Challenger and IT Terrain.

Odd how things coalesced, and one day can define years to come...

Occasionally in this Life in Miniature, I 'be been around successful protects, at GW late in the 80's they came thick and fast, in the 90's it was amazing to watch Magic: the Gathering grow from nothing to a world beater, but TTG's little (micro) success, stems from the summer 1983 launch of Challenger, the 1/300 scale micro-tank game set in the 'Ultra Modern' period.

Challenger, written by Bruce Rea-Taylor, and published through Table Top Games, is a simulation wargame based on the  supposed escalation of the NATO/WarPact Cold War to a point where hoards of Soviet Armoured Divisions roamed into Western Wargamerland.

Quiet if this was simulation, dystopian fiction or wish fulfilment, I can't really say, At what point would a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, have not provoked a nuclear  response, and made all these tiny tanks piles of radioactive dust? Or maybe this was after 'the bomb' and the elephant in the room was that all these little model towns, hills and road junctions were already a radio active wastelands, but still strategically important...  in either case, a certain type of British gamer started to lap it up, and Ultra Modern was a big success, in TTG terms, for the remainder of the 80's.
Within a year or so it was adopted for Nation Championship play, making it the game of choice for both Marxist teachers and Civil servants, looking to advance the cause of Communism, and camo-jacketed maths junkies, holding out for Freedom.

Over the next 10 years Challenger and all it's updates, digests, and army lists would keep TTG in a steady stream of sales that drove the tiny company forwards, and I think this period was the happiest I ever saw Bob, he liked the rules, he loved the period, and he was great chums with Bruce, a larger than life figure, who quiet clearly loved his hobby, and the (niche-sized) recognition it brought him.

Bruce's Rules (published through TTG)

No pictures of Challenger I on t'interweb, unless you know better...

Challenger

Challenger Revised Edition

Challenger II

Challenger 2000

           

Battlezones - Scenarios for the Ultra Modern Period

Corps Commander OMG (Div Scale)           

Firefight (Modern Skirmish)

Ultra Modern Army Lists and Organisation Volume 1 Challenger

Ultra Modern Army Lists & Organisation Volume 2 Challenger

Digest No. 3 - Challenger / Corps Commander

Digest 4 Ultra Modern Army Lists for Challenger II Rules

Digest 5 Ultra Modern Army Lists for Challenger II Rules  

Modern Aircraft Handbook - Aircraft Details & Weapons for Challenger II           

Revised Modern Aircraft Handbook - Aircraft Details & Weapons for Challenger II

And...
Bob used to clean up on the miniature sales for the games too, buying in Skytrex, and Heroics and Ross, tanks and vehicles, the only brands available freely in the UK, and stripping them from their packaging and reselling them at just below original price... Those camo-jacketed gamers could be seen in droves at any show TTG attended, heads down perusing lists and scraps of paper for micro armour at 33pence a pop...

On a couple of occasions both Skytrex and H&R both put a stop on selling to Bob, he just bought around through other people, before getting back into good-books with both companies, and at least once trying to buy Skytrex's range to tie our rules to their models.

Bruce died suddenly in the late 80's, from what I suspect would be described as a life-style related condition, smoking or weight related, and Bob would never be the same person after, the wind gone from his sails...

Ok then, and now for the odd coincidence, on the very same day the TTG took delivery of the first batch of Challenger rules (mid-summer '83?) Bob had a visit from a chap, whose name I never knew, who bought samples of his new companies product to 'pitch', polystyrene terrain and tiles.

2 of the first poly tiles in the world...

These things would over the next few years become almost standard items for large numbers of wargames, but as yet were an untested idea. People used to bring ideas to Bob quiet a lot, I suppose his opinion must have been valued by those wanting to get into the hobby, as the chap from Integral Terrain had done, most were given short shrift, but Bob spotted this as a winner straight away and bought whatever samples the guy had, a few packs of small, medium and large hills, and 3 or 4, two feet square, terrain boards...

I remember  Kate saying, "what fools are going to pay £6 for 2 feet of polystyrene covered in green flock?" with complete disdain... seconds before Mark and I tore into the stock to buy up whatever stock Bob had acquired minutes earlier...

And that's the way it went, gamers knew a great idea when they saw it, and TTG would sell out of Integral Terrain whenever we got new stock in, what gamers had used  previously; green baize or cloth, was cheap and easy, but looked bad, plywood tiles with Tetrion 'hard modeled' on looked good, but needed a village hall to store it in, and a team of volunteers to lift into place, sand-trays were versatile but heavy and attracted cats (!!!)... polystyrene solved a load of these problems, light, adaptable and uniform they gave a gamers a handy battlefield that could be changed to suit many games and was easy to break down and store in a small (ish) area.

So on that evening, Mark bought half a dozen T72's and M60's, which he quickly daubed with green and olive paint, and the pair of us tried, almost in vain, to get some kind of enjoyment out of the maths equation that was Challenger...

I can't say ever I did get a great deal of mirth from the game, then, or on any of the two or three occasions I've played since, but on that night, with some brand new Ultra Modern rules in hand, and some state of the art polystyrene terrain to play on, we could definitely say, the 80's started here...

Tabletop Games

Ok, well the previous posts clears the Old School games out of the way, and I can get into the meat of the next stage of this blog.

Tabletop Games, had been a new comer to the wargames scene in the early 70's, Kate told us (new boys) that the company had grown out of Bob's dissatisfaction with the currently available wargames rules for the Napoleonic period that he playing at competitive level at that time.
Quite what his beef was with the sets they were using I never got to the bottom of, ask him and you get a mumbled responses about "riflemen lying down" and the only way you could "kill them, was with Lancers..."  quiet why this got at him I have no idea... but it did, so when in 1973 Bob won the National Napoleonic title, and I assume, as part of team, was invited to host the following years tournament, he threw away the old rule set and wrote his own.

Bob's rules for Napoleonic warfare were used at the 1974 National Championship.At first they were just given away to competitors, but reaction must have been favourable, because shortly after they were being published by the infant Tabletop Games.

Cover by Rodger Heaton

Tabletop in seems was a partnership at its inception, Bob of course wrote the rules, and the other Partner, Rodger Heaton did all the illustrations.
Kate also told a tale about Richard Butler being there at the start of the company, but not becoming a partner in the business at the last moment because of the finance necessary.
Richard would later go on to write his own set of Napoleonic wargames rules used for National Championship games, To the Sound of the Guns, which TTG published, and Bob and He would remain firm friends.
Richard was one of the few people who wouldn't stop when arriving at the shop, he'd hustle on through to the back rooms without stopping, not even noticing the bemused wooden-top shop assistant sitting on the stool, with his speechless mouth open...

When or how the split with Rodger occurred I don't know; all the early games (series 1 & series 2) had an address given as Ruddington, which is a couple of miles outside central Nottingham, which I'm assuming is his, and all these early games, and many of the early rule sets published, used his illustrations as covers, or scattered though-out the text. By the late 70's Rodger seems to have dropped out of TTG leaving Bob and Kate as the sole proprietors, to run the business from the home on Acton Road in Arnold.

OK then, back after a short break, with the early TTG micro-games, and all the other products of the late 70's and early 80's

Interested in reading Bob's Napoleonic rules?
Check them out here on Scribd.

The Severed Alliance

(80's joke in the title...)
So it came as a bit of a shock to get to work on the 8th of November 1983, and find Bob in a terrible mood, Kate warned us (Mark and I), just to stay out of his way when he was in a foul mood, so we kept our heads down and got on with whatever we had to do...

Shame really coz  I'd had a terrific weekend, for the first time I'd travelled away to help out at a wargames show... and not just any wargames show, oh no... this was the BIG one.

Northern Militaire was held on the 5th and 6th of November in Oldham, at the Queen Elizebeth Hall.  Bob had travelled up on the Friday evening but I went on the Saturday morning with Rees (if memory serves we went up in an escort-type hire-van rented from the place where his wife worked... it's was foggy on the M1 and I remember Siouxsie and the Banshees version of Dear Prudence on the radio...)

Queen Elizabeth Hall, Oldham

TTG had a huge stand at the event by Bob's standards, which is why Rees and I travelled up, and Bob roped in the willing hands of Bruce Rea-Taylor to make four of us to cover the 24 feet.
My section of the stand was made up of the extra stock that Bob had arranged to bring from Citadel.
That same weekend was Games Day in London, and of course Citadel/GW were directing all their efforts toward that.

A deal was struck to exchange stock between Citadel and Bob, so that we could both have a presence in, and a profit from, both events.
Rik Priestley and Richard Halliwell had come to the shop in Daybrook square to bring stock for us to take to Oldham, and also to take away TTG rules and minis for sale in London.

Northern Mil. was amazing for a young'un like me, it was so BIG, a couple or three floors and although there were only a few games on, it was primarily a modelling event, there was a much greater variety in displays, traders and public than a normal wargames event...
And boy were we busy... now in my time I've stood trade shows like Salute or Games Day where the public have been three or four deep at the stand, but nothing came close to the two days of Northern Mil.

"Used to be better in the old place..." grumbled my Boss, "... Never recovered from the change of venue..." But if shows did get bigger and better than this, I would have been amazed.

Games Day '83, note the date.

I remember being driven through Oldham in the dark, heading for the hotel, and the road ran through all the old back to back houses, which were lit with fires and fireworks... Punch drunk and tired I sat drinking cola listening to the old Chaps joke in the bar... perfect.

Sunday, more of the same... Non stop customers... and non stop music too... They used to play Top 20 War Film Themes over and over, all day long on the public address system... Even Bob who liked a movie film theme, would be tiring for 636 Squadron by 11am on Sunday morning...

I bought some minis, a second hand Japanese Samurai army from the Bring& Buy. (more stuff for Tercio)

No club on Monday, a night off after a two day event, and then into work again on Tuesday as normal.

Or not...
It transpired that Bob was fuming because all the stock, minis, rules, displays, that we had sent to Citadel had not been taken to Games Day, they had been left behind and TTG would get no presence, or profit, from the event despite having to work double-hard to do two major events in one weekend, and working hard and taking extra staff/space to sell the Citadel stuff at Northern Mil.

I don't know if Bob even spoke to Bryan on the normal Monday 'Run' or not, but as far as Bob was concerned, that was it, The End.
Over that week, Bob had me take down all the Citadel miniatures stock from
the rack in the shop, other things would take its place, and we would have no more contact with Citadel.

So, people often say to me, "oh the golden age of Game Workshop was such and such... 85-87, or 88-91, or mid 90's". Well for me the golden age of Citadel miniatures ran from the time that they started on the Fantasy Tribes (81?), until the 8th of November 1983, the day that I found out that you couldn't trust them, and they were only looking out for No.1.

And what next dear reader?
Why I suppose we need to judge Citadel's actions in context, so next time, I'll muse on the changes in Citadel in the years of 82 and 83...

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.

Casting

Tabletop's casting operation was tiny...

The whole place, shop, warehouse, casting room and Bob and Kate's living space was situated in two three story Edwardian terrace houses with shop fronts... When I started they didn't need all the space they had so the 'house' above the second shop (55 Mansfield Rd Daybrook) was rented out to a couple of Police officers, who would come and go though the shop or back rooms at will.

The shop fronts were backed by a small room with a fireplace which I assume would have been the main living room in days gone by, but either Bob or the previous occupants had had the living space moved up-stairs and added a kitchen and Bathroom on the first floor... But at the back of the old main room was what might have been the old kitchen, or scullery, a room 4 yards square that opened on to the 'back-yard'... this was where all the casting was done.

When I started they had one casting machine, an ex-Citadel, swinging weight thing powered by a belt driven motor. White metal casting works by spinning a circular mould at a few 100 RPM and then dropping the hot metal into the central feed-hole and letting gravity, centrifugal and centripetal forces do their work...

Saunders Spinning weight machine similar to the TTG one

The only real issue with this is that it works too well, and pressure is needed to stop the still hot metal from shooting out the sides of the mould. Early machines, like TTG's, had three 'towers' place evenly on the spinning plate from which swung levers with weights attached which when spinning, swung outward and levered the top plate shut.
Cleaver huh?

Well to a certain extent it was an ideal way to work, but unfortunately it had one big draw back... The areas in-between the swinging weight would receive less pressure that the rest of the mould, and as a result these areas would flash (excessively fill) the cavities and if these cavities were large or particularly close to the edge of the mould, the still molten metal would shoot out of the mould and spray the inside of the machine... and as the lids on these machine were quite low to the spinning plate, and never shut satisfactorily, the metal would spray from the machine and blast a line of cooling lead alloy across the crotch of the operative... It didn't hurt, fortunately, but it would leave a line of metal embedded in the trousers of every caster in town... For years after it was possible to tell people who were working in the same job as me for other companies, by the 'Caster's Crotch' they all had...

In the middle of the summer of '83 TTG took delivery of another new casting machine, and this one was a bit different. The new machine, with an electric motor driving it's spinning plate directly, and its pressure controlled by a pneumatic ram was a huge step forward. Speed and pressure were now controlled by the caster, allowing for minor adjustments to keep a warming mould spinning for longer in a day. Previously a mould would have to be rested to cool once the swing weights could no long apply enough pressure to keep it running without the flash becoming too bad...

The new machine was delivered by MCP (Multi-Coupling Pneumatic), with a gentleman called Ray Tutt doing the fitting, whist his boss Mike chatted with Bob and Richard. Ray said that the machine that was being delivered was the first in a run of new machines which Citadel had ordered to replace their old spinning weight machines, and we were getting the prototype model ahead of them.

The new machine was fabbo, the pressure controller cured the flash and spitting issued almost instantly, and the dropping of the plates well below the the lid height meant that if you did get a mould that spat, the metal no-longer splashed into your groin...

BYC7 sculpted by Ali Morrison

TTG kept the old machine, so across that summer there were pretty much always two of us working in the tiny room... As I mentioned in the last post, Rees Taylor was one of the other casters, who I was told was just making up a little pin-money whilst being a full-time Father, but my main work mate was Richard Evans, a 27 year old local man, who I don't think actually spoke to me for over a week or so once I'd started...
He and  I would become firm-friends over the next four years while I worked at TTG.
(more on Richard later, a very interesting character, who I was to discover had his own history in the Wargames-world)

Casting isn't a bad job, its not difficult to master, but it is hot and heavy work, and requires long spells at the machine if the job is to be done efficiently... and although I'd jump at a chance to do anything else at TTG if the chance arose, I didn't mind if I had to stand casting all day... it gave the two of us in the tiny room time to chat, and listen to music...

Oh, and the first mini I ever cast... Well it was one of these... BYC7 Asisiactic light-horsemen with bow and javs.

Full time.

So after two or three weeks of working on Saturdays, I knew I wanted a job at TTG.

I wrote a letter, asking if they had any vacancies, despite the fact that it would have been easier just to ask face-to-face, but that was what I'd been told in school, so that what I did, best hand-writing and everything...

Thulg, illo by Tony Ackland.

The next time I was in the shop after school, Kate said...
"I got your letter... its left me in a bit of a dilemer..."

"Why?" I wimpered, preparing myself for a big dose of rejection...

"Well" she continued, "your mate Mark asked me for the same thing yesterday as well..."

My life hung on one sentence...

"...but, I think there is something we can do..."

TTG were planning on going though a bit of an expansion, they had started a miniatures range, which was making the 15mm Laserburn minis, a few 25mm sci-fi and a small range of Dark Age 15mm's,
which they had been licensing in the USA to a company called Alliance Miniatures.

Now, it had come down the grape-vine that another US company, Heritage Miniatures, were going bust, and that Alliance in the States wanted to buy up the failed company and license them back to Tabletop for production here in the UK. Bob was already selling quite large numbers of the Heritage Napoleonics through the shop and though mail-order, so picking up on an existing range would have doubled their miniature out-put in one swoop.
So if the deal went through, Kate was sure that there would be work for both Mark and Myself, in the newly expanded Tabletop Miniatures.

As far as I remember, the deal was still to be finalized in the US, but Kate said if I could do a few days casual work, in the casting room, to see if I was up to the task, then the job would be mine when I finished school...
Casting???
Well I'd seen the machine and moulds in the back-room but I'd never done it at that time, but yes, " I can do that" as Yosser Hughes would have said, "Gizza job."

As it turned out, the deal with Heritage fell though, someone else bought the failing/failed company and their big selling Napoleonic range would remain with Skytex (the UK agent) for a while yet, but Bob, indomitable as he was, made his mind up overnight, with the aid of Alliance in the US, that TTG would start their own range of 15mm Napoleonics, using their great young sculptor Aly Morrison who was already working on a Medieval range of 15mms.

If anyone reading this has any more details about Alliance or Heritage in the early 80's I would be delighted to hear from you... I owe my Life in Miniatures almost directly to these two American companies, and I'd love to find out just exactly what went off in June or July of '83, I heard that Alliance were out bid, is this the truth? Who did pick up Heritage? What happened to them? I don't think that they are still out there... all information gratefully received...

So, short of doing a few trail days in the casting room I had a job... £35 a week for 5 days, 40 hours Tuesday to Saturday.

Saturday, Saturday, Saturday...

I did already have a Saturday job, in late February of '83, Mark had got me a job on Arnold Market, working for a flower seller, but in truth I hated it... fetching and carrying for a couple of '80's barrow boys, in all weathers was no fun at all, so after working on the stock take, I asked Kate if they needed a new Saturday-boy to fill in for Robert (who's second name I can remember), the lad who had done the job for the last couple of years and who was finishing his A levels and heading of to Bristol for Uni...

 

an afternoon tipple

Kate gave it a thought, I assume asked Bob, and said yes. The Saturday post was all about watching the shop whilst Kate got on with a day-to-day life, which from what I remember was sitting with her feet-up, drinking coffee, or after 2pm a barley-wine, and reading the paper... Bob, most weekends would be away at a Wargame Show (a what?), so Kate liked the idea of not sitting in the shop all day whilst he was gone.

'Watching the shop' suited me down to the ground...
Plonked on a tall stool behind the counter, I would sit and read game books, or White Dwarf, or whatever came to hand, and wait for the bell to ring to announce the entrance of a customer...
Saturday Mornings wouldn't be too busy, opening at 9, Kate would fulfill whatever mail-order she could that had arrived that morning, but mostly it was only a light trip to the post office before the last collection at 11.00am, and then a day of waiting for customers...

Trying to remember back to those early weekends, I don't think we ever took over £150, some weeks much less, which doesn't sound like a lot of money these days, but it could be quite hard work when we were selling 15mm minis for 7p (25's for 30p)... and even a big sale, a boxed game or D&D book, might only be £8 - £10, getting to £150 wasn't easy...

The thing that made it for me was the customers, mostly they were fabulous, people wanted to be enjoying themselves when they arrived at the shop, so every-time the bell went, there would be another happy Wargamer delighted to have found a little Aladdins cave of stuff...
 And OK, we did have our share of 'characters' though the place, (more of whom later), but mostly customers were bright, knowledgeable and funny, and I couldn't think of a better way to spend my time on Saturdays than fishing around in the figure cabinets for missing T72 turrets, or dusting down copies of Starship Troopers, or whatever else the customers wanted...

Not only was I doing something well with-in my skill range, I had started to enjoy it too.

The first days work

Pathetic Stock-taker!

Right-o then, fast forward a couple of years, '81 to 83, me and my best mate Mark Weston were in and out of TTG two or three times a week, several things happened in this two year period, expansion, Laserburn, to mention two, but I'll get to these later...

In March of '83 Kate Connor asked me and Mark, if we'd like to help with the stock taking in the shop. He and I lept at the chance. I think that we did two days, Tuesday the 29th and Thursday the 31st, just before the UK Tax year-end in April..

We arrived at 9.00 and after coffee and a chat about why we were doing the count, we set to totaling up box games, and tiny tanks, Citadel minis and Davco ships, and everything else they had in what amounted to the warehouse space in the back of the place. TTG did quiet a number of rule sets and micro-games and all these had to have their components counted, books, QR, record and counter sheets...

At lunch time Kate fed us all, Mark and I, and the other chap who was working full-time in the casting room, Richard Evans, something she would continue to do whilst we worked for Her/Bob.
It didn't really strike me at the time, but it was this kind of small thing that made work feel like home, they didn't have to do it, but they did, and even in later years when we 'workers' stopped using Kate's kitchen and living room as a canteen, they continued to provide cash for us to buy food, to cook in the work's kitchen...

I don't remember what we got paid for the two days, or why we weren't in school for that matter, maybe we were on holiday or maybe school was winding down for 5th year exams, but what I do remember is finishing on the second day and being given a little handful of folding cash.

illo by Tony Yates

 On the way-out that evening, I grabbed a couple of Laserburn scenarios that I wanted, Sewerville shootout and Tarrim Towers heist, and asked Bob
"...how much?"
"Oh you can have those", the great man said...

Money and free games, just for standing around in the shop all day, looking at whatever they had...
I think I'd found something in my skill-range...
Result!

Now the only thing was to turn a couple of days casual work into a Career...

A new shop in town...

I've always been of the opinion that Daybrook Square was the centre of the whole wide world, a fact proved to me in early '81, when a wargames shop open there, right on my doorstep, with-in a 100yrds of where I had first played with Airfix Knights and Astronauts on my Grandma's front room carpet...

Once again I think Andy Black was the bringer of the great news, he must have had to walk past it that morning to get to school and by the time D&D club started at dinner time it was pretty much old news that we had our own shop with-in walking distance...

Images stolen from Richard Scott

My first memory of going though inside was one tea-time after a dentist appointment with my mother...
ding-ding-ding, went the the door dell on entry and we were greeted by a friendly blonde lady, Kate Connor, behind the counter who explained that they had just opened, after working out of their house on Acton Rd, Arnold for years.

My Mum and Kate chatted for awhile whilst I shot to figure racks to see what they had...

And they had loads of stuff, everything Citadel had; Adventures, Monsters, Historicals,  plus loads of Ral Partha and others...

NOT my painting

The shop was also full of other stuff, plastic kits and modelling supplies which Kate later told me had been bought it to fill out the space, and also Dungeons and Dragons books and Modules, rules from other people, and 'Wargames Miniatures', tanks for WW2, soldiers for Napoleonics and ACW, none of which I'd ever seen before... and board games, loads of them...

But, on that first visit I only had eyes for the fantasy figures, Kate lent me a chair to stand on, so i could reach the top of the rack and from there I picked my first ever Citadel miniatures... a slime beast with sword (FF2), and a Fighter in plate-mail (FA1), amongst them...

From then on, for the next couple of years, I'd cycle through Arnold Park and down to TTG after school and spend half and hour or so, going through everything fantasy and sci-fi they had... I knew there stock as well as they did... which was handy...

Next, Stock taker!