him the first bloodthirster of Khorne!?

Have you been moonlighting again Venger, really!? And put down that whip you'll have someone's horn off!

Krull

One of the earliest fantasy type films I can remember seeing vividly is Krull. It was on one Sunday afternoon when my Dad was looking after my sister and I, my mother was probably asleep upstairs as she was a nurse who worked nights back then. I've never seen it since if truth be told and I'm rather glad that I didn't as to the modern eye it doesn't seem well appreciated today.

I of course loved the strange star shaped weapon wielded by the hero of the film... it was called the Glaive ( a name that no doubt inspired the vengeful thargoid ships in Elite Dangerous in recent years) and is certainly an unique '80s weapon. I can't think of any minis from the Citadel line sporting one but I wouldn't be surprised to find one if we all looked hard enough.

Labyrinth

What do you think about when someone mentions the name of this '80s classic? David Bowie's tights (more hosiery!!?), the bizarre musical numbers, the bit when Hoggle urinates visibly and we all laughed? For me its those goblins... or what I feel a goblin should look like, complete with dubious British accent, spindly legs and medieval accruements. They need to be sneaky, gangly, brown or green and rather naff at anything but squabbling to be a real goblin... oh how I miss the '80s take on the little green villains of yesteryear. 

Of course, Kev Adams would dominate GW for years with his take on what a goblin should look like and I loved the creatures so well that my daughter, when she was small, was nicknamed the goblin by me... I used to tell her she would turn green if she was too naughty... ha ha!

This film no doubt set me on the steps to loving small little amusing creatures... you can nver have too many goblins. The 'Road to Warhammer' goes ever on, Mr Baggins. 

The Never Ending Story

The bit when the horse dies.... sniff sniff.... traumatised us all back then and probably still does if we watched it today. Though, looking back its the wonderful monsters that catch my eye. they seem so characterful and solid... unlike today's ephemeral CGI creations. Each one as unique as the other, very much like the myriad of monsters you were confronted with in the bestiary of the 3rd Edition rulebook. 

I think creating monsters and creatures using computer software is a 'job' today. The highly skilled movie people who produce the beasts for the Marvel superheroes to battle are all exceptionally talented but they NOT passionate about it... its something that pays the mortgage. Back in the '80s, the people designing and building this creatures did it as it was a passion, a least to my eye, and passion was certainly evident across all of the GW lines in the 1980s. 

Ah, the time before HR and the corporate voice... lament dear enthusiast!

Willow

The final film on my list is Willow. Released in 1988 and very much in my minds eye when I first caught site of White Dwarf 107 in the newsagent in Wareham. I loved this film and I can remember collecting the scenery and figures released in breakfast cereal at the time. I'm pretty sure it was spring or summer and I played with these to death...

Here's the ad from the back of a box of Corn Flakes circa 1988.

The art style is there... fantastic but grounded in a kind of reality. These simple figure and character scenes stay in my mind as clear and they were 37 years ago and were certainly a forerunner of my later love for Citadel. I'm pretty sure these really caught on at my school too and these were traded on the playground for some weeks. I bet some fan of these old cereal toys is typing a blog somewhere in the world as I type or slaving away, a prisoner to the algorithm, on social media somewhere, no doubt drenched in ads.

Is it me, or is there some hosiery present again? 

The medieval kind, obviously. Clearly an important factor along my road.

M.U.S.C.L.E.S

I can't think of any other toy that set me on the path to collecting miniatures than these M.U.S.C.L.E.S. They were supposed to be wrestlers but back in the mid '80s I didn't know what a wrestler was... these were just pink little men who duffed each other up and came in attractive 10 packs,as can be seen here.

I had loads of these and there seemed to be a never ending supply of imaginative designs for me to pour over. I used to play with these in a neighbouring child's sandpit and we'd build huge castles and trench lines for they to fight over, only to see them all buried in the battle. We'd carefully excavate them afterwards in a bizarre form of archaeology which would later take me to university to do much the same, not with Citadel miniatures then though sadly. 

Hang on, don't wrestler's wear tights?

Fighting Fantasy

What can I say about the influence on Fighting Fantasy on me? Blog post after blog post could be lavished on that as I had loads of the books back then and they were probably the first proper exposure to the black and white scrawly '80s artstyle that I love so much. Out of the Pit was a fantastic book and one I didn't actually own. There was a copy in my middle school library and I used to lord over it imagining all of the wonderous creatures that were contained within. 

This book was the first glance I had at what later became known to me as bestiaries. Books of beasts that described the horrors that awaited in dark places and a taste of the creativity and passion that the creators of these things seemed to have in spades back then. Pretty sure that the striking image of this cover-art lead me towards the joys of Chaos in Warhammer and the naming of this very blog. 

By the way, is that Venger again up the back? Those wings get everywhere!

Knightmare 

This one is massive... Knightmare was fantasy before I knew what fantasy meant. The unique '80s gameshow were kids were sent to their deaths beneath the grinning image of a disturbing computer generated skull. I must have watched the very early seasons when the show was very much dungeon bound. I can remember overlaid spiders, rubberfaced walls that spoke in riddles and the inevitable deaths of the players by crumbling ledges, swinging axes and trapdoors...

Yet the art style follows what I love and that matt painting could just have easily been the backdrop for a flyer from a Citadel advert circa 1987. Tregard's face could have easily fitted in with the other grainier visages you could see at the bottom of the contents pages in White Dwarf in the latter '80s. 

Now that you mention it, wasn't this also John Blanche's look back then? Bryan Ansell told me a story once that John was the first man in England to have a company motorcycle over a car... that said he did have an amused twinkle in his eye when he told me that so take it as you will. 

C64

I loved the c64 so much. Before I knew about Warhammer I played on this machine to death, and after the company sold and the flavour of product changed I went back to it. I remember cancelling my White Dwarf subscription in March 1991 and ordering ZZap64 again.. and by subscribing, I mean asking the fag stained newsagent at the end of my road to order it instead.

He had a finger missing... the stuff you remember when writing at length. He also wore similar jumpers to Phil Collins at the time.

Still, this little computer opened my eyes to fantasy gaming even though for much of it I had NO IDEA what was going on in any of the games. I hardly ever read the instructions and many games were baffling to me, but nonetheless I loved them all. In fact, I loved the system so much I bought one of the modern Retro Games Ltd versions a few years back. 

Just got the Speccy version too. 

Can't wait to run Heroquest again.

Barbarian 

Perhaps this one game is why I love the classic barbarian fantasy look from the '80s so much. The fur clad undergarments, the R.E.H bulging thews and of course the brutality of unfiltered fantasy in an age before offence. 

Imagine a 8 year old of today unwrapping this classic... the cover adorned with a page 3 model and the man who would shortly be Wolf from Gladiators on the cover. And yes Nana, you can cut their heads off!

Hmmmm, that backdrop would look great as a low-fi image to frame any future miniatures I might paint, if I can find any of them again. 

At least I have the pictures on here to remind me of the glory days. Ahh, nostalgia for nostalgia! 

Ultima V: The Warriors of Destiny

This came with the c64 but I had no idea how to play it. I just liked exploring the world in much the same way that the WFRP supplements allowed me to traverse the Old World. Strangely enough, in the first lockdown I managed to get this working on an old laptop and nearly completed it before the day of judgement came and I had to leave everything behind. Perhaps I should go back one day?

And Beyond...?

And so ends my strange rambling list of things I loved that turned me into the sort of young person who would want to buy a copy of White Dwarf in November/December time 1988 and begin the whole journey that would see me creating this blog, being part of the Oldhammer movement and finally playing 3rd edition properly with likeminded folk.

And to think those of us who were there in the beginning thought we might get up to 10 people interested in the idea!!

Strangely enough, its not the end of the story. Because my Road to Warhammer continued over the last few years too. After finding somewhere to live in the second lockdown I was able to take with me a gaming PC. I had always wanted one and picked one up in August of 2020 weeks before judgement day. My love of old school fantasy seemed to follow me with it and a number of Warhammery things caught my attention. 

For a long while it was just me and that computer.

I feel that they have many of the things in common that I have waffled on about in this long blog post.

1) A realistic world that is fantastical but based on a gritty reality.

2) Plausible weapons and armour - not to mention a good deal of historical hosiery.

3) Imaginative monster designs - with a copious bestiary, sadly seldom presented with stats though. 

4) A touch of the subversive - zany irrelevance please

5) Made with passion - sadly lacking in today's tickbox 'creative' meetings.

Witcher games

I've played through all of these... save the DLC from the 3rd game. Shades of the Old World hang everywhere here and the world of perilous adventure promised by Warhammer 3rd edition and its sister game WFRP is very evident here. 

There are even a few German sounding names to riff off too not to mention the common theme of hosiery clad guards and one of two ladies... Oh Yennifer and your undergarments... sigh.

Skald Against the Black Priory 

I played through this earlier in the year. Its on Steam but has '80s inspired c64 graphics and a deep Lovecraftian tone. Lovecraft's writings of cosmic horror is very much part of the Warhammer setting in the warp, at least for me. This game is well worth a play if you had read this through and have found yourself agreeing with or remembering much of my journey. 

It also takes a fair bit of design philosophy from the Ultima games so that is a big YES YES for old Orlygg. I'm hoping for a sequel. 

Baldur's Gate 3

Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader 

These two games are what I am currently playing., The world building, depth and intricacies of CRPGs are the closest thing to old school Warhammer that I have today. Baldur's Gate was a joy, especially the character creation. That's something I loved about WFRP. I never got to play much but made up no small amount of wonderful characters. 

Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader is fantastic too, if more in the vein of 'modern' 40k. Getting to walk about and explore the world of 40k on your own terms is rather wonderful and Owlcat have put a lot of passion into the project.

I must admit to having read half way through the Horus Heresy novels over the last few years too... do they count as Oldhammer now?

Joke...

But what of my Oldhammer stuff? 

I mean, looking back I have been on this wonderful journey for nearly 40 years. Somewhere out there are my painted figures, my boxes of books and magazines and my enormous lead pile.

But where? And even if I did get my hands on them again could I still paint a figure to the same standard I could all those years ago?

Would it be possible to go from nothing again to field a fantasy army once more on beautiful scenery with those who share the spectacle and passion of days long past.

What about the wonderful souls I met on my journey? I hope they are well and prosper somewhere. Paul, Steve and Steve, Stuart, Chico, Garth, Geoff and all the others. Great grognards all..

Guess we are going to have to find out...

Orlygg

PS: I am not a robot