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...