Laserburn.

I said I was happy to have spoken to  Bryan Ansell at my first Wargames show, but that wasn't the first time I'd seen the him, oh, no, he'd been into TTG in the summer...

Tony Yates illo

So I suppose I need to write about why Bryan and TTG were linked in those days, and what happened to end this relationship.

TTG and Bryan had history going way back into the 70's, Kate had said the Bryan had first started casting miniatures in her kitchen on Acton Road in Arnold, but I am unsure whether she meant casting for Asgard, or Citadel, or why even he wasn't using his own kitchen (?!?), but hey that was the story...

Bryan had been instrumental is starting Asgard in the mid-70's, with I think at least two other people, Paul Sulley being one, and had sculpted quite a number of their early miniatures, but as always, with his eye on the main chance, he'd jumped ship in in the late 70's (78?) and started to work with Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone at Games Workshop to start Citadel miniatures.

Bryan's Robin Hood sample piece for GW

GW had a license to to produce Ral Partha in the UK, and had been importing for the past few years. Bryan, I was told by Richard, had submitted 5 self-sculpted minis to Steve and Ian and they were keen to become involved, so Citadel was founded, and started to produce minis from a lock-up garage off High Street in Arnold.

And it was a success.
By the early 80's Citadel were operating out of Newark, Notts, and making a large range of fantasy, sci-fi and historical miniatures and growing rapidly alongside Games Workshop.

In 1980 Bryan had tried to get a sci-fi game/rule-set printed through Games Workshop, and although GW (Steve and Ian) were sold on the idea, and went on to commission Sparefarers, a rule-set based around Citadel sci-fi range, they didn't use Bryan's rules. (details here on BoardGameGeek)

Spacefarers rule book cover by Tony Ackland

Quite how put-out by this Bryan was I don't really know, but regardless, within months Bryan was back with Bob, to set up Tabletop Miniatures to print Laserburn and produce a range of  miniatures to support it...

Laserburn was 15mm based, which I think was a bit of a revolutionary step back then... All GW/Citadels miniatures were in 25mm (inc Sparefarers), and maybe Bryan switched scales as a way of mollifying his partners at GW that he wasn't competing with them... or maybe he and Bob thought 15mm was a better scale for larger sci-fi battles, or possibly the move to 15mm was a trend, economic conditions generally weren't good in the early 80's, so maybe they figured a change to a smaller scale would get people buying, and 15mms were a growing part of the fantasy/sci-fi market, Asgard also produced their own 15mm ranges.

Laserburn was published in late 1980, and was quickly followed by a large miniatures range, covering all the types of troops necessary for the game. Looking back it was quite derivative, the basic game, as Bryan says on the BGG page given above, owed a lot to Western Gunfight games and the background given, to many other current 70's sci-fi staples, the Law Offices were borrowed from 2000AD's Judge Dredd, the Imperialist were classic Heinlein Starship Troopers, and the Red Redemptionists owed more that a little to the Fremen in Dune.

Law Officer (not Judge Dredd)

Tabletop Miniatures started casting this range out of the Daybrook shop, with a machine bought from Citadel, although I think the early miniatures were both moulded and cast in Newark, with Bryan doing the sculpting duties on all the minis, including TTM's range of historical as well...

By '83 when I got to TTG, the range was going cold, Bryan had stopped sculpting and writing for Laserburn, and although he did bring 5 new miniatures when he came to the shop in July or August, these were there first to have seen the light of day for a year or so, and would be the last he did with Bob. I was told after the event that Bryan had come to sign-off with TTM, handing ownership fully to Bob (& Kate) in exchange for a royalty on all his work.

At this point, from my view of it in the back kitchen, it looked like an amicable split, TTM had served its purpose, Bryan was moving on to bigger things and TTM had inherited a lots of Citadel 'staff' to work on side projects, including Rick Priestly, Tony Yates and Tony Ackland on sculpting duties...

But this wasn't really the end of Bob and Bryan's relationship, that comes tomorrow, 30 years ago...

(Interested in reading my copy of Spacefarers, check it out here, on my Scribd page)

First Show.

Wargames Conventions are, I assume, as old as Wargaming as a hobby...
Wargaming by it's nature, and unlike say, model railways or model flight, needs groups of people to make it worthwhile, so where two or three are gathered together, then a 'Show' and the accompanying Trade are bound to follow.

TTG used to have  big calendar in the back room on which were displayed all the events that Bob would be attending in the year. The Season, started in late January or early February and ran through the whole year with a few weeks off in the summer, until the last week in November or first in December... There would be a show almost every weekend, and Bob would attend most of them.
At the time names like, Triples and Midland Militare were all new to me, I didn't really know what went off at these events, all I really knew was that on these Saturdays, Bob would be out of the shop on the weekend, taking half of the shop with him, and Kate and the other Robert would be left alone to hold the fort.

Once Mark and I had started work it became obvious what a large part of TTG's business Conventions were. We would spend the later part of most Show-weeks, getting the stock ready, rules and games all counted and boxed, miniature stock filled to the brim and display cabinets repaired and updated with new items... and by Friday afternoon, there would be a large pile of heavily taped brown card-board boxes stacked by the door waiting for the command from His Lordship to load-up so that he could be away that evening, or early next morning.

Balrog in constant need of fixing...

Tuesdays the reverse would happen, all the stock piled near the door would have to be counted, filled or repaired again and stacked away waiting for the same to happen over and over again... Mark whose job it had become to repair the mini display cases, would become thoroughly sick of constantly having to re-stick dragon wings, or hydra heads to the fantasy range display or tank turrets that had 'taken a knock' in transit... 

Kate had promised Mark and I that when it can to the bigger two day shows later in the year, that Bob would take us one of us with him to help, which would mean a weekend away from home.

But...
The first major show, after the small summer pause, would not require us to go very far, as the British Nationals Championship would be held on our doorstep in Nottingham.

Arena, as I'm sure the event was called, was a result of  the Sherwood Foresters (off whom more later) winning the team prize at the previous years event, and opting to host the event themselves as was the tradition at that stage...

Victoria Leisure Centre

The event itself was held at Victoria Leisure Centre on the outskirts of central Nottingham, less than a mile from the city centre, over two days on I think the 17th and 18th of September 1983. The venue was split into two main halls, with games and Trade in the sports hall and more games and the Bring & Buy in the (covered) swimming pool hall...

From what I recall, Bob had set the trade stand up on the Friday evening so that when I got there on the Saturday morning there was very little in the way of work required of me for the first hour or so until the event opened, and I had chance to wander around... 

The centre of the hall was given over to the games championship, with those grass-green 6x4's borrowed from Notts Wargames Club featuring... but around the outside were other traders like TTG. Bob introduced me to Paul and Teresa Bailey, who had the Minifigs stand, next to them were Jacobite miniatures, who had travelled from Scotland for the weekend and also in the Hall were Dixon miniatures, whose adverts I had seen in White Dwarf magazine and many others.

Also there, taking up one side of the hall were Citadel miniatures. I was very pleased to speak to Bryan Ansell for the first time, He said hello and was I Bob's 'new boy', I was wearing a hand knitted jumper with the logo on, so I guess it wasn't too big a leap for him to make,  I asked about what new minis they had along that day... and in front of the Citadel stand was a huge siege game run by The Players Guild using the new Warhammer Fantasy rules.

And outside, were the Treasure Trap, Live Role Play people, who were offering a free weekend to anyone who could defeat their Champion in hand to hand combat. Mark had about 10 goes at doing this and I think eventually they just gave him the prize for persistence...

I don't really remember much about the weekend other than I spent a long time on my feet, serving customers with minis and rules, I left Bob to serve the people wanting the tanks, planes and ships, as these were well beyond my knowledge... and I came away on the Sunday afternoon with a Jacobite 15mm English Civil War royalist army (with which I hoped to start playing Tercio when I had some painted) 

I think John Blanche won the painting competition, with an Asgard half-troll stood on the most elaborate base I'd ever seen, it had resin as a water effect at the lower levels of it and I just had to (just HAD to) touch it to prove to myself that it wasn't real water... 

I can't really remember much about the games, Ancient and Medieval using WRG 6th, Renaissance using the new edition of Tercio, Napoleonic with To The Sound of the Guns, ACW using the Newbury rules and Modern and WW2 using WRG or maybe Challenger... Who won? can't remember... Not the Foresters, or Nottingham club, I think the over all Champions were The Bun Shop a London club, so the next years event would be theirs to organize.

Nottingham, and the Run.

As I implied in the last post, TTG was shut on Mondays, Bob would often not arrive back from Wargame Shows until Sunday afternoon, and I suppose that it was time-off to do banking and paperwork, without the shop bell ringing, or interruptions on the telephone...

Also on a Monday, Bob would get back in the van and take advantage of Nottingham's place in the Wargames world to get out to see other companies in our area.

Nottingham was not, as yet, known as the British Lead-Belt, a term which I don't think I heard first until the advent of the internet in the late '90's, but is was ideally placed, in the middle of three or four other little centres of miniature production.
Asgard, as I mentioned were in the City, not quite the center but in the city never the less, as were TTG's printer, Trent Printers in the Meadows area. To the south was Loughborough, home to Skytex, manufacturer of small scale tanks, boats and planes for the wargames trade, as well as the agents for Heritage minis in this country, and of course to the north-west in Newark were Citadel miniatures the big-boys of the hobby even then...

VW T2 Transporter

So Bob would jump in the van, and trundle off to see these other companies on a Monday afternoon, bringing back rumours and news from them, as well as picking up new stuff and out-of-stock items to for-fill mail-orders back at HQ.

It strikes me now just how much Bob devoted his life to the wargames industry, working all week at mail-order, spending his evenings typing  rules in preparation for them being printed, driving on Friday or Saturday to a show, standing all day (sometimes two days), and then driving home, only to jump into the van again on Monday to head-out on to The Run, to see all these other people.

Amazing...

But there was one more thing to fit into Bob's day-off  (?!?), and that was Nottingham Wargame Club... and that dear reader is where our travels will lead us, next time...

Asgard for the first time.

Ok, so my first Visit to Asgard was a bust...

But luckily I was making better friends with the lads at the D&D club and on one Saturday Simon Maze suggested that I go with him into Nottingham to have a look at the place...


Now from what I remember this was probably my first trip into Nottingham on my own, OK I wasn't on my own, I was with Simon, but without a parent, if you see what I mean...

I went to his house in the morning, he lived a mile or so from where I did, and we caught the bus in the City Centre... Simon had said that we should save our bus fare and walk, but Nottingham seemed like a million miles away to a lad of 13 so we spent the 7 or 8p that was the cost of the ride and got into the city as quickly as the bus would carry us...

The Asgard shop I first visited was on Commerce Square, which I was lead to believe was their second shop in roughly the same area of the City, off High Pavement, in what was then, quite a run-down area called The Lace Market.
The Shop, which was really nothing more than a front to a warehouse or old mill, was up a couple of big stone steps, with what I assumed was a little workshop and storage space to the rear...
The walls were lined, as was the fashion in those days, with a large areas of 'peg-board' racks, on which were hung all the miniatures they had in stock... Some Citadel, mostly fantasy adventures, some Ral Partha, and loads of Asgard minis they had made on the premise... and that was about it... No painted minis that I can remember, no gaming tables, no racks of rules and modules, just minis and a few old copies of White Dwarf magazine...
The chap behind the counter, I later learnt was Paul Sulley, who at this time owned Asgard...

I'd seen White Dwarf at the D&D club, someone would always have the latest copy, but a back issue took my fancy, so I came away with one mag and one mini... The front cover of the mag that had taken my interest was issue 20 something, with this excellent Les Edwards Ghoul on the Cover...

And the mini... well it was this this Ogre, FM63, a cracking model with tonnes of character...

 

So, I'd broken my duck with Asgard, it really did seem like a cool place, hidden away as it was, filled with all this stuff, and inhabited with what looked like an 'interesting' crowd of people... but little did I know that at this point, that the next time I was going to set foot in a wargames shop it wouldn't be Asgard but a new shop, almost on my doorstep... TTG was just about to come into my life..

My first metal miniatures

These are they then...

What Andy Black was showing me were these three (and I suspect a fourth, now broken) minis, wrapped in tissue paper...
They blew my mind....
We'd used bits of graph paper and the odd small dice or two for working out tricky D&D stuff like combats and party order and stuff, but the prospect of adding little men to the games was a terrific idea, more like the Miniature Wargaming I'd seen in the Airfix guides.

I wanted these, and I wanted more...

The two (badly) painted chaps on the flanks here, are both from Ral Partha, although a swift search fails to reveal which codes they are, or who designed them (help Dave please), but the chap in the centre, stripped clean of my childish gloss paint, is by Asgard miniatures, DA25 Gnome which is probably still on sale today...

Turned out Andy had bought these from Asgard, a shop, "near the courts", in Nottingham...

From what I remember, this revelatory experience was close to the end of summer term in 1980, and over the summer I promised to my Mum that I'd keep up the writing exercises that I had been given for my Dyslexia, if she would take me to Asgard to get me the D&D books before the new school year started... I did the exercises.

I got the books, not from Asgard, we couldn't find it, turns out I was by the wrong Courts, der... instead we got The Players Hand Book from Nottingham Model Soldier Shop and the DM's Guide and the Monster Manual from Beaties.

I can't say why I was less than excited by these other shops, NMSS had lots of minis, but they were mostly Minifigs historicals, which were of less interest then... Beaties was the biggest toy shop in town, but not cool...

So Asgard would have to wait for another time... I had a few tiny toy chaps, I had all the rules I needed... 3rd year was going to be a good year for D&D.

My writing and spelling improved too if you are interested, now I could write and spell; strength, intelligence, wisdom, constitution, dexterity, charisma, experience, armour class, hit points, equipment and "miscellaneous items", quite fluently...

Arnold Hill D&D club

So my first ever game of D&D was with Andy Chambers, and a lad called Grant Wesselby.
I was given a Half-Orc character by Andy, and unusually we were in a wilderness adventure.
It took me 20mins of so for me to get the jist of the role-play aspect, I just though Andy, the DM was doing a lot of talking about the set-up, but after I got-it, the world(s) just opened up...

TSR's advertising tag-line for this period was D&D; A Gateway to Adventure, which is pretty good, but for me D&D proved to be a gateway to imagination.
The possibilities were endless, just by imagining what we were doing we could be anywhere doing anything... and OK, mostly we'd spend our times in imaginary 10' x 10' dungeon rooms killing Goblins, but in theory we could have been doing anything...

And it wasn't just D&D, there appeared to be loads of these types of games around, Gamma World, Tunnels and Trolls, and more traditional board games with sci-fi and fantasy twists; Rivets, Ogre, Dungeon, loads of them... and we used to make games up... all this stuff  stuck me as a perfect way out of dull Thursdays (any day!), so everyday from then on, it was off to L7 for an hour or so of escapism...

One morning I came into school, and fellow D&D'er Andy Black said, would I like to see these... and in a old bacca-tin  he had three or four tiny model dwarves, he said he'd got them from Asgard...

I can't remember if I gave him my dinner money there and then, but by the end of the day those minis WERE mine...

Next up... My First Minis & Asgard, where was this mythical place...